Baltimore or Bust: An Otakon 2006 Event

After several days of indicision and hectic plan-making, I’ve decided to attend Otakon this year. Now, as I continue to recall, Baltimore stinks. Otakon itself isn’t much better. Apart, of course, from the Raining and Fangirling, but that just helps the atmosphere. I’m really only attending to see some cool people.

• Rob - SD Mod
• Suberunker - AMV Creator
• Mookie - Dominic Deegan
• Dave Lister - Paradox Lost
• Lem - Bunny
• Dan - Clone Army
• Fred Gallagher - Megatokyo
• Ananth and Hawk - Applegeeks
• Garth and Larom - Comedity
• Jeph Jacques - Questionable Content
• Nekura, LittleThunder, Nathan, SSmith
• Sheldon, Jasmine, LainEverliving

There are, of course, as with any event, pleanty of people who I’d like to see, but havn’t any indication as to whether they’ll be going. People like Smurd. And there’s certainly people who I wish were going, but cannot due to various circumstances, such as finances or previous commitments. Like most of the awesome folks I hang around on IRC with.

I’ll actually be driving to the con with Rob and SSmith, which will combat fatigue and boredom with good company and excellent conversation. Our trip begins Wednesday evening. Alpicola will be leaving from Detroit MI, picking me up in LaSalle ON sometime after 7pm. We’ll drive away the afternoon for 5 hours, heading to SSmith’s residence in Hamilton ON. Arriving rather late in the day, the three of us will spend the night there. We shall break camp early Thursday morning, taking once again to the concrete highways. We’ll cross back into the US of A, driving toward Baltimore MD. Kristen and Greg will be picked up at the airport, and we’ll all make our merry way to our hotel. Little time will be spent dallying, as we’ll have to move quickly to the PreReg line.

I’m quite pleased with the selection of badge artwork Otakon provides each year. I opted to go with Memai this year.

The Baltimore convention center had open wireless networks set up in previous years. So, in hopes of maintaining some connection to the Wired, I’ll be bringing Nemu along.

As usual, the actual Con events I’m looking forward to are the Anime Music Videos contest, the Iron Editor challenge, any Fan-Produced Videos, the Megatokyo panel, and chatting with the fun folks in Artist’s Alley. Maybe I’ll attend a panel, if one looks interesting enough.

There’s been some rumours afloat about a Farewell Lunch on Sunday, so I suppose I’ll attend that. Assuming that someone actually gets around to planning it.