Animazement

Obligatory press pass photo!

I got to go cover Animazement with Faith, one of my editors at Geek, and it was great to meet an internet friend in person. We also compared stories about random copywriting jobs. Weigh in, friends: Which is less likely to be ever be read: a training manual for fast-food employees or a press release with “e-greetings” as the keyword?

I always think that getting a press badge is a fluke. Maybe the con organizers happen to have one pass left over, and they decide to give it to me so it won’t go to waste. Or maybe they mixed up my name with a real journalist and let me in by accident. Maybe the conference organizers just very quickly scanned my clips, and if they’d had more time, they would have realized it’s all a big mistake and they’d  really regret allowing me to attend. Also I’m pretty sure that anyone I’ve ever run into at a show is just pretending that they have read my work, just to be nice. I am not saying this is terribly rational, just saying that I’ve been covering industry events for years, and I’m always convinced that I’m some blogger who got in by mistake.

I don’t know if it was attending a show with a colleague, or my newfound familiarity with the Raleigh Convention Center (I was camped out in the Marriott Starbucks while lesser journalists were still cursing the convention center’s lack of wifi!), but I felt like a real working journalist at Animazement.

Overall, I really enjoyed going to Animazement. I liked seeing fans sharing their hobby with their parents or children, I liked being part of a subculture that is so accepting of fluid gender, I love that anime has led fans to learn more about illustration, or costume artistry, or to study Japanese language and culture. I would not mind some more showering and bathing by some of the attendees, though.