Cosplay And Photography Expo ‘Reporter’s’ Notebook

OK, it can’t really be called a “Reporter’s Notebook” if it is written by the convention organizer, and not an independent reporter. I know — picky, picky. So consider this a very biased view of our very first convention, the Cosplay And Photography Expo.

The venue
We wanted a very interesting location for our convention that would focus on learning about making and photographing cosplay. I thought an old mill location would be cool, and there aren’t very many hotels and conference centers in New England built into or attached to those kinds of building. The decision to go with the Southbridge Hotel and Conference Center was mainly a financial one — it was half the cost of the only other location.

Once we saw the facility, though, we were sure we not only made the right choice, but hit the convention jackpot. The panel room was a teaching auditorium geared up for high tech and defense contractor companies, the ballroom was big enough for both a Dealer’s Room and a photo studio space, and the inside and outside locations were simply amazing.

The panelists
We knew we couldn’t afford to pay people to travel to our first-time con just to be on our panels, but we are lucky here in New England to be the home to some of the most amazing talents in both cosplay crafting and cosplay photography. Only two of the panelist candidates we reached out to declined, and both because of previous commitments on the day of the con.

Day of
The con itself got off to a slow, rolling start, with everyone dealing with something that caused a slowdown — not the least of which was insane amounts of traffic on the major roadways around the con, starting early and lasting all day. Even still, by the time the first panel, “Makeup: Basics, best practices, contouring, etc. for cosplay,” at 10, there were plenty of people in the auditorium.

The rush, if there was one, came between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m., although the lobby never seemed overly crowded, as the panels drew the attention of many, and the outside photo locations drew many more, despite the heat and humidity. The panels went more or less smoothly, and the sheer amount of info dumped onto attendees was astounding. Panelists did an excellent job of handling the demands of being on multiple panels and wanting to shoot or be shot in between.

Even if they had to change in their cars, many cosplayers brought and wore multiple costumes — including Wonderllama Cosplay, who was a panel moderator when not cosplaying as your editor in chief, or Wilson Fisk from the new Daredevil Netflix TV series. And large costumes were on display, between panelist Thatgearsguy‘s amazing armored Baymax, to Carley Winn‘s nearly height-accurate, four armed Opal from Steven Universe. Not every stilt costume is a giant robot.

At the end of the day, when all panels were done, we held a Cosplay Fashion Runway Show, for cosplayers to strut their stuff and show off their hard work. We decided early on that there would be no costume contest — plenty of cons have them and we thought pitting cosplayers against each other was the opposite of what we wanted to do with CAPE. We were lucky enough to get Gogo Incognito to come up from New York to be the MC of the show, and she knocked it out of the park.

But the real reason for the Runway Fashion show was to have as many people in the panel room as possible for our charity fundraiser, a raffle that gave out a mystery box of goodies Nerd Caliber had accumulated over the years, a gift bag of goodies from Fringeworks Cosplay Crew, a gift certificate for $25 from the winner’s choice of Joanne’s or B&H Photo, and the last minute prize donated by Thatgearsguy — a custom made foam armor helmet from the game Destiny. We raised $244 for the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, the highest rated breast cancer charity by all the organizations thank rank these things.

The bad
There is one thing I need to make note of. In light of a con in which nobody reported a single instance of any kind of harassment or abuse, we did hear from the hotel about one unfortunate occurrence. A hotel guest walked past a pair of ladies in costume at the bottom of the marble staircase, right at the time when one of them was taking a picture of the other, while she had her skirt hiked up and reportedly was not wearing underwear.

We made it very clear that this was a hotel with multiple family focused events going on the same day as CAPE, and that no activity or costumes that would not be allowed in public would be allowed at the convention. Flashing falls into that category.

While we have a very good idea of who these people were, based on the amazingly good description by the guest, we have no definitive proof, and therefore can’t do anything about it. But make no mistake, if we do get proof or if it happens again, we will make sure those two are not only not welcome at any other Nerd Caliber events, but known to all cons we have connections with.

Cosplay is not consent works both ways, folks. Do not subject unwilling people to your sexuality. That is what hotel rooms are for.

OK, back to fun! While we did lose a little money on CAPE, it was less than we feared, and as a percentage of what we shelled out, likely less than most first-year conventions. We aren’t ready to commit to a second one quite yet, but I can say we spent an inordinate amount of time this morning talking about what to improve.