Meet The Team Behind BAMCon
Conventions have not yet reached their peak in popularity or attendance. One new anime convention making the scene in the New England area is BAMCon. BAMCon is a first year anime convention located on the western side of Massachusetts. I have always been curious to know the “behind-the-scenes” at conventions and wondered at how much work goes into creating events like this. In this article, I took the opportunity to speak with BAMCon organizers Amelia Ritner, Jon Wynn and Crystal Howcroft. If you ever wanted to know more about convention organizing or just curious about BAMCon, this is your chance to learn more!
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Tell us a little about yourselves. What are our current occupations outside of BAMCon?
Amelia Ritner: I am a stay-at-home mother currently expecting her second child. I grew up in Connecticut, but lived in Washington State and California for the last few years before moving to Massachusetts with my family last winter. I met up with the Berkshire Anime Club and began helping them plan the convention almost as soon as I found out it was in the works.
Jon Wynn: My name is Jon Wynn and I’m an electrical engineering major at UMass Amherst. I was born in the Berkshires and I’m the founder of the Berkshire Anime & Manga Club. I also run a fledgling production/publishing company called MediaCrash.
Crystal Howcroft: My name is Crystal and I have been into anime since the 1980’s (so now you know I’m ancient). I have gathered an extensive collection of anime on DVD as well as manga. I have studied art and have focused on art styles in anime and manga. I have taught drawing classes in the past, but right now I work at the local college and also work with developmentally disabled people.
What brought about the idea of doing an anime con in Western Massachusetts?
Amelia Ritner: I think Jon can answer this one best, but I’m sure it has something to do with Pittsfield being a reasonably-sized city and the fact that there aren’t many other conventions in this area.
John Wynn: I think we decided to do a convention for the same reason that we started an anime & manga club. There wasn’t one in our area. Not that we don’t like to travel to conventions, it’s just that we wanted the club to promote our own local events.
Crystal Howcroft: I loved the idea of doing a local convention as soon as it was presented. My year is planned around going to conventions and this area has so many anime fans who don’t get a chance to go. This also gives us the opportunity to show our community a little bit of ourselves and invite them in to learn more about the culture that we all love.
What are your opinions about the growing popularity of conventions? Why are more and more people attending and cosplaying?
Amelia Ritner: More people are attending and cosplaying, I think, mainly because of the exposure anime has gotten in recent years. When I was growing up, I was that weird kid who watched anime and cartoons all the time. Nowadays, it seems like you’re weird if you don’t watch anime of some kind.
John Wynn: I think this question is a double-edged sword. I mean, we obviously like the fact that conventions are more popular than they used to be and we love cosplay. We certainly want people to attend BAMCon in mass numbers. But I still have kind of a weird feeling about the whole geek culture thing. I grew up feeling like geek culture was generally for people who didn’t really fit in and I kind of liked it like that. So I don’t know how comfortable I am with the fact that tons of people are into it. I like it, but I just think it’s strange. To me, gaming and comics and anime were never done by the “cool” kids, so I think of cons as a place for true geeks to congregate. I am glad that it’s so accepted now.
Crystal Howcroft: Geekiness is definitely on the rise in our culture, so to see people embracing the idea of getting together and meeting new people who also enjoy anime is great. I think attendance is on the rise because anime is easier to acquire now as well. It used to be a chore to hunt down anime on VHS, and now you can pick up DVDs of some anime at common places like Walmart. People are more aware of it now than they were even a few years ago. The fact that anime can be found on more than one station on tv these days is wonderful, and also makes anime more accessible to people. I think more people are cosplaying because its fun to do, it gives you the opportuinty to dress up and act like someone else for just a day or two. It also helps create this bond between people at conventions, in that you may not know the person in the costume but you may love their costume, which makes you want to go talk to them.
What has been some of the main issues in putting together a conventions so far?
Amelia Ritner: One of the obvious issues is funding; as a first-year convention, our budget is limited, and it is difficult to convince businesses in this area what we are even proposing, let alone getting them to sponsor us. It was also difficult, at least at first, to find more local guests. We want this convention to expose more of the country to the Berkshires as well as to anime in general, but there are a limited number of professionals in this business living in the area.
John Wynn: The main issue for us has been budget. Period. If people knew how much money we had to do this con, they would have definitely told us it was crazy. We sort of knew it was crazy and went ahead with it anyway. It ended up working out but we would have been able to do so much more with deeper pockets. We will try to address that for next year. Other than that, I think that the organizers are doing an amazing job with the limited budget that we have.
Crystal Howcroft: This is our first convention so the biggest issue so far has been figuring out how to go about doing things the right way and staying in budget.
What problems have you seen in other conventions that you are hoping not to repeat at BAMCon?
Amelia Ritner: As this is my first time actually planning a convention, I can’t really answer that from an organizers point of view. On my part as a con-goer, I hope we offer better food at our con than others do.
Jon Wynn: I don’t really think of problems that other cons have (I know Crystal does!), I’m more focused on our logistical and scheduling issues. I don’t want to be critical of other conventions because I know how hard it is to put one together. I’m just amped that they even happen at all!
Crystal Howcroft: We hope to keep the convention full of fun things to do so there is always something for people to do.
What events and programming do you have lined up so far?
Amelia Ritner: We have a full list of Events, Panels, and Guests on our website, www.bam-con.com. But I can tell you right now, I am excited to meet the Sailor Moon Independent Short cast and crew, singer Stephanie Yanez, Voice Actor Robert Axelrod, and to watch Greggo’s Game Shows, with audience participation. We also have panels from The Chibi Project and +2 Comedy, as well as workshops on AMVs and cell painting, and two separate art contests.
Crystal Howcroft: I’m working mainly on programming so we have some great things lined up to show like Puella Magi Madoka Magica, and the Gurren Lagann movies as well as some old favorites like Cowboy Bebop.
Jon Wynn: I’ll let the other organizers fill you in on our lineup. Thanks for interviewing us! (^_^)/
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The Berkshire Anime and Manga Convention is the first major and large scale anime/manga/comic/gaming convention in the Berkshires, and we hope, Western Mass. BAMCon is an independently organized anime conetnion in the Western Mass metropolitan area. BAMCon 2012 will be held at the Crown Plaza Hotel in Pittsfield, Massachusetts on Friday, May 4 @ 10:00AM – Sunday, May 6 @ 8:00PM.
The convention features Japanese creators of anime and manga, voice actors from anime series, Japanese musical acts, artists, vendors and exhibits, panels, workshops, and gaming. Events all focus on aspects of anime, manga, and Japanese culture. With the popularity of anime and manga growing in the 1990’s and 2000’s, anime conventions have seen positive grown in their attendence; we hope that the first anual BAMCon is no exception.
BAMCon will begin it’s annual conventions in May of 2012, and is organized by Media Crash, and the Berkshire Anime Club.
You can find more information at their website,http://www.bam-con.com/. You can follow us on twitter @Official_BAMCon
