Thank You Part 2

A big glaringly obvious piece of the puzzle was missing from our wrap up letter from last week.

Volunteers.

Before I begin my long and heartfelt swoon monologue for the 2014 volunteers I would like to remind everyone that we always need volunteers.  We need them from the planning phase to the day of to the days after.  We look good on a resume, we can give you a reference, AND we are working to register with a government bursary program where we can take on students as interns so it will help with specific areas we need that you can benefit from!  Stay tuned for that (I hope we qualify!)…oh and like this year we will probably have a Volunteer Prize Draw Basket again!

It is not enough to say thanks to the few people that stepped up and helped us out. It was no small task and having just even a small amount of pressure off was greatly appreciated. 

We had our parents come and help, my husband, friends and several genuine volunteers.  I wanted to tell a little bit about my personal experiences during the convention because it really truly meant a lot that we had a couple absolute stand outs.  This is not to lessen any of the other volunteers contributions just know that we loved you all no matter how big or small your portion of the load was – we needed everyone!

The day of the con I ended up with 2 sets of minions. 

The first set a girl named Tailar and her little elf friend whom I don’t remember her name came to my rescue and helped setup the Cosplay room minutes before the event was to start.  Somehow we forgot to get someone in there and arrange all the chairs and move the tables.  >.<

I only found out afterwards they were friends of Keanna (one of the executives) and Tailar had plans to help out anyways, however, from my view of things all I saw was two attendees just walk right in and help me out.  They kept helping out the rest of the convention from 1pm onwards to closing and take down.  I was very impressed.

My second set actually can technically be my first since they were there for pre-setup day and during setup.  Allie M and Mary popped up like wack-a-moles awaiting tasks, they’d be set off to do them and BAM they would pop up again waiting to do more.  They moved tables, assigned badges, cut the badges when we found out I had misprinted and missed some all together, they ran back and forth for me to the storage room (I’m a gimp so they were much faster) and they did so much else.  Allie was also a Maid (1 of 3) for our café!  They put in several hours of work and always seemed up for more.

I was just so impressed by all our volunteers being so eager to help and I mean GENUINELY help.  I would have probably fallen apart by 2pm if they were not there to lend  a hand.  THANK YOU SO MUCH. 

From my tally we had 7 volunteers who had no association to the executives prior to the event.  It’s a small pool of people to pull a draw from.  Did you remember that part?  Any person that was a volunteer (NOT an exec or parents, sorry!) were entered in to win a prize basket we slowly collected over the past year.  The winner?

 

ALLIE MADDEN
(sorry no photo of her outfit ;_;)

There may be more in this basket than what is shown…

Thanks again to all our volunteers, friends, family, exhibitors and everyone who came to check out what we worked hard to put forth!

Caio for now

Cap’n Krys Christoffersen

Overdue Thank You!

Dearest Darlings,

Thank you for attending The Medicine Hat Fan Roundup 2014!  It was a lot of work and a lot of fun with the best outcome possible: success!

I have a large bulk of thanks to give out to specific people that I initially started writing at the beginning of this address but decided to move it down more since it’s a little long and everyone really wants to get to the meat of this off the bat.  If we didn't thank you below you should have received or will receive an email thanking you personally.  

So here it is:

Attendance: 179 people attended!  My personal goal was 200 but that just means next year we need to work a little hard to get you guys to come out.

Amount raised for The Women’s Shelter: $500

Our local Panago owner, Barb, has also expressed interest in continuing our relationship for years to come so we can continue to support our local charities and help in our community more!

Maid Café Tickets: 36 out of 39 tickets sold!  It was supposed to be 40 but Neoko got hungry -.-

Fan Favorites: Name That Tune, Cards Against Humanity, Big L Match Game, 404s Comedy Troupe

Fan Unfavorites: Distance between events (we hear you -.-), too many events not enough time, more food options

Cosplay Contest Winners:

Best Craftsmanship

Best Performance

Best in Show

We also had several honorable mentions that we made sure to have a group shot with!

AMV Contest:

1 Emma Browning - (AnoHana - Rubix Cube): Best Drama AMV

2 Kemar Cunningham - (Attack on Titan - The Phoenix): Best Action AMV

3 Emma Browning - (FMA -The Phoenix): Judge's Choice

All three can be viewed on our Facebook Page

Next Year's Theme: 

Pirates!

Lessons Learned This Year:

We learned quickly this year that we had a lot of content which for the amount of attendees we are pulling is actually a bad thing.  Next year we will be reducing the amount of panels and taking the "Quality over Quantity" motto to heart.  Filling up the panels we have is a priority!

We also know all too well that the event was spread too far across the College.  This is not exactly a lesson learned as more of - This is what we were given to work with.  Like every year, we will aim to get the S wing because it is the most ideal location for our event.

The Thank Yous!

We want to thank each of our exhibitors for coming out and supporting the event.  In particular we wanted to show appreciation for:

Ed Lukowich and Edge Publishing – Edge Publishing has continued to come out and support our convention year after year and it’s due in part to them that we were able to make contact with Ed.  Mr. Lukowich was also a wonderful person to meet and talk to and I hope the experience was a good one.

Helen Stringer – You are simply adorable.  I could not describe you any differently if I had only 1 word to do it.  We appreciate you coming and your enthusiasm towards us and the attendees was a bright spot.

Thomas and the Force Start Entertainment team – This year may not have happened without your support and your offer to help us so much.  We love you guys and want to keep working with you!

Jesse and the Red Rage Comics Crew – The Cosplay Contest saviors!  Getting you on as our sponsor and as a judge got the ball rolling very fast for other judges and the ability to make the Cosplay Contest the success it was! 

Ballto and Big L Productions – Same as above! You helped us out a lot with the Cosplay contest not only judging but basically M/C’ing it as you went – and your one Pinky Pie actress was a very enthusiastic and unexpected entertainer during the intermissions.  We also loved the Match Games and hope you bring it back for us again.

Tony Allen – our local radio DJ was an enthusiastic participant as a guest judge and he filled out our Guest Judge Panel well.

I obviously can’t thank everyone individually here but I have and am continuing the individual thank you’s personally to everyone I have contact information for.  

I would be remiss if I didn't give a shout out to our performers of the day Fire Dragon Taekwando, Ka Muso Kai and Olwyn Supeene.  You guys were all fantastic!

Thank you to all our attendees and to everyone who made this event what it is.  We hope you come out again for 2015 with a smile on y'arr face. XD

Krys and the MHFRU Crew