Nan Desu Kan 10

Last weekend was Nan Desu Kan 10, an annual anime convention in Denver. This was my third year attending NDK and I had a pretty good time. I would have had a great time but I was too busy working. And as usual after a con, I came home exhausted and bummed that the weekend was over.

I’ve been working at NDK since I started attending two years ago. The first year I was a volunteer working in the video rooms, where they show anime around the clock. The way volunteering works is that you still pay to get in your first year but if you work at least 16 hours during the con, you get two free passes for the next year’s convention (one for you, one for a friend). I easily fulfilled this obligation watching anime for eight hours a night.

Last year I was promoted to staff, which in truth just means that the rest of the staff thinks you did a good job. The responsibilities of staff members aren’t much different from volunteers, though they do get to choose their hours to work before the volunteers and they get a few other perks.

This year, however, I was the Video Coordinator, in charge of the three video rooms where I first started working just two years ago. It’s pretty unusual for a person to be a section head in their third year of attending a convention but the circumstances surrounding the video staff this year were unusual, to say the least. To avoid any hurt feelings, I’ll refrain from detailing how this all came about.

Anyhow, in my first year in a position of such responsibility, I wanted to make sure things ran smoothly. That meant I wanted to be present for all of the special events we hosted in our video rooms (look for a later post about these). Unfortunately, this meant I missed out on a lot of the other goings-on around the convention during those times.

In hindsight, my staff was more than able to cover the special events without my intervention and I could have enjoyed myself more during the convention. Next year, I’m going to schedule time off for myself and make sure I have a great time.

I’ll be posting several more entries about specific events around the convention. Stay tuned.