AnniCon 2016 was a huge success.

AnniCon 2016 took place yesterday at the Anniston City Meeting Center. If you were there you may have seen me running around in a Totoro sweater with a giant camera rig photographing guests, events, and attendees. It was a long day with setup beginning at 8 am and clean up ending a little before 11 pm, but it was packed full of fun, awesome people, and the atmosphere was great. Everything came together splendidly and our turnout was almost double what we expected. Woohoo!

AnniCon began as a youth program at the Public Library of Anniston and Calhoun County directed by Kimberly Westbrooms, but it outgrew the Library’s capacity in it’s fourth year. The event moved to the Anniston City Meeting Center in 2015 where it took on the form of a one day celebration featuring voice actors, belly dancing, and various programming, and dozens of artists and vendors. Shortly after AnniCon 2015 a planning committee was formed to plan for AnniCon 2016 and I was asked to be a part of it. It’s been a crazy endeavor but I’ve learned a lot about putting events together, and the pros and cons of working in a committee, and I consider anything educational to be worthwhile. Not to mention it’s been awesome to hear so much positive feedback about the event itself.

Our programming more than doubled this year. We had a lot of performances this year, including a mini Sailor Moon concert by Jennifer Cihi, singing voice of Sailor Moon, and a vocal cover performance by Caleb Hyles. This year also saw the addition of three new spaces enabling us to add a gaming room, anime viewing room, and a panel room. The gaming room was a huge hit with Smash Brothers Tournament and some sort of Pokemon Challenge thing that I don’t completely understand but was well received. Some other fun programming included a bellydancing performance, sushi demonstration, and several martial arts demonstrations. I think we did a good job balancing Asian culture programming with traditional anime convention events.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.