A letter I write to myself-

This will be the 5th Anime Iowa I've attended and the 3rd one in which we've participated in artist alley. Following last year's shinanegans with being quarantined at least 50 feet away from all dealer's room traffic (INSIDE THE DEALERS'S ROOM no less) while we all got stuffed in together like awkwardly piled tetris blocks, we shall still sojourn 6 hours due north once again for Anime Iowa 09. Why? For party good times and laughter fun. For despite the things that may go wrong, we still love visiting with other artists and eating at HuHot's (it's tradition!)

For reasons I can't quite pin down, Anime Central 09 wasn't too stellar. We were late to the show and hence, nearly lost our place in the alley. That part was my fault. However, the completely unregulated/unverifiable way I was set up with a table was not. I was bascially told to find an empty table and just claim it. For all the rules, regulations, and database management they had, I can't believe how simply it all broke down, for me personally. Anyway, from what I gathered at ACen 09, it would seem as though we will need to step up our game considerably to catch more attention--or just bow out and stick to the smaller cons--our business in Anime STL and Natsucon were pretty much tied for our activity in Acen 08. Acen, with it's thousands upon thousands of attendees compared to ASTL with it's near 1,700 attendance (I believe) and Natsucon with it's....500!