A friend is trying to crowdfund a local anime con, I chipped in. It's my first ever Kickstarter pledge. Very curious what comes out, if anything. Living in the flyover country, I learned to appreciate local cons in 1,000-4,000 visitor range, and learned that they differ quite a bit. The best is undoubtedly LCAD in Las Cruces, NM, ran by El Paso Anime Club from across the border in Texas. I heard it was actually better than their own convention. When professional promoters made a seed run of OtakuMex, it was... a little "sterile", if I may borrow from Jack Baruth, who borrowed from generic autojournos. It was competently run, however, which should be a benchmark. But I would prefer Justin to shoot for LCAD. Of course, if in 10 years Con-Jikan turns into AX, I would take that as well.

UPDATE: Omo shot me a tweet referring to public data on the progress of funding (Kicktraq provides a web page for it), and apparently people suddenly funded project today, possibly even reading this post. I presume everyone who pledges means to attend, so we might want to get together for an Kickstarter Samaritan dinner. E-mail if you're interested.

Actually what the heck, I should probably run an animeblogger panel, too. For fans, by fans!