#panelist

[laz-kay]

Obsessed with these shots of me doing my thing at UKPC. Get me behind the goddamn mic again🥲

📸 ~ Ribbon Moon Photography

[travsd]

The Bill Cullen Bicentennial

Born 100 years ago today, broadcast personality Bill Cullen (1920-1990). When I was a kid in the ’70s, Bill Cullen was, along with Kitty Carlisle and Peggy Cass, one of the regular panelists on the game show To Tell the Truth, and on rare occasion he subbed for Garry Moore as the host. Carlisle was an opera singer, actress, and socialite I later learned; Cass was also an actress, mostly a…

[fashionboots]

Euge Schlatter

Argentina

[ericlvargas]

Norwescon wrapped up last week, was a bit of a blur to be honest. Was surprised to get a best in art show for science fiction award, my first time winning an award at this event. Did a lot of live drawing panels this year as a panelist, Friday especially was back to back, here's some of the sketches I did for the panel attendees as well.

[rachaelmayo]

This set is titled, Stuff I Do At Conventions. The Archon convention was held over the Sept 29 - Oct 01 weekend, and I have attended this con as an artist for the last 25 years. I participate in programming, mostly in the art track. These are the artworks I made while I was there.

The first piece is a collaboration with fellow-artist Hollie Linn. The panel was an "Art Relay", which devolved into a general art jam. Hollie was my partner, and we didn't want to share with anyone else! Our first assignment, prompted by the audience, was "a goth lion and a hippie dragon at a dinner party". She drew the lion and I drew the dragon, and we both colored the picture.

The second piece was also a collaboration with Hollie. I asked her to draw her favorite animal - with wings. She drew a quick pegasus, and I tackled it with markers. Then she tackled it with more markers.

The third piece was done in an art demo by fellow-artist Rodney Eaton. He was demonstrating his own colored pencil techniques, and invited us to try out some of the mediums he likes to use. I worked on black multimedia board with Prismacolors to make a quick dragon drawing. I might or might not finish this one later.

The final piece is just my table tent. Each person who does work as a panelist receives a nametag that can be seen across the room. I almost always decorate mine, both out of the need to keep my hands moving, and the desire to advertise, without any doubt, I AM AN ARTIST! The green dragon is my work. The spaceship is the default illustration from the artist guest, Timothy Chiasson.

[kristinawkelly]

I will be at the Indiana Comic Convention March 14th-15th as a panelist/presenter! I’m doing a solo presentation on using SFF elements to spark poetic creativity!

Here's the tentative schedule where me and my coauthor @jandkwriting will be panelists.

Friday March 14

*2:00 pm: Room 133 Stellar Fusion - How Blending Genres Can Make a Story Go Nova Jonathan and Kristina (and others)

*3:00 pm: Room 109 Filk Into Poetry - Using Speculative Elements to Spark Poetic Creativity Kristina (solo presentation!)

Saturday March 15

*11:00 am: Room 104 Rebel Women of Pop Culture Kristina (and others)

Sunday March 16

*12:00 pm: Room 135 You Are Just a Puppet - Lies and Lost Histories in SFF Media Jonathan and Kristina

*2:00 pm: Room 132 Stay a While and Listen - Video Games and Storytelling Jonathan and Kristina (and others)

[hoshirosethorncosplay]

Just a quick look at how I organize my calendar for my convention commitments. Especially when I have panels and contest on the same day.

Yes, I swear at myself.

[nursingucgconference]

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[channeltechnologies]

What our Speakers said | Ms. Jaslein Sawhney, Director, EY | CT Cyber Charcha

"I’m definitely looking forward to the next event,” said Ms. Jaslein Sawhney, Director at EY.

Let’s hear what she had to say about her experience as a panelist at CT Cyber Charcha and why she’s looking forward to the next one!

[hiriajuu-suffering]

I'm going on hiatus

I'm going to be honest with you, I'm burnt out.

I thought by now I'd at least have a panel assistant if not a whole team that believes in my vision for convention content programming, following through on the vision I had in 2022, after 3 years, I realize I'm sort of alone on how I want to do things as far as forming a coalition. Groups like this don't quite exist like they used to, for better or for worse.

The qualifications of panelists at conventions has gotten more diverse, but the backgrounds of panelists nor quality of panels at anime conventions has not. If anything, it's deteriorating. When the pandemic ended, I thought my main competition would come from people who had something really interesting to say about anime fandom and the community, not every other cosplayer that can run a sloppy game show or shit-posting panel with no interest in improving their content beyond their covered entry into the convention. Even if I don't enjoy that particular style of content, I get along well with those kinds of panelists when they're down to make friends and network with other panelists, not people that are cosplayers or social media influencers first and content creators second. Every convention I attend and I see someone with a panelist badge filming a TikTok instead of having a conversation with someone or helping someone else out, I realize the community isn't what it used to be and it makes me feel regret over J-culture becoming so mainstream. There used to be some level of respect and pride that came with being a panelist, people who panel are respecting the role less and it's causing conventions to undervalue the role programming can play in drawing numbers. Since it's assumed every panel will just be the same shit or outright bad, why would it be worth attending? I used to low-key resent people that said things like that, now I find myself agreeing with them.

There are so many panelists I love and respect and I've had personal conversations with a vast swath of them. A lot of us are feeling the same way, and our tenures as veteran panelists can only last so long. We're not at VTuber levels of going on hiatus, but it feels like too many of us come to cons tired and mistreated by the organizations that help build the community up. When people would rather drive out to the Leigh's Anime Bar or go to the nearest Round One than be at a convention (thereby potentially your panel or actually making new friends, God forbid) they got a pass for, we need to at least begin conversations about programming quality before most conventions say programming doesn't matter so let's become a glorified trade show and not have any non-guest panels. We've already seen the trend start, and conventions like A-Kon, Anime Matsuri, Anime Houston/Dallas, Oni-Con, YUMiCon, AnimeVerse Fest, and Anime Riverwalk stopped putting any care into their programming at all while still managing to sell passes. Too much of doing this is based on clout and hardly any of it is based on the quality of content in the panel itself. The best panels don't get invited to the biggest conventions in North America, it's the creators with the most clout. The two aren't mutually exclusive, but for those of us panelists that don't want to be glued to social media, you're completely unrecognized and unrewarded for what you're doing at conventions. WeebCon, now likely the largest anime convention in the DFW area, gave us wristbands instead of full passes in 2024. That's how little love we get from the community.

When I started this, my goal was to be invited to the biggest conventions for my ideas, despite how limited I keep my following online. I realize that's likely no longer possible, this decade at the very least. The panelists that do this for the love of it most often have to keep their social lives as detached as possible from their careers because our livelihoods come first. If I commit to being an influencer, it means a target of cancellation on my back grows, Elon Musk be dammed. I'm in a career the people making decisions will find anything to get me out of it because there exists implicit xenophobia towards my identities in public spaces. I've had a great deal of career instability without making attempts to be an influencer, it would be far worse if I did. Life obligations force me to put my career before my passion(s) because of patriarchal expectations and I do a lot to avoid replicating the trauma inherent to my ethnic group's experiences. Not making effort to be popular is that exactly. Getting an invitation to panel at Anime Expo, Anime NYC, Anime North, AniMinneapolis, Otakon, Youmacon, Anime Boston, Metrocon, or Sakura-con feels out-of-reach for me because of the landscape of convention-based content creation, A-Kon and Anime Matsuri sure as hell fail to recognize my value even though I'm a native Texan. Paneling at Anime Central and Anime Weekend Atlanta were peaks the past few years, but I didn't feel like I had something valuable earning those slots on my own merits, so I question if the goal I had was even worth it all considering attending a lot of these marquee conventions would just be a personal cost, not something that says a whole lot about how far my content has come. Above all, I was doing this for the love of it, and anytime I'm losing my love for it, taking that step back is needed.

My life is changing and, as much as I love this community, I can't sink as much time as I want to in it anymore, and I'd rather not commit to doing something halfway. As much as my handful of fans love my content, I can feel my quality slipping from the high level of my personal standards and I don't want to give a panel when I'm disappointed by myself or something I should have had control over. The largest component that's holding me back is I'm going on auto-pilot, stifling new ways to make my content better, so I've lost too much of my creative spark and not being fully present in my panel performances. I don't want to feel I've given any audience member in my panels less than my best, and I can only say I've done that when they've fully absorbed and enjoyed the content I present. I feel I'm lacking not because I don't believe in what I'm presenting anymore, but because I'm not being as inventive as I used to be in adjusting to the audience I have in front of me. When I feel stale, eventually someone will think I'm stale, and then I'm not doing the content I believe in justice. Even more than that, life is changing a lot for me personally. The fact the only weekend I could make work for my wedding is DreamCon weekend the first year it's in Houston speaks volumes to how I'm feeling. While that scheduling might feel somewhat anti-black, the level at which DreamCon exploits its attendees in pricing, even when compared to the most scummy conventions around, makes me feel less awful about having to make the choice. I turned down DreamCon last year because they weren't offering any tangible benefits to panelists, and I did enjoy AnimeFest quite a lot in its last year. I have personally stagnated in life circumstances by which 15+ conventions/year felt like the best thing I could be doing with my time, yesterday will have marked the completion of my 42nd convention in a little over 2.5 years or a little under a thousand days. I know artists/vendors who earn their living at conventions who don't average going to a different venue every 3 weeks. Even typical convention guests like voice actors and professional cosplayers don't even grind at the rate I've been going, so maybe I need to slow down just to keep my presence and content at conventions the least bit interesting. I still feel immense guilt for being forced not to show up for Ecchi Expo in December, because it was the first time I deeply felt I let this community down: some of it due to burnout and some of it due to life circumstances.

I say I'm going on hiatus, but it'll just look more spaced out between conventions. The sheer difference in volume will be noticeable, and it'll certainly feel like I fell off the map. My priority the rest of the year will be my career and personal life because it's tough to justify to myself I'm getting much out of going to more than a handful of conventions a year as things stand right now.

Conventions I'm fully committed to, despite the hiatus

WeebCon (April 18-20, 2025)

Anime Tyler (April 26-27, 2025)

Ba-Con (July 4-6, 2025)

San Japan (August 29-31, 2025)

Conventions I will go if invited personally

Tokyo X Houston (June 14-15, 2025)

Delta H Con (July 18-20, 2025)

Anime Texas 2025

Maybes

Ecchi Expo STX (December 12-14, 2025)

Tsumicon Texas 2025

Kawacon 2026

UshiCon 2026

If you don't see it up here, I'm not going unless something drastic changes.

I'm not going to leave the panel content I have to be completely unused, because I truly do believe in the ability of my panels to start conversations and facilitate the type of environment that's severely lacking at conventions. However, if others make attempts to replicate or outright replace me on my panel ideas, here's my feelings on the panels I have in rotation.

Teachers in Anime, Speech 100, Card Game Anime Three staple panels of mine, I actually don't mind if any of these panels get taken up by someone else because I'm not too proud to think I will always be the best performer of these. If you want one of these panels, I will freely send you every resource for the panel and adapt it to your own tastes so long as you meet a basic requirement for each. Teachers: a current or former K-12 educator in Texas Speech: holds a National Speech & Debate Association degree of Distinction Card Game Anime: received an invite to the Yu-Gi-Oh! North American World Championship Qualifier, placed top 8 in Bushiroad SpringFest or Championship Series, or qualified for Bandai Card Games World Tour

Sociopolitics of K-Pop vs J-Pop, Ethical Swinging/Swapping I actually want someone more qualified to become the primary lead for these panels, as there are moments I feel imposter syndrome giving this panel even if I'm confident I'm representing the material well. All I need is a conversation on how you relate to the panel, and we'll work towards getting you to be better than I am at doing the panel.

Being the "wrong" type of Asian in the Anime Community Unless you're skilled at navigating identity and ready to make people uncomfortable with what you're saying in the performance, I don't want to recommend anyone take this on. Several people have told me this is my most meaningful panel for my vision as a panelist. I'm willing to help you make this panel your own as long as you 1) are a darker-skinned person w/ an Asian grandparent 2) acknowledge there is a loneliness epidemic 3) think androphobia has a place in discussions of misogyny/patriarchy

Polyamory My headliner panel is a little more complicated than the others. Part of what's worn me down in doing conventions is being rejected fairly often at representing polyamory in a positive way through the medium, and my list of rejections for this panel, even from conventions that wanted my overall content, is VAST - Anime Matsuri (every year) - YUMiCon (every year) - A-Kon - Fan Expo (every year) - DreamCon 2023 - Colossalcon Texas (every year) - San Japan 2023 [they avoid repeating panels back-to-back years] - Anime Weekend Atlanta 2023 - Ikkicon (every year) - WeebCon 2024 - Anime Houston (every year) - UshiCon 2025 The polyamory panel at Kawacon 2025 happened, but it felt like it happened begrudgingly in a lot of ways. You'll notice I italicized three conventions. The reason is these conventions not only rejected my panel, but they accepted another panel that speaks about non-monogamy in an explicitly negative way. These three conventions have regularly had panelists trashing on, not just people that challenge amatonormativity, patriarchy, and/or monogamous relationship standards but also, people who use labels that firmly put them in the LGBTQ+ community and are far more recognized as statuses that warrant a little more compassion. The panelists that ran these "anti-woke" panels are completely unhinged and regularly violate the sensibilities of non-white, non-male, non-straight, and non-cisgendered people. Given the state of American politics right now, haters of ethnic and orientational minorities are basically a protected class, damn snowflakes. I heard a lot of people showed up to a polyamory-adjacent panel last Anime Matsuri expecting to see me up there, only to find the panelists were mocking and belittling anyone who thought outside of mononormative relationships for over an hour. If you encounter a panel that actively talks down on non-monogamy without room for audience interaction, WALK OUT OF THE PANEL(S) if you have any respect for what I've been doing. I find this especially ironic considering who the owner of Anime Matsuri is and what the community knows he's done. Even so, the rise of anti-nonmonogamy in panels has risen substantially, many of which are promoted by AFAB individuals that have, on record, cheated on prior partners. One of the central purposes I had in putting so much work into this panel was to do something about the general unhappiness with the gender disparity in the fandom, wanting to express to AFAB individuals specifically they can have multiple AMAB individuals that take care of them without having to feel guilty about it or making them into simps; not so cisgendered white men can form harems and seemingly every AFAB individual vies for the attention of guys with the most clout and treat the other 97% of men at conventions like garbage to the point an unwanted look is enough to try to kick someone out of a convention. To some extent, I feel the panel has regrettably done more to justify non-ethical/toxic aspects of how the anime community operates in the space despite how much I talk about how crappy these practices are every panel: o.p.p.s, unicorn hunting, etc. I'd like to believe this panel promotes gender inclusivity the most and yet I see the least of it in my audiences, as AFAB individuals seem to prefer the husbando shitposting panels to learning about relationships. I think this panel desperately needs an AFAB individual to be a panelist on it so I can get a more balanced perspective on gender throughout the content, but I have been struggling to get collaborators on this panel for two years. As a result, if you want to try to present this panel, we need to have a long conversation before I'm comfortable sharing all of my ideas and what to do with the content. I'm guarded with this content because of how many haters I've gotten for the contents of this panel and how much the community treats ethically non-monogamous individuals as making an invalid choice.

Contact me on Discord if you think you'd like to be the lead presenter in any of these panels, temporarily or otherwise. If you're reading this, I'd hope you'd respect my wishes enough before applying to perform my material without my consent.

Maybe I'll be able to pick the pace back up this time next year, if life feels secure and my internal motor for this feels a lot better for this than it does now. I'll be more proactive about updating this blog and my Instagram with good news. At that time, I want to be more ready for the moment than I ever have been. Until then.

[whimseysthrone]

Arisia 2025, 1/17-1/20/2025

Today’s quick update brought to you by medical appointments. You can see me on panels at Arisia this year, where I’ll be moderating four and participating in two more. Those will be: Um, Actually, Dropout is a Game Changer, So Make Some Noise – Friday, January 17, 2025, 9:15 PM EST Safety Systems in TTRPG spaces – Saturday, January 18, 2025, 6:45 PM EST (mod) Writing With The Rainbow – Sunday,…

[paintingdragonfeathers]

Fiancé and I had a BLAST at my final con of the year—GalaxyCon Columbus! It was my first time in ANY Galaxycon, not just the one in Columbus, and the crowd and overall vibe were awesome! Had very sweet booth neighbors, there was a lot of public art around Columbus itself, and the food was overall excellent. Sales-wise, even though it’s been an overall weird/slow year, it was my second best show of 2024 after Anthrocon.

My world-building panel was pretty full, but my creature-design panel was standing room only AND people got turned away at the door. I’m glad so many people asked questions and approached me to talk creative writing shop during and after the panel at my booth, and that they were educated and entertained. XD

I’ve already put my application in for next year.

#convention #dealer #artistalley #paintingdragonfeathers #artist #fanart #vendor #artistlife #con #writer #diorama #pokemon #pokeball #pokeballterrarium #art #craft #terrarium #cryptid #galaxycon #galaxyconcolumbus #galaxycon2024

[travsd]

Booking Bennett Cerf

Among show biz buffs, Bennett Cerf (1898-1971) has become the poster child for How American Pop Culture Has Changed And Not for the Better. Cerf was the co-founder of the Random House publishing company; he was also a panelist on television game shows. We exaggerate perhaps when we claim that such things could never happen any more, but you must admit, it would be remarkable. Cerf was born with…

[fashionboots]

Euge Schlatter

Argentina

[the-river-people]

Evansville Horror Con Panel on The River People!

We're so happy to announce that tomorrow, Saturday March 2 at 11am, me and my scary artist partner in crime Elliot Cantu will be presenting a panel on The River People in Room C!!! Throughout the con we are Booth 32 Sandpaperdaisy ART.

Screenshot from https://www.evansvillehorror.com/panels We’re so happy to announce that tomorrow, Saturday March 2 at 11am, me and my scary artist partner in crime Elliot Cantu will be presenting a panel on The River People in Room C!!! In this panel we’ll go into the details of the project, tell you a little about ourselves and what prompted us to love scary art and stories, and offer art,…