[jenchan]

I have an idea that I'd like to propose for this year, and beyond. In running an independent anime club for more than ten years, I have noticed a lack of collaboration among local clubs. For the longest time, I haven't found many college clubs that are willing to work with others, as they seem to keep some sort of rivalry going, which I don't understand.

I'd like to fix this. I would love to get all Chicagoland anime/manga clubs networking, and maybe we can get big things to happen. When we work together, we can get stronger, and there will be a stronger anime fandom in this city, and perhaps create a place for anime fans to meet, other than ACen, one a year.

As rumor may have it (feel free to correct me) Anime Central staff members are also members of many school/college clubs, and as we know, ACen as a convention can have some great influence in the anime community/industry.

As you will perhaps recall, Jamie of AnimeChicago and myself hosted a few Anime Fandom in Chicagoland panels at various conventions, including ACen in an attempt to get a feeling of unity going. I have been more than willing to work with other clubs, hence my work with Elv of AnimeShinGen, having planned collaboration meeting which brought our two clubs together for one amazingly fun day!

Look, all we have here is random events, Anime Central, SoyCon, and UChi-Con. This gets people together occasionally, but there needs to be more. Sure, there is Mitsuwa too, but that's not enough either. We have random anime clubs in random schools. We need a sense of community, and sense of unity. There needs to be a central hub where we all gather, without the fear of rivalry or "my club is better than yours" mentality. We need to really get over this mentality. We need to realize that we need to take control of our own fandom, and make more of a mission to promote and encourage more anime/manga collaborations and events within city limits.
I would like to introduce the idea of a panel, or event a meeting of local anime clubs so that we can find ways to bring the fandom together and discuss what we can do as a community to bring more major anime events to Chicago, and promote them effectively!

Thoughts?

This post has been edited by jenchan: 31 December 2011 - 10:09 PM

[Hikari189]

A similar idea has already been brought up by the head of panels. You can find the thread here.

[jenchan]

Hikari189, on 31 December 2011 - 08:17 PM, said:

A similar idea has already been brought up by the head of panels. You can find the thread here.

Sorry, I didn't see that topic, don't visit the forum often. Thanks! Please feel free to delete this topic, I have just copied the info I posted here over into that other thread.

This post has been edited by jenchan: 31 December 2011 - 10:02 PM