UP-AME (Monogatari) Fair 2011

This post is more than a month late. Hehe.

The perpetually anticipated UP-AME Fair for 2011 was held at the World Trade Center last November 12, 2011 and I volunteered to not only be a media partner (and I obviously have been remiss in my duties in that aspect) but also as a speaker. Under the Anino Games Inc. banner, we also bought some sponsorship space. Yes, I know, this is one of the local anime industry's biggest event of the year. Hence the active participation.

The thing about UP-AME's fairs is that it's also one I usually dread going to, mostly because past experience has led me to think that it will be disorganized or that students cannot handle the volume of visitors that usually come their way. After all, they do this annually to celebrate AME's anniversary and not because they do PR events for a living.

This year, I was in for a complete surprise. The crowd control went pretty well (considering the volume of traffic coming in and out of the tent), the ushers were systematic, garbage maintenance could use some work but it was at least manageable and I actually had fun. Plus, I learned a lot from some of the workshops and that's always a good thing. So whatever it is this batch of UP-AME members did, I hope they continue to do it in the years to come. I think the World Trade Center tent was just the right size for an event of this magnitude.

Anyway, here are some key photos of Monogatari. You can view more photos on my FB page.

This is our booth. It comes with two pretty watchers, Vana and Nikka.

If you ever go hungry, you can always grab some P15 onigiri at the UP AME snack booth.

What is an anime fair without costumes?

This is for those who like 'em cutesy stuff.

Some toys for sale.

Beautiful blades.

I love this entrance.

Great job on the plants that lined the entrance. Tita May's work. =^.^=

Pocky!!!

Nikka checking out the headgears.

People dancing.

Akitani-san's kimono's.

Artists working on what they do best.

Bands.

Some kendo demonstrations.

Toys on display at the workshop area.

Cutie kid in a costume. She posed by our booth.

That's me preparing for my topic.

Which was about how to turn your anime-gaming hobby into a career.

Akitani-san and her kimekomi art.

It looks easy enough...

But looks can be deceiving. Nikka works on her kimekomi.

Almost done.

It really ain't complete without cosplayers.

Have your fortunes told.

On winning at the Philippine Blog Awards 2011

2011 began with the Otaku Fridge winning at the 12th Philippine WEB Awards (PWA) and it ends with the Otaku Fridge bagging Best Gaming Blog (National Level) at the Philippine BLOG Awards (PBA). I honestly was rooting for my other site, Sarimanok.PH, which also made it into the National Finals so I was not prepared to do a speech for this one. Why do I always mangle these things?? ^^;;

I thanked our readers, but I neglected to thank our contributors. One of them, username Voldemort, also won an award yesterday evening. Well, let's rectify it here, where it will go on record for as long as this site lives. Hehe. Thank you! Thank you!

I'm just happy because next year, the Otaku Fridge will be celebrating its 15th anniversary and I keep remembering how it started waaaaaay back during the GeoCities days. And the screening for this year, according to our host, was the most rigorous since hundreds of blogs had to go through so many processes. So yeah, she had it right when she said that all finalists are to be considered "hard core". Another thing to be happy about is the fact that I discovered quite a few blogs that I'd really love to visit. (Especially I am Fickle Cattle. I swear, working in a testosterone filled game development company has considerably nerfed my gaydar. I thought he was straight when he came up onstage.)

Anyway, here are some photos of the event, which was held at the Carlos P. Romulo Hall of RCBC Tower. You can view more photos at my Facebook page.

The stage.

Posing with my Sarimanok.PH co-author, Cris Dumlao.
The site made it into the finals (National Level) but we bowed to Sining Factory for the Arts & Culture category.

All winners:
Me on the left. My friends Lia of Geek Girl Manila and Kel (a.k.a. Voldemort) of It's True! It's True!
Kel, incidentally, was also the voice-over. He thought he wouldn't win because he was hosting.

Posing with other winners on stage.

Most of us.

And this is the trophy.
I should buy a properly labeled stand for it before friends ask me why I have a "kalabaw" on my desk.

Truth be told, my year had been quite rough (and was TOTALLY BAD for my self-esteem, which went on an all-time low). It's quite ironic because 2011 started out quite well for. But this is a great year-ender, telling me that life is still good after all. =^.^=

We Won at the 12th Philippine Web Awards!

I've already posted about the 12th Philippine Web Awards awarding ceremony at my personal blog. I've already thanked many of the people who have contributed to my growth as a webmaster and a blogger. This time around, I would like to thank the people who have contributed to the beginnings of this website and what it is today.

My cousins and sister, who make up the Senshi contributors: 
Firesenshi (Virna Naomi), Thundersenshi (Alex), Icesenshi (Aggie) and Lovesenshi (Rae). There were  more of us senshi cousins, but us five were the most active online. We all began from the Sailor Moon community of the late 90s, with The Otaku Fridge being our first website. If I remember correctly, belonging to that community meant serious competition when it comes to web design, content and technology. Heck, one of the pioneers in design and technology within that close-knit but controversy-driven community was one of the spearheads of Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome (Ben Goodger of Netherlands). How else were we supposed to keep up?

The international contributors:
Bluemaxx (Malaysia), Elfboy (Malaysia), Aoshi (USA), Kenryoku Maxis (USA), Larghaz (USA), Status (USA) and many others. I hope I can name them all, but Blogger's database is so simplified (compared to the last CMS we used) that tracking has become quite difficult.

The local contributors:
Mark Poa, Voldemort (Mistervader, Kel Fabie), Shunichi Sakurai (JM), Kaoko (Chrissie Mata-Peria), Ficsation (Christelle Mariano), Animetric (Rowena Lim-Lei, the original owner of Animetric.com) Vash (Noel Soller), Lizard (Nicco Mapua), Xellos (Juan Luis Singson), Snakecharmer (Marcus Ruger Ramirez), Katana no Miko (Tin Ramirez), Mookamori and many many others. It was a difficult task, maintaining content of this magnitude but because of your valiant efforts during the early days of The Otaku Fridge, I was able to continue where everyone else left off.

To the OB members: I THANK YOU ALL FOR YOUR CONTINUOUS SUPPORT.

Going through a two-step journey was nerve-wracking, even though I try not to care. Hehe. It's been a while since I competed for this award and it's sometimes nice to feel validated...especially since not all Web 1.0 webmasters were able to transition successfully into Web 2.0. Hopefully, though, The Otaku Fridge would have a local presence and I was thinking that The Philippine Web Awards could help me gain that.

Since 2010, I had been aiming to have a local presence and it seems like this is coming true these past few months. It looks like we're slowly getting there. Here are the Google Analytics comparison charts of the territories The Otaku Fridge covered from December 2006 - December 2007 and December 2009 - December 2010. Click for a larger view.

As you can see, the United States and Canada are still predominantly where most of the visitors are coming from but the Philippines is starting to get greener and greener with each year. =^.^= We've journeyed 14 years. 1997 and GeoCities seem like a long long time ago. (My gosh, I was in college then. Haha!)

Lastly, I would like to congratulate all the awardees in the 12th Philippine Web Awards. I believe in the Filipino ingenuity and innovation. Let us all continue to strive for excellence in all our endeavors.

Finalist for the Philippine Blog Awards 2010

Last week, I received the message that the Otaku Fridge made it into the finals of the Philippine Blog Awards 2010. In the last 13 years that this website has existed, it was only this year (2010) that I decided to turn it into a blog. It's also only this year that I decided to make it prominent that the site's author resides in the Philippines. (Many passersby thought that this is owned by a Japanese dude and not by a full-blooded Pinay.)

And what a year it was! Ever since I converted this from web 1.0 to web 2.0 in 2007 (during the Fridge's 10th year anniversary), I had less time for it. What used to be updated nearly everyday suddenly stopped churning out information...which is ironic because web 2.0 should have given me more than enough time for updates. The thing was, in those last three years, I felt oddly detached. That was a hurdle I had to overcome.

By turning the Otaku Fridge into a blog in 2010, instead of your formally run CMS-powered website, I was able to breathe more life into it. It went from having three updates a year to two updates per month. And why shouldn't it start running again? After all, the Otaku Fridge was the very first website I came up with, when I was that college student who had just realized that she was in the wrong course a few months before graduation. This was the site I first learned HTML for. I couldn't just abandon it.

Getting this recognition -- amidst hundreds of other competitors -- means that I am getting back on track. Yet another irony: I've gotten recognitions (internationally and locally) for my other websites...but never for the very first one that I built. Until now.

The announcement of winners happened yesterday, December 12, 2010, at the RCBC Plaza Carlos P. Romulo Auditorium. Though I didn't win, at least now I know that I can put this website on the local map. Being among the top five is already an honor. Thank you, Philippine Blog Awards, for this wonderful opportunity.

Getting interviewed after the awarding ceremony.

If you want to read about my complete experience at the Philippine Blog Awards 2010 -- who won in my category and who owns those two trophies I'm holding in that pic -- you can drop by my personal journal.

UP AME Track 10 at the SMX

This should have been posted during the weekend but I was actually waiting for UP-AME's official statement regarding the fair. I still wasn't too clear about what exactly transpired -- all I really know is that I've been hearing both good (from people who were able to get in) and bad (from people who who couldn't get in) things from various camps.

Honestly, I didn't think that I would be able to make it into the hall when I arrived at approximately 4PM. I had just come from another event at the SM Prestige Lounge. Had I known that that this would be quite chaotic (at first), I would not have confirmed my attendance with the other event's organizers. This fair is the kind that awards early birds because early birds get to experience everything it has to offer before people come in droves. By the time I arrived at SMX, what greeted me was this:

(Don't even ask how it looked like outside. It was worse.)

I had to swim my way through that crowd and still ended up swimming in the wrong direction. In a good way, hehe. I found myself standing inside the halls of the World Robot Olympiad 2010, which I blogged about three days ago. While I enjoyed my time in that other convention, it was this pretty elf that caught my attention and brought my mind back to the AME fair.

Unfortunately, she had also caught the attention of just about every fan boy imaginable. (They come in all shapes and sizes. Waaaah! Thought I was going to get crushed.) Sorry for the blurry shot. I had to stand tippy-toed, with my cam on full zoom, because her swarmers were much much taller than li'l ol' me. I can't even give her beauty justice. Feh.

A lot of cosplayers were really determined to get inside, regardless of the crowd size. I had not even taken a photo of how it was like outside of SMX. To say that many people outside were becoming disgruntled was an understatement. Some were turning into degenerates.

I actually feared for the organizers. They could've been easily mobbed. Thank goodness, they kept themselves level-headed the entire time.

I found myself staring at this ticket when I saw a bunch of scalpers outside. It made me wonder: "Hm. Maybe I should sell this for P1,000?" I was pretty sure there would be takers. People were getting THAT desperate.

Hah! Of course, I wouldn't do that. This is actually my first AME event. I would not miss the experience for anything. Certainly not for a measly P1,000. (Maybe for P10,000?)

Once inside...well, there were many things that had been removed in order to accommodate the crowd. I wasn't able to see the Café, the Sumo and some other highlights. Fortunately, I still had a lot of fun going around the hall. (Even if I couldn't take decent photos because I keep getting jostled. Really must learn event photography. How do professionals handle it?)

On the left was one of my favorite costumes. I love the little details this cosplayer painstakingly took into consideration. In the middle was one of the things I wanted to purchase. It's a dark green, floral girly trench coat...that I couldn't buy because I had a measly P100 left on my wallet.

On the right is one of my favorite RPG couples of the 90s: Rinoa and Squall.

Here's my friend Molly, posing with a bunch of head pieces. She's actually the sister of the fair host, Szusza. Hm. I just realized that we don't have photos together.

She brought me in front of the stage, where the cosplay judges sat. I saw the score sheet and I was pretty impressed with it.

Look at that. It's so high tech! And so adorable! This clearly had been well thought of.

Below: Klaine and Szusza, the kawaii hosts. Behind them are some band members who were about to perform a J-Rock number.

This is the best part about being at an event: meeting someone you had not seen in ages. A few weeks ago, I had encountered an old Otaku Fridge Boards (OB) member, Kel, known a long time ago as Voldee. Last month, it was MarkPoa, whom I had encountered at Cosmania X. This time around, I saw Josh (known in OB as Lune Knight).

His voice is now lower pitched. Hehe. But he still has that full head of rowdy curls, which I immediately recognized. Looks like I wasn't the only one who had a great time at the AME fair. There's only one thing I hate Josh for: He had photo booth pics, which he posted in his Facebook account! I didn't know there was a photo booth. Wah!

All in all, I'd say that this is one phenomenal fair. I've heard "horror stories" about it being so full of people that function rooms kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger each year. Despite the "horror stories", the crowds just keep multiplying. (Kinda figured one SMX hall would not be enough.) I think that speaks a lot about the organization. Good job!

And as they say in Japan, "Congraturation!"