June 11th, 2010 omo
Jim is a great guy because he enjoys and takes his time sharing with the rest of us what’s going on. It’s little things like enjoying the riparte online that makes a fan con great. But I thought this was worth sharing, in one of his more sentimental moments. It comes from a post script in some 3-liner post he made just randomly.
PS: I’ll take credit for the careful torturing here — that really *is* all me, and I’ve been doing it since before we announced L’Arc~en~Ciel wayyy back in 2004. I’ve been pretty up front about how much I enjoy that aspect of it, and I’m glad you guys seem to appreciate it. :)
But making musical guests happen takes more than just me; I’m just the boss, so I’m supposed to provide vision and direction and keep people on track. I do a fair amount of negotiating and strategizing, but it would all be useless without the right staff to pull it off.
There are years of groundwork laid by my immediate predecessors as Relations Chief (the Heaton brothers and Jonathan Harmon) — and by a guy named Jeff Kleist who has been involved in this stuff since the beginning and has really been bringing his A-game the last couple of years. Then when acts get onsite, I’ve got Jeff Kleist, my assistant Jeff Lee, and former con chair Terry Chu (who was chair in 2004) all taking point for various musical guests. Our main events staff (led by Mike Lee) and our tech ops coordinator (Walt Sysak), plus the guys from DSL Sound, make all these crazy things happen. And our interpreters make sure we can all communicate.
And then we have folks like our many contacts and friends in the industry, who campaign on our behalf. Folks at Sony and Geneon and Avex and King Records and Domo and Lantis…be very glad that there are folks on the business side who get it and believe in it and that really makes a difference. We earned their trust over the last decade, but they’ve also earned ours by playing fair in an industry not really known for that.
So when you’re sending your positive vibes and your thanks, remember that it’s not just “Jim Vowles”, it’s the entire team of people who make this happen.
This post has been edited by alabaster: Yesterday, 04:45 PM
Reason for edit: credit where credit is due.
——————–
Jim Vowles
Member At Large,
Otakorp, Inc.
Board of Directors (2010)
Relations Section Chief 2007-2010
Con Chair Emeritus (Otakon 2006)
Grand Vizier of the Ota-Net
Maybe I should share his post about last weekend too. Or maybe I’m just getting old.
Tags: Anime, otakon
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