Yes, an Animetion Panel!  We were pleased to be asked by the organisers to run our very own panel at Alcon this year, with a focus on running an anime fansite and compiling our articles and news.

Running the panel was daunting as it was something we hadn't done before, but we feel it went quite well.  We hadn't had a lot of time to plan as we were asked if we wanted to do a panel quite late on, and were unsure of what facilities would be available to us in the room.  We did as much general preparation as we could in the week before the con, and then arrived early on the day to make final preparations and set things up.  We actually had more people turn up than we expected, which was good, and there were several unfamiliar faces amongst the people who attended.  Our nervousness mainly went away once we got underway and we felt that things flowed quite well, with both Webmasters Rich and Tom speaking about different aspects of the site and avoiding talking over each other.  In fact as it went one we grew in confidence and it felt a lot more natural.
 

 We began by speaking about he history of Animetion, that it began in 2002 and how we progressed since then.  We then started talking about how we produce the pages, which raised a few eyebrows when we revealed we still use Microsoft Frontpage.  Those eyebrows were quickly lowered though when we spoke about achievements we have made, such as receiving review copies and establishing links with retailers, all while maintaining our fan ethos.  As we had a laptop connected to a projector, we were able to display our site throughout our panel.  This obviously made it much easier to highlight area we were discussing and led to having a lot of

fun going through some of our Top Fives - possibly the most popular bit of the panel!  We even did a 'Who's that Pokémon?' quiz using one of our Pokémon quizzes on the big screen - the satisfied winner walked away with a Pikachu plushie!

We then moved on to talk about the site content and writing.  An important part of the site since the start has been the news section and we spoke at length about the continual research and online legwork required to keep our site as up-to-date as possible.  Much trawling of websites and retailers forthcoming releases lists is required to keep sections such as our release schedule and news section ticking over, and although this takes a lot of time it is essential to keep new content coming if you want people to keep coming back.  Running a website is something that many fans have probably considered doing, but  have decided against due to the logistics of it.  We offered tips and advice to those wishing to start their own site, including how to register domains and the kinds of costs you would have to consider.  We have been lucky in many respects in that we know someone who owns a webserver and hosts our site for a minimal fee, so covering costs has not been so much of an issue.  However, we did discuss ways of making money through the site, such as affiliates schemes and advertising.  We also spoke about articles and reviews, including the expectations put on you by anime companies and retailers, as well as the importance of covering the community side of things.
 

 As mentioned earlier we have established several links with anime companies and retailers.  This is definitely advisable if you want to run your own site and become known within the anime community.  Companies know that success depends largely on appealing to the fanbase before the mainstream, as anime is still a niche market in the UK.  Because of this they will not dismiss any fansite's value as a promotion tool.  Whether it is providing you with DVD review copies or competition prizes, supporting fansites will help them promote themselves to their core customers.  It is, of course, mutually beneficial as it will give you access to the latest anime releases and give

something back to your visitors with some cool competition prizes.  The anime companies have always been supportive above and beyond the call of duty with us, and there's no reason to believe that they wouldn't do so with anyone else.  We rounded things off by letting people know that we are always looking for new contributors and if people want to become known online a good way to do so is by writing for existing fansites.  If you are interested please email webmaster@animetion.co.uk!

The penultimate part of our panel was a random raffle.  Everyone who attended our panel got a number and we drew numbers out of Webmaster Rich's manky fishing hat at the end, with winners walking away with prizes ranging from anime figures to a Hello Kitty jigsaw puzzle!  We finished up with the do's and don't's of running an anime fansite, which we also list below.  These are the tenets we run the site by, and we have found some of them out through experience.  If you are starting your own site, you could do worse than pay them some heed!

Do:

• - Speak to anime companies, anime industry is very fan-focused and companies will take
    the time to talk to you

• - Remember you're a fan, running the site is a hobby not a way of life

• - Try to get more than two people involved!  Keeping everything up toether is difficult if
    there are only a couple of people working on it - trust us, we know!

• - Keep things fresh, and ensure you make multiple updates.  Even small updates gives
    people something new to read and keeps them coming back

• - Try to build a community, if you build a community around your site you will obtain a
    dedicated readerbase and it will help get yourself known within the anime community

Don't:

• - Ask or demand things as soon as you launch, give it time, build up a position and
    relationship with companies and you will be offered opportunities.

• - Get high and mighty, you may run a website but that doesn't make you better
    than other anime fans.  You won't get far if you make enemies.

• - Bite off more than you can chew - diversifying your site content is fine, but you
    can easily overstretch and end up with too much to do

• - Expect to make money.  Unless you can find an untapped niche or create an
    image to merchandise there's no money to be made from anime fansites.

• - Lose your discretion - If you run a site you will occasionally be told things by
    enthusiastic company reps that aren't public knowledge.  Remember that some things
    are secret, and talking about them without permission could cause a company to lose a
    license

In the end we really enjoyed running our own panel and were very happy that we were given the opportunity to do so.  Hopefully we will be able to do so again at a future event, but this time with the experience of this year under our belts we can approach it with more confidence and planning.

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