November 8, 2006
News for Anime Weekend Porto Alegre 2006:
Chibi-Pa cancelled
by PatrickDChibi-Pa Next, a small convention in West Palm Beach, Florida which had been scheduled for December 30th, has been cancelled.
According to the web site, they have realized that they are not able to hold a free event at a facility which they would have to rent. They report that they were not able to raise the money necessary to cover their expenses.
The web site's announcement reads as follows:
We are sorry to announce:Chibi-Pa: Next will be canceled. In recent months Chibi-Pa has been over come with the strain of holding an event that is free. Most free events are held at locations such as schools and churches. We on the other hand have been trying to rent a space from the City of West Palm Beach. The space seemed perfect because the actual cost of the location was $500. But in the end we also had to come up with a $2500 deposit, $500 of insurance, $300 for a crew to clean the bathrooms, $400-500 in special guest fees and many other things.
We felt that as long as we had a sponsor that would graciously cover the deposit that our dealers and advertisers could cover the rest. In the end we got no where near the 20 tables of dealer that we needed. Also the group that offered to take care of getting the Daiko Drummers could not come through with their end either.
Lynn and I tried our best trying to find county parks or cities in the Palm Beach county area to host our event. Sadly enough this was not the case. We put up a donate button on our site. All we got from that was responses on message boards about how it would not be a free event if attendees were asked to donate any monies. This attitude led us to believe that no one wanted the event. This should make all the conventions in Orlando and Tampa happy. None of them are free and they believed we were taking their business.
So Lynn and I decided to make this announcement considering we believe that there is no chance that we will be able to come up with the required monies in the next 10 days. On that note we would like to apologize to the people who have helped us and worked very hard to make this event. We apologize to vendors and advertisers that wanted to come to our event. We also apologize to the artist who have lined up to attend Chibi-Pa. On the other hand we do not apologize to the attendees that came to our website and saw the donate button. $1 form 1000 people may have kept Chibi-Pa alive. But you are so busy worrying about your daily lives that you do not care about the big picture. And for that you can stay home and twiddle your fingers. Maybe you can dress up like your favorite anime characters and go to the local mall. Just pretend your at a free anime event. Cause thats as good as it gets for now.
We will be leaving Chibi-Pa active. We hope that we can help other groups to put on their own events in their areas. If you have an anime club in Florida and would like to know how you can make your own festival contact us. We can help.
