We wrote in the last post that we went to the opening awards night for V3con on Friday. We were hoping to do a follow-up post about the conference on Saturday, but we got...busy. With school, that is. First day was Monday.
Anyways,
V3con was a lot of fun. We had to get up at around 6 a.m. in order to get to the
Japanese American National Museum by 7a.m. which was the time we had to get there to help set up and get ready to volunteer. Because we hardly ever get to go to events with a bunch of adults without our parents, we felt a little out of place. So many of the other volunteers there were much more experienced than we are, so it was pretty intimidating to be around them at first, but they turned out to be really friendly and helpful. We created a business card just so we can passed them out to people.
Now, about the actual volunteering: Chloe and I were assigned to a blogging team to post about various panels and tweet about the conference. We weren't scheduled to write blog posts until the afternoon, so we spent the morning mingling with other volunteers, eating
Panda Express, and listening to speakers. I had a lot of fun tweeting from my new phone (I've never had a smartphone before, and now I realize how convenient they are for social networking) and Chloe used her iPad to take pictures.
Then we got around to blogging about the panel discussions. I learned that beyond the mega Youtube Asian comedy stars like
KevJumba or
NigaHiga, Asian Americans use social media to promote a wide range of causes and viewpoints. I got assigned to some interesting ones:
Using Digital Media to Promote Non-Profits,
Getting Some Social Media Skills, and
Comic Relief: Anime and Manga in the Digital Era. Chloe wrote a post about how Asian-American bloggers use social media to cover health issues (click
here to read it!) and another about
social media's impact on blogging. All of the panel discussions were interesting. I even got to listen to some awesome people I've been wanting to meet for a while, like Lela Lee (creator of Angry Little Asian Girl), Kun Gao (co-founder of
Crunchyroll, how cool is that?!), and
David Choi (that crazy-good youtube singer!).
We also got some cool stuff from the conference, including an awesome volunteer t-shirt.
 |
| V3con T-shirt, McDonald's bag, dragon piggy bank and AARP pen! |
That's not to say the whole experience was painless. Each panel discussion lasted about an hour, and we were expected to be able to complete most of a post within that time frame. I had 3 panel discussions to blog about in a row -- no breaks in between. I had an emotional meltdown about halfway through the last one, because I still hadn't finished writing the first post by that time. I was so stressed out. I ended up having to stay later to finish the posts while the rest of the attendees headed off to the Bloggers Showcase, including Chloe. She got to meet all kinds of cool people while I got to finish blogging... Joy....
Despite the minor trauma, We're really looking forward to going back again next year. Everyone was so supportive and fun to be around! We hope to keep in touch with them and to have the opportunity to attend V3con again!
