Post NYCC/NYAF 2011 with Peter Tatara Part 1

Hello readers! I present to you, Peter Tatara, who is the Programming Director of New York Comic Con (NYCC) and New York Anime Festival (NYAF). I had the opportunity to interview Tatara about this year’s convention accomplishments and improvements for the future. Overall, ReedPop is “very proud” of the convention. It was a great achievement with 105,000 attendees, and it “flowed smoothly, despite more bodies, more guests, new spaces, and just a wee bit of construction.”

Goals

This was the second year that NYAF and NYCC have been presented together. There was an objective for each event that had to be fulfilled. According to Tatara, “with each event, each year is building on top of the last.” In regards to NYCC, the concern was with the flow of people, namely crowd control. As a result, Reed “invested” in the spacing, staffing and in the traffic flow to make the show more organized. Although fan attendance increased in 2011, “crowding was not nearly as big a concern as it was last time out.” In regards to NYAF, as voiced by the fans, the concern was about the space: what worked and what did not. “We reinvented where and how the Anime Fest was placed within NYCC as a result of this.” More or less the goals were reached. However, as stated by Tatara, “we constantly build.”

Even though the traffic flow was improved for 2011, there are still some issues that need to be amended. “Getting people in and around the building was much more effectively done, but once people got into a big queue hall for something like Avengers, they were just hanging out -- sometimes for hours.” He believes that there should be a more efficient way to “communicate, educate, inform, and entertain” those who have been waiting in line(s) for hours to attend a panel. In regards to finding a more suitable area in the building for NYAF, the Galleria “worked very well for gaming and Artist Alley.” However, he believes that it “was not the best for panels.” The panels for NYAF, compared to last year, were decreased to fit into Hall A, which also housed non-NYAF panels. “What we built this year for NYAF worked better than it did in 2010, but we're talking to fans and panelists and guests right now about how to improve, change, and evolve for our next outing.”
© 2011 Linda Thai

Stay tune for Part 2 of the Peter Tatara interview.

Photography by Linda Thai

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