Another year, another CONvergence. I’ve written here before about the convention itself, and I may have more things to say later about the nuts and bolts part of the convention since it was in a new location this year (spoiler: I thought it was a net positive overall). Today I’d actually like to talk about CONvergence’s panel culture and some specific experiences I’ve had related to that, including some positive and not-so-positive ones I had this year. My experiences aren’t necessarily directly related to CONvergence in all respects; I’ve got some personality problems/mental health issues that make certain situations different for me than they might be for others, but hopefully this will all resonate with others to some degree.
Most of the conventions I attend are straight-up anime conventions, and for the majority of those, panel content is drawn from submissions that attendees offer up on their own. There’s a time period prior to the convention during which people apply to present their ideas and material, and depending on the number of submissions and other factors, panel offerings are accepted and scheduled, or rejected. The people who submit the panels are responsible for creating the content, arriving on time, and filling the hour with their material. Occasionally, panelists are given the option of allowing additional folks who they didn’t specify beforehand onto the panel, but that doesn’t seem to be a universal option. In any case, this is a common way of creating a schedule and ensuring that there are folks to run programming.
CONvergence runs things differently than other conventions I’ve attended. I’m not sure if it’s something more common at business or academic conferences, but they go about their quality control in a very different way. Months before the convention, there’s a public meeting during which attendees can throw out ideas for potential programming. Convention staff takes note of these, and closer to the convention they provide the list and a form by which interested parties can sign up for topics that interest them or for which they have some expertise. CONvergence’s attendee base tends to skew older, and by virtue of that there are many more folks who have applicable professional experience, so the quality of the panels tends to be very high. In some cases, the number of prospective panelists exceeds the number of speaker slots for a topic, so speakers are narrowed down through various means. The convention has a professed interest in cultivating a diverse speaker pool (which is great), so often those factors weigh into who is scheduled to speak. I believe the number of panels each person has applied for is taken into account as well (that’s just my speculation, though).
Panels are also run a bit differently. Some number of years ago, CONvergence switched to a moderator format. What this means is that one panelist is assigned a moderator role (people applying to be on panels can also volunteer to moderate panels that they are assigned to). That person is in charge of directing the conversation, ensuring that all the panelists have a chance to speak, and making sure that audience commentary doesn’t get out of hand. They also tend to be the person who organizes things in the background before the convention, helping to facilitate the panel’s direction via email with other panelists (I was on a panel this year with no assigned moderator, but since I initiated email contact and discussion before the con, I sort of turned myself into the panel moderator and served that role during the panel discussion). The participation level of the moderator in the actual discussion can vary quite a bit; In many cases that I saw the moderator would share their thoughts on the topic, but in others, the moderator was mostly present just to ask questions of the other panelists. I prefer the former situation to the latter; if I’ve signed up to sit on a panel it’s because I’m interested in the topic, so I want the chance to speak as well.
While the convention does its best to ensure diverse viewpoints on panels through its scheduling process, I get the impression that this must be difficult when it comes to the anime-related programming. Anime is really not CONvergence’s focus and anime fandom isn’t a big draw there like it would be at a specifically anime-centric con, so it doesn’t surprise me that I was the only woman on any of the panels I participated in. This hasn’t exclusively been the case in the past, but it was the case this year for whatever reason. This doesn’t typically bother me because I know logically that I have opinions experience when it comes to anime. As you readers can hopefully attest I have a pretty decent working knowledge of current anime and opinions related to them, and I’ve never had anyone try to question my presence on one of these panels. While there can certainly be gender relations issues of that kind online, I’ve been lucky that most of the anime fans and panelists I’ve met in person have been decent people with an open-minded approach and desire to share. That said, I think our interactions are often colored by thoughtless actions and unconscious prejudices, and those things, combined with my social anxiety, the specific demographic makeup of a panel I was on, and the personalities of the other panelists, resulted in kind of a sour (and early) end to my weekend.
The bad vibes started Friday evening when my husband and I arrived to a panel room for our panel that required a tech setup. The room did in fact have a projector, but there were no cables long enough to reach the speaking dais, and we learned later into the debacle that there was literally no way to hook up my laptop audio to the speaker system in the room. For a panel involving video clips with sound, this wasn’t the best situation. We ended up presenting sitting in chairs adjacent to the projector, and holding a microphone to my lap-top’s speaker in order to ensure the volume was loud enough for people in the room to hear. It worked, but by that point I was very frazzled and anxious, since I don’t like to give off the impression that I’m unprepared (normally we wouldn’t be; I think we’re both used to anime conventions which tend to have tech setups in every room and cords long enough to accommodate laptops – we anime panelists love our clips and slide presentations!).
I was scheduled to sit on one last panel Saturday morning. The topic in question related to the use of terminology such as “anime” and “manga” for works that are not created in Japan. We’d had a lot of email discussions about it and it was clear that the topic was something of a controversial one (it has been in anime fandom at large for a long time, and among our panelists there were some differences of opinion). There were several specific topics brought up during our pre-discussion, and I was prepared to talk about any of them. About the first 1/3rd of the panel went fine and I think we all got to share our perspectives. After that the conversation began to be dominated by a couple of folks, and a back-and-forth started between the panelists and audience members that took things way off track. Additionally, there was a lot of noise bleed from an event in an adjacent room that only added to the noise level.
One of the ways that I cope with my anxiety is that I plan. I do my best to plan well for events and things that involve me. What I’m not great at is speaking off the cuff; I can do it when needed and I practice for it sometimes, which probably seems counter-intuitive but what I really mean is that I try to think of other potential ways in which the conversation might go. However, in an environment where multiple people are speaking at length (and sometimes trying to speak over one-another, or respond to audience commentary), it can get tough for me to follow the conversation. Add in muffled dialog from noise bleed in an adjacent room, a creeping feeling of impostor syndrome, and a feeling of being un-seen by others up on the speaking platform, and you have a recipe for an anxiety attack. I left the panel feeling really defeated, and ended up going home for the rest of the weekend afterward.
I didn’t write about this to make anyone feel bad, but I did want to point something out. The push to feature diverse people and viewpoints is noble, but is only as successful as those with louder voices allow it to be. I think there’s still this mentality that if people want to have their voices heard, they should fight for the space in which to speak. In fact, I think it’s more the responsibility of those who are used to the feeling of having their opinions be accepted at face value without limiters on their time to speak to relinquish a bit of that time and allow others a seat at the table. The first step of doing that is learning how to recognize when you’ve taken more than your fair share.
I’m sure to some this looks like some kind of “flounce;” I actually still love CONvergence, will definitely be back next year, and was really sad to stay home the remainder of the weekend – but I knew I wasn’t in the correct mindset to enjoy myself after Saturday morning. I wanted to work through my feelings a little bit in writing, and then move on. I might even try to write out what I would have talked about had I been offered the chance to do so (I suppose having the opportunity for some future content here is a definite plus!). I mostly hope that this post will help others consider the space they make for others within fandom, and the responsibility they have as stewards (rather than gatekeepers) of that fandom.