What It’s Like to Be An AVCon Staff Member

Hello to those tuned in, and welcome to the AVCon blog!

Here, we’ll be posting some entries every so often; that’s all to do with AVCon. Whether it be anime, video games, Japanese culture, pop culture, volunteering, you name it!

To kick things off, I’m going to talk about my involvement with AVCon so far.

Who am I? Well, my name is Jaqueline, and I’m a Social Media Officer for AVCon 2018!  It is my duty this year to take care of our blog, along with our other Social Media platforms.

You might catch me on Instagram, Twitter & Snapchat alongside my Social Media partner Georgia, and I’ll be all over the AVCon 2018 app over the weekend too!

My journey with AVCon began in 2016. I signed up to be an Invader (Games), as well as a Ceremonies performer. I had never previously been to AVCon, but I had heard of its legendary reputation amongst my friends. I decided that this would be the year to go, and what a better way than to start volunteering for it!

Ceremonies were one of the biggest self-developing experiences of my life so far. It was so much fun and so much work, and I got to step out of my shell more as well as meet and befriend a whole new team of people. We attended rehearsals/meetings almost every week (I still have the tiny book I carried with me, with dance steps and notes scribbled all over it).

The performances you see on the AVCon main stage at our Opening and Closing Ceremonies take months(!) to prepare for. It was all worth it, though; being on that stage was exhilarating. I enjoyed the Closing Ceremony in particular, as another team member and I got to be front and centre for a fight sequence.

I loved my time on the Ceremonies team as an Invader and my first ever AVCon. It was absolutely unforgettable. However, if I could have a dollar for every time someone told me I looked like our AVCon 2016 guest Hex from Good Game, I’d be swimming in coins.

After my first year of volunteering, I definitely knew I wanted to come back.

It was only a few months later when I applied to be a Staff member and began my journey into joining the Marketing team for AVCon 2017.

I was signed on by Elise, our Marketing Coordinator, to be a Social Media Officer. You may have caught me sprinting around the Adelaide Convention Centre during AVCon 2017, trying to see as many events as I could. I even had my own little schedule written out every day. I could probably still recite when and where the main events were happening as I studied the AVCon 2017 booklet as if there was an exam coming up. I ran so much that I kept falling asleep in our office on Saturday. Whoops.

I’m super excited to be volunteering for AVCon once again. It still amazes me how much work is put into the event itself. People dedicate their time outside of their own personal lives (with full-time careers and studying) to help the show run. It actually gives me the warm fuzzies to be able to be part of such an amazing and fun-filled event that is so loved by many, including myself.

This year, AVCon will be bigger and better than ever, and we can’t wait for you all to see it.

This post was originally written and posted on our blog on 22 May 2018.