Hopkins hosted JohnCon, its annual science fiction and fantasy convention last weekend.
The event, which was run by the Hopkins Science Fiction and Fantasy Association (HopSFA), was held in Levering Hall and lasted for two days straight, from 5 p.m. Friday to 5 p.m. Sunday. Each year, HopSFA attracts panel groups who showcase anything from artwork to jewelry to comic books.
This year’s convention featured groups including Cyanide and Happiness, Surviving the World, Manly Guys Doing Manly Things and Disorganization 13 as well as two student panels.
Junior Jeffrey Bismayer, supreme adjudicator of HopSFA, oversaw JohnCon.
“It was well attended, but it could have been better. It was better than last year,” Bismayer said.
Bismayer added that this year’s successful attendance could pave the way for the continued improvement and expansion of the convention.
“Hopefully since this was a larger turnout we can get more funding and bring more to the convention next year,” Bismayer said.
Although the convention ran continuously over the 48-hour period, the panels did not present during the middle of the night. The attendees who did stay at the convention overnight played board games and watched anime, which was running the whole time.
One of the most popular panels was Disorganization 13, which is a popular spoiler comedy group that appears at Ota
kon and the New York Anime Festival.
Spoiler groups take a topic, which can range from video games to anime to popular culture, and retell its story in a humorous way. By the end of the story, the group has “spoiled” the story to anyone who did not know it by revealing key facts.
Junior Kendal Reed said that his favorite of all the panels was Disorganization 13.
“They were amazing. They put in a lot of work every year,” Reed said.
Freshman Zoe Longenecker-Wright, who attended the convention on Friday and Saturday, said that while all the panels were good and the event was well managed, there were surprisingly few people there.
“Turnout was lower than I expected it to be,” she said.
Longenecker-Wright added that the low turnout did not discourage her from future participation in HopSFA and JohnCon.
“Having this be a non-academic club that actually got something to run makes me feel like I’m part of something worthwhile,” she said.
HopSFA received around $4,000 of funding from the SGA for JohnCon and used approximately $1,000 of its own money to host the convention. Despite this funding, the finances of the event were still tight.
“When we applied for funding we went to an SAC grant. They didn’t give money for food for panelists or additional capital for fundraising efforts or decorations,” sophomore Rena Finkel, head of public relations for HopSFA, said. “We were refused funding for that, but we did not want to have it affect our con. We applied for reimbursement for what we already spent.”
Finkel added that even though the funding did not meet the demands of the organization, the financial shortfalls were not apparent to the attendees.
She also said that the event was definitely a success, especially considering how hard it is to get Hopkins students out to events in general. She estimated that the total number of attendees at the convention was 100 people, many of whom stayed for the whole weekend.
“It has gone downhill in the past five years, but the new board has allowed this year to be a really big success,” Finkel said.
This year the board of HopSFA had a slightly different agenda.
“They were focusing more on actually being a convention and getting the people who actually create this stuff to come,” Reed said.
The two student panels were also very well received. Junior Alex Mui had a 90-minute panel on Japanese visual novels. Visual novels are mixed media graphic novels that are formatted like books in which the audience can see the page and the progression of the story through the flipping of the pages.
Bismayer said that Mui’s panel was impressive.
“It was well put together and well researched. I want to see more of those in the future,” Bismayer said.
The other student panel was performed by junior Aaron Abugaber. In his panel, which was an introduction to plastic modeling, Abugaber built a live model in front of an audience. His panel also featured a raffle of two model kits that were donated by a local hobby shop.
The other aspects of the convention beside the panels were also fun, according to Longenecker-Wright. “I enjoyed playing board games in the game room with people I had never met before. I met some fun people who live in the Baltimore area,” she said.
HopSFA and the students who attended the JohnCon deemed it a success, and only expect it to be better in the coming years.
