Welcome to A-KON^® • VSE

It's finally here...the advent we promised to everyone. It's been a long road, but well worth all of the effort we put in. After all of the hours of toiling at the computer, hacking away at code and getting jacked up on Mountain Dew I realized we had only one thing left to do...come up with a theme for the year. And so I set out to come up with something that was fun, but adequately fitting. Given where we started and what we've gone through to get here, I finally decided on Kaigan: Awakening.

I'd like to give my personal thanks to everyone who helped us get where we are today. And so, I take my hat off to both the creators who supported us while we took three years to evolve; to those who provided endless feedback, both positive and negative, and, lastly, to those who have spent hours parsing feedback, testing ideas/concepts and for being my personal think tank...Thank you.

Recent News and Announcements

A-Kon® 2010 - Contest Winners

And now for the information you've all been waiting for...

Masters Contest:

• Best of Show - Friend Like Guu (M100000142/Hare Guu) by RolltheStampede
• Fan Favorite - I Love the Anime World! (M100000089/Various) by RiderG
• Best Non-AMV - A Walk To Remember (M100000104/AMT/Clannad) by MeliChan923

Standard Contest:

• Best of Show - Averted Gaze (S100000065/Fruits Basket) by Code
• Fan Favorite - Geass Le Musical (S100000148/Code Geass) by PatCastro
• Best Non-AMV - Laggan Trek - (S100000103/AMT/Guren Laggan) by Ozzie Al Thor

"H" Contest:

• Best of Show - Disney® Sing Along Gone Wrong (H100000127) by Ashnak

Mentions:

The judges and staff would also like to give the following honorable mentions. These smaller awards denote submissions which created a stir of laughter, unique reactions (and quotes), and some much needed chuckles from the judges and staff during the group viewing sessions and judging process. Honorable mentions are given based on nominations submitted by the judges/staff and do not represent scoring placement in their respective contests.

• Family Time Sing Along - Springtime! (M100000100/FMA) by MisterFurious
• Who doesn't love a little Optimus Prime! - I Love the Anime World! (M100000089/Various) by RiderG
• Oops I did it again! My submission is around here somewhere... - Out to Save the World (M100000069/Various) by JudgeHolden
• Wow...err...uhm...wow...uhm...I feel dirty now! - Shush Girly (S100000156/Naruto) by Demi-chan
• That was *explitive* cool! - Geass Le Musical (S100000148/Code Geass) by PatCastro
• Best use of bondage footage - Worlds Dumbest Interpol Videos (S100000056/Lupin III) by "LC"_Lapen

Note from the Admin:

As soon as I have a chance to recover from con weekend, I'll post the official master list/award sections on the website and get back to everyone who's waiting on email replies from me. Good night, everyone. :)

Posted by: Phantom on June 7th, 2010 011:37pm

A-Kon® 2010 - Contest Submission Deadline

The submission deadline for all events is scheduled for May 2nd, 2010.

Posted by: Phantom on February 24th, 2010 011:04pm

Site Update - Go Live!

As of 4:45am CST this morning, we are officially live! All of the end user sub-systems are up and functional. Once I get some sleep, I'll be doing a final review on all of the site text and error checking modules (grammar and spell checking time), but I have done enough to be certain things are working well under a controlled load. Here is the final end user feature list (including some requests from last year):

• Online registration and login features.
• New submission management dashboard.
• Summary view set as default view for all users.
• Dashboard now supports viewing submissions across all contests.
• Detailed submission information is available from the default dashboard, but removed from the default main dashboard view for a cleaner viewing experience.
• Menu options are reduced and simplified in the new interface.
• Submission management is icon driven providing more options in a smaller dashboard view.
• Submission status and news are available on the same screen, which is now the creator default login screen.
• Upload capability now integrated into the site so FTP/Mailing information is no longer necessary.
• Limits and caveats of the integrated upload system have been noted at the interface point for the FTP.
• Auto-updating of status based on administrative trigger events. (speeds up the status update time so you guys don't have to wait for me to update the status of each submission)
• Improved status detail on the main dashboard. Status now includes a brief description on any action required.
• Option to delete submission permanently removes the submission from your dashboard view. Option to withdraw from an event has been removed in favor of deletion (by user) or disqualification (by staff).
• Option to test external links for submissions is now available from the submission detail section. Look and feel cleaned up...significantly.
• All forms now contain field mini-descriptions that contain helpful information to assist you in filling them out.
• Double-byte character support added to website/database.
• Improved profile and contact forms. Contest options are now driven by profile options and checked/enforced during contest submission by the backend architecture.
• Registration email notice re-enabled. You will now receive confirmation messages account signup. Notifications for submission status changes still on the development table.
• Improved instructions/details. Much of what was in the original FAQ has been moved to reside in areas of the site where the information directly applies to prevent the need to check the FAQ for simple information.
• The FAQ has been revamped and streamlined significantly.

There's a fair bit more that pertains primarily to the administrative, security, judging and event management areas that I'm not listing here. If you guys are interested, I'd be happy to share at a later time. Regardless, there are a couple of additional features I still want to squeeze in this year so look for us to do another update on a couple of the site modules. The submission system is final for this year so, unless a major issue crops up, we should not have to take the submission system offline again until after the contest this year. Good night, everyone! Drop me a line if you have any issues with the site.

Posted by: Phantom on March 29th, 2010 04:43am