I honestly can't believe I'm reading some of the things I've seen in here. Okay Kumoricon, let's get this straight: You have two drastic choices. These are your only options. 1) Attendance cap. Try and shrink the con so it still fits into a hotel. 2) Make the jump to a convention center. Obviously, I advocate the latter. The only valid reason I'm seeing not to do this is money - and there are ways to get around that, even if it may be difficult. Obviously, other conventions have managed. And every time I've seen an attendance cap go into effect, people have been furious, and the convention has suffered drastically as a result. The only convention I know of that's managed to make it work for a number of years is Otakon - and that's only because there is literally no place else for them to go and everyone knows it. They outgrew every single venue including the Baltimore Convention Center.
Walking to hotels? You really think this is a problem? If you ask any attendee I'm pretty sure that walking back a block or two to one's hotel would be far preferable to trying to wait in line for 20 minutes for an elevator. Again, other conventions do this and it works out. Anime Expo has hotels so far away that people need to take shuttles to get there, and yet people still go to the con and enjoy it. Cosplayers having to go outside is a problem? We already have to! Lines go outside, panels are in a separate building, and you have to go outside and around the building to get the dealer's hall. Bringing in "industry" is a problem? Then why have vendors, or industry guests like voice actors? (Also, for the record - growing into a convention center and turning into "an industry con" is absolutely not the same thing, and trying to automatically equate them is ridiculous. Fanime is big enough to take over a very large chunk (if not all, I haven't checked) of the San Jose convention center, and yet their programming is absolutely crammed with fan panels, contests, and even a dedicated stage that runs all day for fan demonstrations and games.)
The OCC is in fact probably too big for us right now. But you know, there's a solution to that too - don't rent all the space right away! Every time I've seen a con shift over to a convention center, they rent a smaller area first, then expand into more of the space as needed in following years. This way you can also save some money on that crucial first year's move, because it is going to be hard from a financial standpoint.
Lastly, I'm with everyone else who's expressed anger over this concept - if you wanted to keep the con small, it's already too late. Cons are popular. People want to go to them. The only way a con naturally stays small by itself is by an outside forced limit (attendance cap) or if your con sucks and isn't worth going to. You're running Kumori-related events at other times of the year, you're promoting your con in various places, and you've been showing people a pretty good time thus far - that means that people will want to go. Congratulations, people like your con. So you're going to throw that away and tell them that they can't come? Gee, that's brilliant.
I suppose I should apologize for being abrasive, but this just makes me furious. I've been attending anime conventions for 15 years now, and I've seen dozens of events make this same jump successfully that Kumoricon is balking at. It can be done, it has been done by events very similar to Kumoricon, and there is no reason why it can't eventually work here too. I'm not going to waste my time going to a con that's trying to stuff its genie back into its bottle, either - there are plenty of other events that I can go to on a Labor Day weekend that don't try and force attendees to squish into a venue that's far too small and inconvenient for them.
