I enjoyed Kumoricon. I could wax on about all the ways that I enjoyed it but that would take a long time. I'm pretty long winded to start with. 
So I'll go with what I think should be changed.
Oh, and that brings me to my one big gripe. The cosplay rehearsal that turned into a three hour sitting marathon for most participants? That was rediculous. Perhaps if the organizer had been at the cosplay related events on time and then stuck around things would have ran more smoothly?
All in all the cosplay event had some flaws that should have been easy to anticipate. (make participation in the prep meeting mandatory? Collect music in the prep meeting? Plan how the event will run and post the specifics BEFORE the con?) I hope there is more planning in the future. Not everyone enjoyed the "last minute" feel of the event.
Several things happened and I do get the blame for many of them. I should have anticipated elevator issues when coming downstairs from the 14th floor and I stopped at the infodesk to pick up last minute forms which I found in many different places other than the cosplay clipboard. The infodesk was understaffed and I can't really blame them for some of the forms being someplace else. I had instructions written up for them, but even the instructuions were often misplaced at times. I don't hold anything againt the infodesk people. That was the hardest job at the con (except perhaps the person that had to tell people that we were full!)
The next item was that I made a big error and judgement. When I went through all of the forms turned in at the cosplay Premeeting, there were only 5 skits registered to be in the contest. At that time, you are absolutely correct. That should have been all that acts. I just didn't want to set the precedent of having mostly walk ons and hardly any skits and I bend over backwards far too much to get more skits to enter. I really should have only extended the deadline by an hour or two and had a new premeeting at that time. (Hindsight)
There was a scheduling issue. We were supposed to have access to the stage for our walkthrough at 4:00 and didn't end up allowed on until after 5. When I asked, I kept being told that access to the stage would be "soon," so I didn't make other plans. If I had any idea that "soon" wasn't really the case, I would have put together some chairs to outline the area that the stage takes up and started rehersal off stage. That way, the people from the Portland Costumer's guild could have started their judging in advance as scheduled. Had I not made that decision, as people arrived, they would have recieved their cosplay badge with their act number on it as they walked in the door.
Some of the how to can't be done in advance even if you try. Sometimes one doesn't know exactly what stage setup you will get until it's done. Sometimes it's one set of stairs, sometimes two. Sometimes there are wing curtains, sometimes not.
As for the music, I've heard too many horror stories of music getting misplaced, scratched or broken. Had we had access to the stage, the music would have been handed over as the act did their walkthrough to limit the amount of time the music was out of the owner's hands.
Once we were able to get stage access, I should have taken over from Andi (from the Portland Costumer's Guild) and continued the rehersal, freeing them to begin judging, but I took advantage of the time to work out some issues with the half time show which ended up with me having to run up to my room...and that ended up taking longer than expected. One of the issues that no one knew about until after the Cosplay that happened at about this time, I ended up slicing my finger deeply open with a cutting wheel and soaked 3 balls of cotton before I could slow the bleeding down. I didn't have bandaids in the room, so I put one last cottonball on it and wrapped it as tight as possible with transparent duct tape. Luckily, I wrapped it so tightly that it held together so it didn't need stitches. I didn't take the time to get it looked at until after midnight. At that time, only some of the halftime act people knew where I went, and they certainly weren't expecting me to take so long.
(Having had to stand outside in the rain for hours more than 2 hours waiting to be in cosplay at Sakura in 2001, and then having to stand single file against the wall in silence at Sakura for 3+ hours the next two years, I do have the opinion of at least you got to talk and sit and move around, but please don't think I'm diminishing your complaints.)
From the cosplay point of view, you are correct. The forms will be on the website at least 4 months before the convention and preregistration will be highly encouraged. If there still are open slots at the con, there will not be any more entries after the pre-meeting no matter what the percentage of walkons to skits there are. If the stage is not available at the scheduled rehersal time, rehersal will start anyway in a similarly sized space and judging will begin at that time. One of the changes made last year that should have helped the timing was having some of the construction judges watch the presentation to see how the costume looked and moved on stage and have the others do the up close costume judging right after the act left the stage, but the costume judges wanted to all see both parts. It's a change I felt strongly about implemementing, but I have too much respect for the Portland Costumer's Guild to question their decision on that.
(Oh, and I won't slice my finger open again like that no matter what position I hold at the con next year!)
