Sakura Con has been busy as the date gets closer for the convention in Seattle. Sakura Con has open up submissions for panels at the time of this post. If you want to host a panel at this year's Sakura Con, you have until February 14th. For more details regarding the panel process you can click on the link below.

Sakura con Panel Submission

Sakura Con also has announced that Shiki Douji will be attending this
year's convention as a special guests. Shiki is a character designer and illustrator known best for her work in Full Metal Panic. Other work you might of seen her work in are:

• Glorious Dawn
• Variable Axel
• Youheidan no Ryouriban
• Shoukan no Chousensha
• Seven Stars no Inkoku Tsukai

Sakura Con is being held at the Washington State Convention Center in Seattle, Washington. The convention will be on April 14-16th.

With only 8 days away from the looming date of hotels being opened to the public to register for this year's Fanime anime convention, information regarding what hotels will be up for grabs are now live on fanime's site. All hotels that are listed on the site, are on a anime convention discount then the normal prices for a hotel in downtown San Jose. The hotels that are listed on Fanime's site are as follows:

• Hilton
• Marriott
• Hyatt
• The Westin
• Pacific Motor Inn
• The Fairmont
• AC Hotel
• Holiday Inn San Jose
• Courtyard San Jose Airport
• Four Points by Sheraton San Jose Airport
• Fairfield Inn and Suites San Jose Airport
• SpringHill Suites San Jose Airport
• Doubletree by Hilton Hotel San Jose

Prices will range anywhere from 70$ to 180$ a night pending on which hotel you plan to choose from. Hotel registration will go live on Jan. 18th, and will be open to attendees who pre-orderd thier badge for this year's Fanime. Fanime will be taking place this year on May 26-29th in San Jose at the convention center in down town San Jose.

Anthony Beanes
-Director

In an early leak on twitter, the twitchcon website has confirmed that this year's TwitchCon will be in Long Beach, California on October 20-22nd.  In previous year's TwitchCon has been moving from location to location for the past 2 years. In the first year of TwitchCon, the convention started in San Fransico, California. Last year's TwitchCon was held in San Diego, California.

TwitchCon is a convention that celebrates the twitch platform with panels, special guests, cosplay contests, and much more. Many streamers attend the event to network, and meet their audience as well as other fellow streamers at the event. We covered TwitchCon's first convention, and you can watch our coverage of TwitchCon on our youtube channel.

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Tara Strong the voice of Twlight Sparkle, will make her return to this year's Babscon! Tara Strong is well known voice actor who not only voice Twlight Sparkle from My Little Pony, but many other roles in various cartoon shows, and video games. Some of her other characters she voiced in are:

• Bubbles from the Powerpuff Girls
  
• Timmy Turner from The Fairy OddParents
  
• Harley Quinn from the upcoming video game Injustice 2
  
• Raven from Teen Titans
  

Babscon will be taking place this year at Burlingame, CA on April 14th-16th. For more infomation about Babscon, you can check them out on thier website.

Its rare to see the support of the city for a convention of any kind, but it has been done before. Fanime is supported by San Jose, San Diego is a huge supporter of San Diego Comic Con every year, and now added to the list is A-Kon. A-Kon is partnering with the City of Fort Worth for this year's convention. As often with most cosplayers, and photographers locations for photoshoot is always the challenge at conventions. With Fort Worth opening their location to A-Kon to use, Fort Worth offers more than 250,000 square feet of exhibit space, nearly 60,000 square feet of flexible meeting space, an impressive 28,160 square-foot ballroom, a 13,500 person events arena, and a 55,000 square foot events plaza that connects to the Fort Worth Water Garden.

Also, A-Kon is planning to host multiple other programs in the surrounding area of the convention by expanding its programing at the other hotels for this year's A-Kon convention. The hotels that are being hosted for A-Kon will be separated by two categories. Hotels that will have panels, and other late night activity will be named Active hotels. While other hotels that is supported by A-Kon will provide quiet hours from 12am to 8am for guests, families and fans who need to catch a good night's sleep. A-Kon takes place in Dallas Fort Worth, Texas. A-Kon convention will take place this year on June 8th-11th.

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