I can't help you with this, but I'm curious what these "panels" involve. If you don't mind talking about it. The site is unhelpful. I even looked at the list of panel ideas, but it's just a list of topics.
I'm also interested in the FFVIII roleplay thing, since I played and enjoyed that game. Are you all going to dress up as the likes of Squall/Zell/Selphie, etc. ?
The panel can be just about anything you want, as long as you follow the rules of the convention (which are fairly lenient). The convention hosts will give you a large, lecture-hall sized room to yourself and you can do with it as you please. Probably the most common form thing people do is have group discussions, especially if the panelists are in cosplay and they answer questions from the audience as they would if they actually were their character. Other people just show custom fan videos they've made (which is usually a disappointment) and others involved playing games.
Unfortunately I won't be dressing up as a character from FFVIII, I wish I could, but I'm budgeting myself to a single costume. I'm going as Eren Jaeger from Shingeki no Kyojin, presuming I can find a good cosplay of him online. I don't want to require people to dress up as a character from the game to be able to participate in the RP, but it is encouraged as it's generally more fun.
I plan on having it as more of an open-world RP, where anyone can do just about anything. For example, if someone wants to be Squall or Rinoa or anyone else, they absolutely can, but they can also choose to be a normal Galbadian Soldier, Garden student, SeeD member, or just about anything else.
Sorry, Nakura. This slipped my mind.
It actually sounds pretty cool getting your own big room like that. Any idea how many people might come in?
Also, any idea what you plan to do? Star Citizen is a game which doesn't exist yet, so what will you do? Maybe you can entice someone to help you if you lay out your plans, and I'm curious too.
There seems to be plenty of interest in Star Citizen around here, so maybe you can bounce ideas off people even if you can't get anyone to actually come and help you host it in person.
Also, any further information on what you plan to do for the FFVIII thing? I don't really know how such a thing would work, or how long you'd have to do it.
I'm not sure how many people will come, that's up to how many people think it's interesting and what other events are going on at the same time. If it gets scheduled during the masquerade, I wouldn't expect much of a turnout. I'm not sure what we would do for it yet, like you said, the game doesn't even exist yet. I'd very much like to hear different people's suggestions on what to do.
This will be my first real-life roleplay, but my best friend is going with me and she has a lot of experience RPing, both in real life and online, so she'd help me organize and run it. Basically, it would involve people pretending they are a character and then working with (or against) the other 'characters' (people) to fight each other or 'imaginary' monsters and what-not. A lot of imagination would be involved. Unfortunately we only get panel rooms for about an hour, but they generally let you continue things like this outside of the panels, as long as you don't bother other people.
Unfortunately there have been over a hundred proposed panel ideas so far, and panel registration just opened up. These were panels proposed in early September:
http://kawakon.com/downloads/panel-ideas-2014.pdfThey don't have the ideas that have been proposed in late September and October on their website yet. Given that there have been so many proposals sent in, it is unlikely that all five of my panels would be accepted. In fact, it's possible that none of them would be accepted, but I suspect at least 1-2 will be accepted. The more people you have on a panel, the more likely it is to be accepted.
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