Welcome to the Meetups, Events and Clubs section – MEC for short. We exist to organise meet-ups of AnimeLeague members across the world. Our meets can range from small informal meets to larger groups attending conventions, clubs and expos.
This guidebook provides important information on posting in the MEC forum, attending and organising meets and the Organiser's Council. Please continue reading for more information.
Posting in MEC
The MEC forum is subject to AnimeLeague’s site-wide rules. If you haven’t read them yet, you can read them here.
When replying to a topic, please try to keep posts relevant to the topic. If a topic is being spammed excessively, a moderator will warn you.
New topics should be about meets and events only. If you're setting up a topic to organise a meet, please read our guidelines below under Organising a Meet first. If you're not sure if your topic fits into MEC or not, ask a member of the Organisers Council – we're a friendlier bunch than you'd imagine!
If you are promoting your own event, please do drop us a PM first so we can ensure it's appropriate. Generally with other commercial events we do ask for there to be cross-promotion between our events and your own.
Meet-ups
We highly encourage members to take part in the meets. It’s a great way to get to know your AnimeLeague friends and fellow members both offline and online.
Rules at Meets
1. If you wish to drink alcohol at the meet and are under the age limit for your country (18 in the UK and 21 in the USA), you may only do so with your parent's or guardian's full consent.
2. You must drink responsibly. If you create a mess by being sick and do not clear it up (or are unable to), you will be considered to have broken this rule.
3. You must not engage in any anti-social behaviour, including but not limited to deliberately antagonizing others, creating excessive noise, keeping people awake against their will, ignoring meet organisers and so forth.
4. You must not engage in or make threats of violence or intimidation.
5. You must respect other people's property. Do not damage maliciously or steal.
6. You must not smoke when it is not permitted to do so – inside hostels, hotels and bars for example.
7. You must not possess, take or sell any drugs.
8. These rules are not exhaustive and if you do something not on this list that causes a problem, we will inform you.
If you break any of these rules, then you will be banned from meets for a period of time to be decided by the Organisers Council. Bans from meets also extend to being banned from Alcon. If your behaviour is particularly bad, it may have repercussions on your AnimeLeague account itself.
Advice for Meets
We encourage members of meets to interact with everyone attending. Try not to keep to a small clique or group and if someone isn't socialising too well, try to make friends with them. If someone is struggling with something else, offer them a helping hand.
If you have a problem with an aspect of the meet or another member, either talk to the member concerned or to an organiser to get it resolved - avoid complaining behind people's backs.
A lot of issues are due to miscommunication. By nature almost everyone here is reasonable and the best way to resolve something is to talk it out and not to make an assumption that someone you have an issue with is inherently unreasonable.
Finally, respect the meet itself and all those attending! For example, don't make a mess and leave it there – help clean it up. If someone is complaining about the noise, be considerate and turn the volume down.
Organising a Meet
Please note that to organise a meet, you do not have to be an official meet organiser.
Topic Title: If you’re creating a new topic for a meet, make sure to identify it correctly. The topic title should state the country and if in UK, region, where the meet, convention or event is being held and the dates of the meet. For example, it should end up looking like this: [UK-SW] Bristol AnimeLeague Meet – 6th to 8th Feb 2009
Give full details: Write about what is going to happen at the meet and everything they need to know before turning up. Please also keep the first post updated with all the details needed by members attending the meet. This saves members trawling through the topic and potentially missing important details.
Dates: Give the dates of when it'll be happening and give the time when you'll all be meeting up.
Where: A hugely important factor! People will also need to know where to meet up.
Transport: Make people aware of what forms of transport are available and where they'll need to go to.
Accommodation: If you're organising a larger meet or people are coming from afar, you may wish to organise accommodation for the group. For smaller meets we'd suggest sharing rooms in a budget hotel such as a Travelodge. For larger meets you may wish to consider staying at a hostel. If you don't feel confident in handling this, you can always ask the Organiser's Council for help. If you're in a mixed group, try to make sure that any females are not on their own when sharing a room.
Attendance List: State which members will be attending. If people are staying overnight it's a good idea to make a note of this too in the list.
Costs: If you're doing something that requires people to spend money, let them know how much they'll need to bring. If you are organising a meet where you are sorting out a hotel or a hostel then you will need to include the cost of this in the topic.
Links: If the meet is at a convention or event, providing a link to their website will help others to find out more about the convention or event.
Dealing with problems: If a problem arises at a meet, try to ascertain the cause of the problem and get the point of view from both sides. Stay calm, stay rational and try to talk out the problem with those involved. If you feel you can't solve it by yourself, don't be afraid to ask for help.
For an example of a well-structured topic, click here.
The Organisers Council and Applying to Become a Member
Who are the Organisers Council and what do they do?
We are the organisers that help to ensure that Animeleague's meets take place. We also keep an eye on the MEC forums, helping others to organise meets and dealing with problems. If you have any questions about attending a meet or organising a meet, you can get in touch with one of us.
Members of the Organisers Council
The members of the Council can be found and contacted here.
Apply to become a member of the Organisers Council
Are you interested in becoming a meet organiser? We'd ideally like an organiser to help to organise or attend at least two or three meets a year, be willing to help out unofficially for meets that they are not an organiser of but are attending, contribute to the MEC forum where they can and promote meets across the wider AnimeLeague community.
If you feel you can do this, signup here using the form below!
Code:
Signup Form wrote:
Experience: State how much experience you have of organising meets or events.
Time to Commit: State how much time you can commit to organising and attending meets.
Location: State where about you are based.
