Over the last 4 years the World Cosplay Summit has grown and changed in a number of ways. One new change this year was to invite one organizer from each organization attend the event along with the 2 cosplayer team. When the event began in 2003 with 4 countries, not many regulations were set in place for coordinating events. Now with 9 countries participating, preliminary rounds occuring year round and around the world, the need to communicate and maintain some standards has become a point raised between the different organizations. It was good to sit down with representatives from each event who was in attendance, talk about how things operate in each country and pledge to continue active communication over the year. I didn't take any pictures. Usually pictures of organizers are not as interesting as pictures of cosplayers anyway. :)
Another area of improvement which you will be able to see very soon is a more robust English web page. I have been getting feedback and comments and people do actually read this blog and the web page (thank you!) and there is a demand for more information on what is going on. Although there have been scaled down versions of the Japanese web page from the beginning, an English version was not included until this year. The English page has been a condensed version of the Japanese page but for next year we have assembled a group of top notch worker elves (humans dressed in elf cosplay of course) who endevor to make the English page as elaborate as the Japanese page. Keep checking back for new changes!
There is no English version (yet?) for the previous years but if you have a chance you can check out the Japanese web pages for 2003, 2004 and 2005 here!
It is pretty straightforward click on the corresponding images for 2003 - 2005 found at the bottom of the page, they look like this:
Even if you cannot read the the script you can gain an understanding through the images and see how the interpretation of the event and indeed the event itself has developed over the years.
Enjoy!
Ed
