Sign Up Wars: The Online Registration Menace
Out of 35 total spots for this year’s Fanime Karaoke Contest, 25 were made available for online pre-registration about 3 weeks before the convention. The word around town was that pre-registration for the Karaoke Contest grows more and more competitive each year. This year, looking at how the online sign-up system closed about 20 minutes after going live, I’d say “competitive” could be an understatement. On the evening of Sunday, May 3rd, 2009, hordes of eager contestants sat at their computers with their eyes glued to the Fanime Forums and the Karaoke Twitter page, waiting to sign up at the first sign of a registration form. How do I know this? Well I was one of those people! I believe that I only managed to obtain the last spot available because two other registrants before me didn’t fill out their forms correctly. Here’s hoping that everyone who missed out on the online sign-ups still managed to get a spot on the day of the contest. I knew that I had caught a lucky break that night. I was happy! But whenever I catch such a glimpse of good fortune, fate somehow never fails to come back and bite me in the toes with its twisted sense of humor.
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