Oni-Con scheduling and Ingress panel clarifying

We’re about 24 hours or so away from the beginning of Oni-Con Hawaii, close enough for my preview article — the same one that appeared in our print edition yesterday — to appear on Honolulu Pulse (and the Pulse version is free to read!). Over on Oni-Con’s Facebook page, the updates have been coming fast and furious for the past few days … so fast, in fact, that I can only assume it’s difficult for them to keep up. The scheduling grids posted there and on their website haven’t been updated with revised info since they were published on Saturday, and navigating through all of the updates to figure out what’s what may be a daunting task.

So for your planning convenience, here’s my version of the schedule, incorporating those changes and adding in columns for cosplay meet-ups and Marketplace hours. The URL is http://ow.ly/qnmT7, for those of you who want to store that in your smartphones.

Also for your reference, here’s Oni-Con’s most current panel description listing. It serves its purpose for the most part, save for one panel: the Ingress panel, scheduled for 3 p.m. Friday, which has the following description:

Ingress ◊ Friday at 3:00pm, Panel Room 1 ◊ Jordan Silva and John Hyrne discuss about the android app game Ingress.

… which may be underselling the panel juuuuust a tad. Yes, it technically is an Android app game, but … well, here, have a Wikipedia blurb:

Ingress is a near-real time augmented reality massively multiplayer online video game created by Niantic Labs, a start up within Google, currently for Android devices [2] but expected to be available for Apple’s iOS in 2014. The game has a complex science fiction back story which Niantic is revealing in segments.

The gameplay consists of establishing “portals” at places of public art, landmarks, cenotaphs, etc., and linking them to create virtual triangular fields over geographic areas. Progress in the game is measured by the number of Mind Units, i.e. people, nominally controlled by each faction.

Leading the panel will be four of its local players. Yes, Jordan and John will be there. But so will Joyleen Kaiwi … and a certain friendly neighborhood anime/manga blogger. Yes, this technically makes it the first con panel I’ve ever done from the presenter’s side of the room. Be nice, and ask really nicely, and maaaaaybe I’ll consider serving on another panel. Maaaaaaybe.