Oh man. I now feel justified for not going to Wasabi, despite every one of my friends who still likes anime asking me to go.

I should point out that NDK isn't completely on the up-and-up either - I don't know all the details since I fell out of the anime scene a good eight or nine years ago, but they've always been stingy and a little weird about things. A friend and her boyfriend did some heavy-duty volunteering for them in exchange for comped tickets and a hotel room, and maybe some money. That was the deal all the way up until they finished their work, at which point it became, "Oops, we can't comp you anything, bye!"

Wasabi, on the other hand, seemed really unprofessional (which could be due to them just starting out) and some of the admin people I met gave off creeper vibes (although large parts of the Denver anime community does, last NDK I had to talk myself out of actually printing out copies of the Geek Social Fallacies and handing them out).