Why do you want to be President? You personally, not your platform; I'm trying to get a feel for "Richard" the regular guy.
What can you tell me about him?

Hi Nora,
Great question, and I will probably send a version of this answer to the ICG-D list.

For whatever reasons, I (and my wife) tend to be "Walkers between the Worlds." The short of it is that as long time members of the SF&F convention and costuming communities, and members of this "new" cosplay world, we would love to bring the best people from the respective communities together. Of course I do understand that there are other media oriented fandom such as the Furries. I don't mean to exclude them, just that we are not avid members of said community ourselves. If elected, I will try to work with them also.

This is why I want to be the President of the ICG. I want to preserve, leverage, and expand what we have in the ICG, and see if we can offer them to the Anime and other communities with open arms. These new fandom are like the tsunami waves, the cosplayers/costumers have a lot of energy, a lot of new ideas and a lot of talent. Rather than seeing some of them painfully reinventing the wheel or ignore good practices and sometimes make a mess, there are a lot what the more established SF&F costuming community can bring to the table.

At a more personal level, while I am not a costume maker, I appreciate both the beauty of the costumes and the immense creative effort that go into making them. I started taking high quality photographs of the masquerades and costumers and offer them on the web for viewing because I think such work of arts deserve to be mere fragments of people's remembrance. And not just photos showing the standard front views. I want to show off the artistry of the costumes, the characterizations from the wearers. I, as a photographer, want to engage the viewers such that they will say, wow, that's a great costume, and I would love to meet these people.

My wife and I started bantering the Heart of Costumes project http://www.imagecraft.com/photostudio/heartofcostume.html as another expression of our appreciation (this project is currently on hold until we can find a capable editor) to the costuming community. I know how difficult it is to be an artist and craftperson. I see what I can do for the ICG is to help the creative folks out in my own small ways.

As for "Richard" the person (we can skip over the joke about Richard the Man, oops), I believe in Work Hard, and Play Hard. I started my own software company over 10 years ago. I know we probably won't ever retire in a small island in the Pacific, but I think if we work hard, we can make a decent living. On the hobby side, I do Tai Chi Chuan, have been a student for over 13 years; play the didjeridu since 1996; and take tons of photographs. As an aside, I am going pretty retro in my photography hobby, and have gone and set up a B&W darkroom recently. I also do all the modern digital photography stuff of course. I also do Karate for 5+ years and for the past year, Taiko drumming; my Chinese calligraphy is half decent, must have been all those years of writing and writing and writing some more while growing up in Hong Kong. We have 2 daughters and 2 female dogs and a menagerie of other small female furries. I also have 2 female coworkers besides my wife. Yes, I am living in the adolescent male dream of surrounded by females. Unfortunately, they are far from being a harem. The house is informally known as the "Moon Ruled House."

Work Hard, Play Hard. Do my best.
Hope this answers your question.
// richard