Pacific Coast Origami Conference (PCOC) 2025 was held on October 31 to November 2 in Sacramento. As usual, big convention is a lot of fun. I'll share my experience in this post.
By driving, Sacramento is slightly more than 2 hours away. However I don't like driving so I biked to Santa Clara station and took Amtrak train (I like trains). The plan was to arrive a day earlier to bike around Sacramento and hang out with arrived convention goers. Taking train took nearly 3 hours at $37, one way.
I prepared to teach two classes. The first one is lecture about how to diagram origami efficiently. I've diagrammed for the past 5 years and there are some processes developed to minimize repetitive work. The lecture would share those learnings and hopefully more people understand what it takes to diagram and not repeat the my mistakes. Plus there were jokes about how awful was "the cove" diagram in OUSA convention 2025 book which motivated me to give this talk.
The second class is teaching my 1 legged pukeko chick. It was optimized so the folding process is less repetitive and some sinks are converted to normal valley fold. Some time ago I mentioned how I prefer to not teach folding class, because it's not really useful and how risky it is (overtime, smartass in class, or struggling students). This time I tried to step outside of that comfort zone and would try to teach such class again.
For exhibition, I brought my bird models to New York. Would be boring to show the same thing again so I brought my mammals and arthropods (including the latest wildebeest and trapdoor spider). The convention page said table spaces are limited so I booked only 1/4 table. We also have design challenge in exhibit space, whose theme was "Farm to Fork". I submitted my leek.
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| Packing the exhibition |
Day 0: Bike & Trains
I took the earliest train to Sacramento which would arrive by 12.00. As expected the train ride was pretty scenic. I passed Alviso Marina County Park where I usually biked to on weekends and various old industry building. Three hours of train ride didn't feel that long.
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| Start of journey |
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| Industries along the tracks |
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| Freight train |
Once arrived, I visited California State Railroad Museum nearby. It explains how train infrastructures in USA were build and how it transforms the distribution. There was also various steam and oil locomotives, where we can go inside and there was ex-train conductor who explained stuff. The biggest collection is miniature trains. I've just recently discovered that there exist such hobby. These hobbyist are true artisan, they build crazy miniatures with high level of detail. As I grew older and spent time in origami, I've came to appreciate artistry and fine craftsmanship.
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| St. Clair North, by Irv Schultz. Complete with hopper car and funnel to cargo ship. |
At 15.00, I went to the hotel for convention check-in. I met Boice and various Dan members who planned to get dinner around 18.30. I went to bike around Sacramento before dinner, and damn, the bike trail along Sacramento river is beautiful.
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| Bike road along Sacramento river |
That night I stayed at Best Western near Sacramento river. It is half the price of Grand Sheraton but is 10 minutes away by bike. While Sacramento wasn't as expensive as San Francisco, the hotel fee is almost comparable. The base price after PCOC discount was $189, but junk fees inflated it to $220 per night. Also not sure how safe it is at night so it is best to stay in the venue, which I would be for the next day.
Day 1: Special Guest and Dan Meet-up
The morning started with exhibition setup. I met many others from past conventions, such as William Holt, Steven Chang, Ari, Reza, and Parth. Steven had his folded insects neatly framed inside handmade wooden frame. He offered to trade one of his frame with one of my model. It would be the first time I trade piece, but honestly it felt exciting to trade item that we crafted from ground up. I agreed and will notify him of which model to be given.
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| Exhbition setup |
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| Steven's exhibition |
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| My exhibition (left part) |
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| Design challenge submission |
Convention opening ceremony starts at 10, with usual welcome speeches and introduction to special guests. This time we have Jun Maekawa and Michelle Fung. One different thing from past PCOC is, each special guests would teach one session to the entire participants. It's great because all participants are guaranteed a chance attend their class, instead of relying on the round robin algorithm and priority passes during class sign up. Michelle taught her heart and tree, which were as usual of her models, deceptively complex, highly efficient, and well designed. Maekawa taught his modular cube, and from his interaction with the committees, he seems like a chill, fun, (and extroverted?) person. He spoke English and occasionally crack jokes followed by short giggle, either based on situation on joking about himself. Anyway I successfully got his signature on my copy of Genuine Origami book. He happily accepted my signature request and demonstrated me his ambigram signature by turning the book upside down.
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| Michelle's class, ruler was used to draw the crease |
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| Michelle's exhbition |
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| Maekawa's exhibition |
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| Maekawa's signature, as seen from top and bottom |
After lunch, I went back to community room and chatted with Michelle. I've met her online back in FoldFest 2021. Some time later the other Dan members came and join the chat. We talked about OrigaMIT lores. She left earlier to prepare for class and the conversation shifts towards Dan. Boice and Brandon as few of the most senior members dropped many lores of the server. I also met Malcolm who started StanFold. Maybe one day I can join their weekly meet up in Stanford.
That afternoon I took Winston Lee's manta ray class. It has a clever way of expressing color change that is structuraly built with 22.5, instead of shaping color changed flaps to fit the shape. The class had good pace and we finished early.
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| Winston Lee's oceanic manta ray |
Boice gave us a strip of "Origami Dan" tag to be put beside our nametag, and an official tag to be put in our exhibition to indicate our affiliation. I guess the success of such program back in New York convention made him formalizes the structure. Funnily the next day I heard someone thought there was a prankster called "Dan" who put his names on exhibition tables.
That night we have a reception event. We were warned that the food offered would not be an all you can eat buffet; so be courteous by eating just one portion and if you need "a lot calories", plan additional dinner on your own. Last PCOC was also like that, where the food was so little and ran out quickly. However this time where are plenty of leftover. The college guys ate several plates of food and yet there were still many left. I guess it is really situational on where the event is.
We spent the night chilling in Dan table while folding or working on the Colombus Cube art installation. The idea was to fold purple and golden stackable cubes, so it forms pixel art that spells "PCOC". Each table received several "orders" that describe which part of the pixel art to make. We did 2 orders, and might have been asked to do more. Honestly I don't really enjoy modular so I prefer to not take any more order once our assigned duties were done. I went back to sleep around 22.30 to save energy for the next 2 days.
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| Job's done |
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| The submission table |
Day 2: Teaching and Late Night Folding
Woke up around 7, and had to call a friend until around 9. Then immediately had breakfast and coffee while reviewing my teaching materials. The diagramming class went well. I stutter less, the delivery was smooth, participants laugh at jokes, and actively ask questions/share their wisdoms.
The afternoon class however, not so well. The pukeko chick is actually a pretty simple model, so 2 hours should be enough. However some participants struggled on normal sinks, squash, inside reverse fold, and Elias stretch. I tried to honor the code of "let participant fold their model" described in OUSA teaching guide, so I don't fold their models. To some extent they were able to perform these folds after I demonstrated the steps side by side and show them how to hold the paper (which finger, which layer). I underestimated how much time was needed as the model is simple enough, so we couldn't finish it in 2 hours. We were short of the last 5 steps to finish the model, even after I skip over cosmetic steps.
My next class was wet folding intro by Anne LaVin. She explained really well the concept of paper grain, how paper behaves when wet, why some papers can be wet folded while others don't, etc. The class was chill, yet she was strict at following the rules (in a good way). Let me describe the situation: the class was popular and sold out, but there were extra people joining to sit in. So when she gave us the wet folding materials, she noticed the extra people when they asked if they may also have these materials. She politely explained that she can't give them, because it would be unfair to the law-abiding participants who legally requested her class but didn't get it. She also said "in the past this situation got ugly" but didn't elaborate further.
I admired this kind of teacher who is knowledgeable, teaches well, and is just. After her class and being burdened with the shame of not finishing the Pukeko teaching, I learned the lesson that we have to be fair. We have to honor the class description, that if students were demanded to be able to easily perform complex maneuvers, then it wouldn't be fair to such students if teacher spent too much time helping students who can't do such maneuvers. So for my next folding class, I'll do better at keeping the pace. Ensure that everyone understands what is the expectations, and if they don't meet it, I'd have to resort to make the fold for them.
The event that night would be evening banquet. I sit on a table with the seemingly local San Francisco bay area residents, because I recognized them from the last Origami Palooza. We properly introduced our names to each others, and funnily discovered that many of us worked at the same company in software engineering (even the same building). It's strange that I've never ran into them; I go to office every work day. Given our common backgrounds, and half of them attended my diagramming class, we discussed the challenges, and possible solutions of a better diagramming software.
The food was great, true to the city's "Farm to Fork" claim. We had costume contest (I didn't bring one as my attempt failed), appreciation to committees, as well as to special guests. Maekawa cracked jokes here and there and said "sorry I am drunk". There was also band performance with classic songs whose lyrics where replaced with origami theme. It was spectacular.
By 21.00, we moved to different room because the community folding room was modded into banquet hall, and it was too dim to fold. All Dan members had various design challenges that Brandon and Dex hosted, such as 10 minutes design challenge with random prompt, 5 minutes fold then rotate to other person challenge, etc. It's been a while I did such contest but fortunately the first 3 rounds warmed me up. My designs didn't turned up too bad, and even won few rounds.
The rotation challenge was much more fun. Some people can get adventurous and made hexpleating, titled grid, or strange things, but in the end the model can turn into a finished model. Ani was our judge that night, and I have no idea how he got that much charisma (or what the youngster call "aura") to give interesting commentary on how he judge the models. Things he said made sense, delivered in a mix of seriousness and funny expressions.
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| The result of folding all night long |
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| Judgement time |
The most memorable one is the last round. We had 3 people, each has 2 minutes to fold and rotated with 2 cycles. We may communicate to coordinate what to make. My team had Plop (don't know his real name) and Athreya. One of them overheard Brandon team has a theme of pokemon evolution, so we also want to fold cohesive models. Through random discussion we decided to make a modular robots, where Plop would do head+chest, I do arms and torso, and Athreya does the waist and legs. My imagination was to get a cool looking combine-able robot like what's on power ranger typed show from back in the day, but we ended up with this goofy boy.
It looks so funny that everyone including Ani bursted into laughter upon seeing it, and he gave us 10/10 because "how much joy it brought him". Obviously it's half joking. That 3 AM activity really put everyone in funny mood.
Anyway thanks to daylight saving, the clock move back 1 hour, so we adjourned at 2 AM (biologically 3 AM). I had 5.5 hours sleep which is not bad at all and woke up around 7.30.
Day 3: Special Guest Classes
Day 1 was spent on opening ceremony, simple models by special guests, and Winston's class. Day 2 was spent on my classes. So finally in day 3 I have time to enjoy the "real" special guests class.
That morning the winner of design challenge was announced even though the challenge page said that it is not a contest, so everyone got a little gift. Anyway my leek won the 3rd place and I got this Kawahata book which I already have. I find it strange that out of nearly 300 participants, and perhaps 10% of them who could design, there were only 4 submissions of design challenge. Maybe the information was quite obscure so only few who scoured the website knew about it.
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| Gift for 3rd place |
The first class was isoarea Sonobe star, which was designed by Maekawa but taught by someone else. And surprisingly Maekawa was in the class, so the teacher said she was nervous. The model is quite tricky to fold as it is symmetrically on every axis (left/right, top/bottom, front/back) and it can be difficult to find the right part to manipulate. About 15 minutes into the class, Maekawa stood and said "any problem, I am (the) assistant" in a joking tone and actually went around to help people out. It was a funny sight.
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| Isoarea Sonobe star |
The next class is conversation with Jun Maekawa that is actually Peter Engel's class. Maekawa jokingly said "Peter is the teacher, I am the material". I've read Peter's book "Zen Origami" and he said that Maekawa is like his counterpart in different side of the world. They both have similarities in age, initial pursue of origami, and their way of doing it. They met from back in the day and the class' thumbnail was their picture when young, at least 30 years ago. However I think Peter put more thought on the "zen" part of origami. You can read in his book how he thought deeply about the meaning of origami, much more so than Maekawa. So during the conversation, Peter asked if Maekawa's work carry special story, harmony, or tradition; and his answer was "it's not that deep" :))
Anyway here are other interesting parts of the conversation:
- He has interest in spreading the ideas of origami, so he writes book, teaches, and still actively design new models. He acknowledged that diagramming is troublesome (the word he used was "mendokusai"), but it is important for sharing ideas.
- In math, paper thickness is not considered, and we can do crazy things like assuming the paper is infinitily large, while in reality no such assumption can be made. Still, Maekawa treats math as the "aiming star" of origami from design to finished model (perhaps the same thing that US corporate people call "North Star").
- When asked about legacy and how we want to be remembered, he said that he's happy if everyone eventually forgets about him, as long as his origami influence remains. One example of the influence is back in the day before his "Devil" was made, none of the origami designs have fingers. Ever since that devil, fingers became part of model's expression even until now.
- He thinks that the future of origami is still wide open, anything can happen. So he'll be the watcher of the future.
Even though I couldn't have Maekawa's class due to scheduling, I'm glad that these 2 classes make up to it. Also he's punctual. In both classes he would remind the teacher that it's about time to finish the class, but is still willing to stay longer.
Many asked him to get autograph and picture at the end of class. I overheard him asked Boice about Origami Dan, and he acknowledged how complicated were the works of Origami Dan. When I took picture with him, he also asked "are you part of Origami Dan?". Looks like we're one step closer to be more well known in the origami community.
As the day goes on, I had to close the deal with Steven. I decided to trade him my markhor in exchange of one of his wooden boxes. One day I'll leave USA and go back to my home country. Not sure what would happen to all my models. So him willing to take care of that model makes me happy. Plus, I appreciate his craftmanship on making the wooden box.
The next class is Michelle Fung's "portrait of origami artist". She was well prepared. There was a fully precreased paper with lines marked put beside the paper used for teaching, which improved clarity on which creases to make. In the beginning the paper is still big, so she put the document camera on a platform to make both papers visible on screen. This platform is removed during collapse to focus on single paper. Also she had black paper put underneath as the tablecloth was white, to make the paper's white side more clearly visible. I'm willing to bet there are more gadgets stored in her bag to prepare for other situations.
The class is rated complex and she had stated in description what to expect. There were few participants who couldn't follow tricky maneuver such as unsink, and while she tried to show how to do it, eventually had to resort to make the fold for them. It was a good call because the class finishes right on time. Had she slowed down the class to match the less skilled participant, we wouldn't have finished it.
At the end she showed us how to finish the base with various styles. There were 5, with different shirt and hair style. I actually folded two with the intention to unfold one for study, but in the end I followed her shaping guides for each side of these two models.
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| Different hairstyles per side |
Finally my last class was a modular gift box by Glenn Sapaden, who contributed in the band performance the night before. It was a chill class and I learned the concept of "handedness" in modular origami. Some modules look identical from outside, but they may be left handed or right handed, depending on where the hole is to slot flap during assembly. As the class went on, he told us stories about organizing convention. He also explained that Sacramento is a government city, and government shut down on weekends, that's why the lunch option is very limited. No wonder I had issue finding lunch. Most place to eat is closed, which confused me as I thought weekend is supposed to be the time people eat out, have brunch, and hang out in restaurants.
As the class ends I rushed to exhibition room to pack my stuff and get ready go home. My train ride is at 18.55, but the walk from Sacramento station to the train platform would be long. Also need to buy dinner or else only fast food would be open by the time I arrived in San Jose. So I said goodbyes to friends and left at 17.30. It was thanks to the reception, banquet, and late night folding that I made a lot more friends in this convention.
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| Saw this finished assembly of the Colombus cubes |
Remarks
I arrived home around 22.15, then eat dumplings bought in Sacramento and pop an ice cold drink to bask in the satisfaction of convention. Also grateful that the past 2 PCOCs were close by. There were many things I learned in this event, and I'm sure there are still more to learn on future conventions. If the fate is kind, I might have chance to join another convention.
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