I'm not sure this is good advice. Cons (and especially anime cons, which tend to skew a lot younger) depend on leading a lot of socially awkward people to talk to each other, and as such basically live or die by the skills of their organizers. If you're restricting yourself to small local cons, and you're not very lucky, you naturally get organizers who are either inexperienced or incompetent.

That's tolerable if you already know a good chunk of the attendees. But if not, it's hard to overestimate how bad this can go. When I last attended a similar con, for example, I met several people I immediately disliked, attracted one (1) stalker, and enjoyed the spectacle of an attendee being dragged out by the police after getting too handsy with his partner at a cosplay event. I did not meet anyone new that I'd have cared to meet again.