Thursday, February 5, 2015

Schedule Updates

As you may (or may not) note from the sidebar, I've updated the schedule.  This morning I dropped the balance of our vendor space payment for Geneva Steam Convention in the mail, and this afternoon I filled out the on-line application for Lake Count-I-Con.

Geneva Steam is a first-year steampunk convention, to be held in Lake Geneva. In the same time frame I was also looking at Kitsune Kon, a more established anime convention in Green Bay, but Kitsune Kon never answered the two inquiries I sent to them, and Lake Geneva is in commuting distance of Xap's, so we went with Geneva Steam.

Lake Count-I-Con is a second-year "Comics, Toy, Game, and Art" convention, at the Lake County Fairgrounds. The alternate there was Geek.Kon, a more established anime-ish and general geekery convention in Madison. Count-I-Con is more of an unknown, and has more expensive spaces, Geek.Kon is more confidently a good fit for us, and has cheaper spaces, but additional travel/lodging expenses. The thing that I think tipped it in Count-I-Con's favor is not needing to take Friday off for it, as its a 2-day event (with planned Friday night setup).

Edit:  Well, that was quick. I've now received (and paid) an invoice for space at Count-I-Con. So I'd say we're in.  

On the consideration list for the later in the year are:
Maneki Neko Con, 9-11 October, south 'burbs
Daisho Con, mid-late November, Wisconsin Dells
Midwest FurFest, usually early December, Rosemont

Windycon, in mid-November, seems like it would be a good choice on the surface, but has always been literary SF-oriented, and seems to be moving more that way. Wendy Z. runs a good costuming track for Windycon, but I don't think there's enough potential busines there. Teslacon is highly unlikely, but I should poke around and see if any new steampunk-ish events have cropped up for the later part of the year. Con-Alt-Delete is right out for reasons previously discussed (as is Anime Midwest). 

Anybody have any other convention-ish things to suggest for the last third or so of the year?

3 comments:

  1. I could suggest Gaslight Gathering in September (September 18-20), but it is more than a bit out of your usual range. Gaslight could use a good leather work dealer. The one they had last year had pretty shoddy work (like seam spacing of nearly an inch).

    On the other hand, I know where there will be crash space in the same area available.

    (I could also suggest Westercon 68, but that is in July and since you have less than zero chance of getting into Comic-Con this year - or any year in the near future - you wouldn't be tying it to a potentially more profitable trip)

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    1. I suppose I should give you the URL for info related to my useless suggestion: http://gaslightgathering.org/hotel/2015-vendor-information/

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  2. Yeah, no. Unles you're flying a cargo plane you haven't mentioned, getting the trailer/contents is way too expensive in terms of time and/or money.

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