Convention Fans

This past Saturday, Convention Fans ventured out to King of Prussia, PA to attend Zenkaikon 2009. While we did have fun and got to hang out with some cool people, the convention was experiencing some severe overcrowding issues. I don’t think anyone expected that the turnout would be as big as it was, nor do I think the staff anticipated just how insufficient the hotel space would be. Below is a breakdown of the highlights, along with some suggestions for improvement. And course, there are plenty of cosplay photos to go along with this report (view all of our Zenkaikon 2009 photos).

The Good:

- The hotel has plenty of free parking. One of the first things attendees and vendors deal with is the parking situation, and it really helps when there is ample free parking close to the facility.

- I cannot say enough about the performance by cosplay/J-Pop singer Reni Mimura. Not to be cliché, but if you looked “cute” up in the dictionary, her picture should be there. I’m not sure if it was the bunny ears, her smile, or her barely understandable “Engrish,” but I completely fell in love with her. Seriously, “cute” is the only suitable word to describe her. If you don’t believe me, just check out this YouTube video of her from another recent performance.

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One of the highlights at GameX, which I attended last weekend, was that three cast members from the hit webseries, The Guild, were attending as guests. Although I don’t play World of Warcraft anymore (I’ll renew come expansion time), I am still a dedicated fan of the The Guild.

Thanks to the tireless efforts of GameX’s PR manager, I had an opportunity to sit down and interview The Guild’s Jeff Lewis (Vork), Robin Thorsen (Clara), and Sandeep Parikh (Zaboo).  Each one was gracious and funny, and I hope I’ll soon have a chance to meet the rest of the cast as well.

The full transcripts of the three interviews are linked below:

An Interview with The Guild’s Robin “Clara” Thorsen
An Interview with The Guild’s Jeff “Vork” Lewis
An Interview with The Guild’s Sandeep “Zaboo” Parikh

This weekend I headed to Oaks, Pennsylvania to check out GameX, a video game expo and media convention. While I did have a good time overall, GameX does have some areas that need improvement. As with most of my reviews, I’m going to break this convention report down into the good and the not-so-good, and offer some constructive criticism for the organizers of the con. Of course, some of the criticism I have for GameX would be good to read for any convention organizer, so you don’t make the same mistakes, as they were pretty common ones.

The Good:

- The convention had plentiful and free parking at it’s location (the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center). You don’t realize how important this can be to someone’s overall experience until you have a parking problem. Being able to find a place to park quickly, and not have to pay for it, is a strong selling point for a convention, for me personally.

- GameX had pretty good signage! Again, you don’t think about this being important until a con doesn’t do it right. GameX had clear signage for check in, and plenty of overhead signage in the expo hall itself. They also had maps printed in the program, and posted throughout the convention hall. The only thing that could have been marked a bit clearer was the celebrity area. The cast members from The Guild actually told their Q&A audience on Saturday that they felt they were hard to find.

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PhauxCon 2009 was unlike any convention I’ve ever attended, namely because it doesn’t want to be like all of the other sci-fi and fantasy cons out there (hence the name “Phaux” con). What started as a small gathering of friends in a living room seven years ago has evolved into a slightly larger small gathering of fans at a hotel. I must admit that when I walked into the PhauxCon 2009 conference room with my friend Nathan Lilly (who runs the Convention Finder), I didn’t know what to think of this little convention. But what surprised me was that nine hours later I was genuinely sad to be leaving all of my new friends.

When Nathan and I entered the hotel lobby, there was just one little sign by the elevator directing us to the 7th floor. We arrived and discovered a large conference room (more like a small ballroom really), with about two dozen chairs, a projector, a screen, and two people sitting behind a table. We were introduced to Sierra and Rob, who are the two behind PhauxCon. Sierra is the founder, and Rob is a friend of hers from “across the pond” that’s been helping her run it for the past three years. We soon got to meet some of the other attendees, including David and Filamena (who I had met at Game Core Con just a few weeks earlier).

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My apologies for the delay in posting the links to our photo galleries from Dragon*con and Game Core Con. I had so many photos to go through and get uploaded! But, the good news is that they are all posted now over at the Convention Fans flickr account. Click the images below to go straight the galleries.

Enjoy!