Category: convention

Origins Game Convention June 22-26, 2011

 
 
 

[June 22-26, 2011 – Columbus, OH, US]

So, I went to the “Origins Game Convention” which was from June 22-26, 2011. At the convention, my production company, talcMedia Productions, released the Nuclear War “Radioactive Fallout Spinner”. It’s a simple add which is just the spinner replacement in electronic form for the Android (available now) and Apple (coming soon). Voice over was done by Claudia Christian (of Babylon 5 fame)… The full Nuclear War Game “app” will be coming out in 2011, so stay tuned! More information is available at:


NuclearWarGame.com

Nuclear War was invented by Doug Malewicki (and I met him earlier in California). The game series is distributed by Flying Buffalo Inc. (which is owned by Rick Loomis which is the person of the left side of the picture below).

So I went to Origins for the first time to see how the convention went. I attended the Nuclear War tournament and most of the pictures are from there, as follows:


Origins Game Convention June 22-26, 2011

 
 
 

Steampunk World’s Fair 2011

 
 
 

[May 20-22 2011 – Somerset, NJ US] So… The Steampunk World’s Fair 2011 is over. Second year in running. As with any new con, still not running smooth. From what I heard, the Crowne Plaza hotel totally dropped the ball and didn’t file the appropriate paperwork so all the “in room” vendors were closed down by the Fire Marshall. So, all the vendors moved into the program area constricting the activities. It was a not a good scene. But of course, the mighty con goers took it in stride and made the best of the situation. Hopefully, next year, third time will be a charm… Here are the pictures I took:


The Two Doctors at Steampunk World’s Fair 2011

 
 
 

SteamCon II Steampunk Con 2010

 
 
 

[Nov 19 – 21, 2010 Seatle, WA, US] This was the second installment of SteamCon. Still experiencing growing pains but it was an fun, although I would like to see the shortcoming corrected, such as: SteamCon ran between two hotels (Marriott and Hilton) and that caused the people to split up. A bunch hung around the Marriott and a bunch at the Hilton and there seemed to be less mingling of the two groups other than to attend events held at one or the other. Basically, SteamCon needs a much bigger venue and be under one roof for cohesion I think. The SteamCon Con Committee was unable to get either of the two hotels to allow for room parties. And you know what I think of cons without parties. FAIL.

There were only a few “non-sanctioned” parties and they couldn’t advertise in any way shape or form or keep their doors open, so it was a huge bummer. Only word of mouth and that was hard to come by. Hopefully the ConComm will get room parties sanctioned for next year. (And lock it down to one floor so that people don’t need to go hunting thirty floor in multiple hotels.) Apparently the dealers room was too small last year. It was bigger this year but it was still too small. If people actually stopped to look at dealer wares, the traffic flow clogged up because the aisles were way to narrow. So, they need to get even a bigger area. (Or allow in room dealers on a floor of one hotel or something.) Lastly, having a con suite in both hotels was also a failure. Both rooms were generally empty. There should be one big con suite in one location so that everyone know where it is so they go to one spot. Hopefully they will do a post-con review and fix the issues. Wow, that’s more than I usually write. Sorry for harping. It was a good con, just needs to iron out the wrinkles. And, I didn’t take too many pictures this time, sorry…


Nick Valentino
author of “Thomas Riley”
and girlfriend in the dealers room.

 
 
 

Hal-Con SciFi Convention, Halifax 2010

 
 
 

[Oct 29-31, 2010 Halifax, NS, Canada] So, months ago, I decided to go to Hal-Con in Halifax. How did I find Hal-Con in Canada? Well, I was using my own site, ToServeFan.com. I have four volunteers (LAMP, JAR, LAT and SLR) working on populating the data on all (fun stuff, not business/trade) conventions in the entire known universe. So anyway, I was looking into going to a con for the Halloween weekend and picked Hal-Con. Was pretty cool. It was their first con (didn’t know that). The last time Haifax had a con of it’s own was half a dozen years ago, so the turnout was pretty impressive. The execution for being the first con was pretty good. They will need to work on crowd control better next time though. And, like other cons I have been going to, the attendance was way under-estimated, so they had more people than most all of the program rooms could hold. There were several con guests, notably Walter Koenig and Denise Crosby. If con-goers bought the VIP ticket, there was a three hour event that all of the con-guests were at and anyone could visit and talk with them. Of course I chatted up with Walter Koenig and Denise Crosby 🙂 It was a fun time.


Hal-Con