Space City Con - The Good, The Bad, and The Awesome

The Good

The second annual Space City Con was a tremendous success by anyone's standards. They even blew past all expectations of turnout. The lines for registration stretched the length of the central foyer and down the hall to the exhibit area. I was amazed after last years more lightly attended event.

The guests were bigger, the dealer room larger, and the cosplay was truly amazing. Of special note were the 501st Legion - Vader's Fist. They were there enmass and really livened up the con and posed regularly for pics. I had one guy to this for me.

The Klingons were in rare form. Two of the better dressed were funny, making fun of a Jedi with a hair placement fixation. The roamed around in good spirits freely posing and cracking wise with anyone.

The fan clubs were out in full force including Dr. Who, Firefly, Ghostbusters, Legend of the Seekers, and various forms of Star Trek and Star Wars. Some of there props were amazing including a TARDIS and Dalek.

Several local film companies were also present to advertise movies like Matt Mercury - Rocket Ranger and More Than Human. Both production companies turned out in full force with previews of their work. Look for a soon-to-be-published extended post on Matt Mercury.

Three different companies of Live Action Role Players (LARP) were in house to show off their wares. One group held a continual battle at the Hilton across the street while Sovereign Scrolls held night time adventures inside the Marriott host hotel. LARPs are of particular interest to my 10 year old son. For the record, LARP really isn't my thing but my son loves it.

Sovereign Scrolls made him a Paladin but he's not really the Paladin type. He spent his games hanging back waiting for one of the adults players to turn their back, at which time he would run up and slice them from the neck down to their legs. We were there until after midnight.

The other eternity was time spent in the dealers room. It was huge with an astounding variety of vendors.

The Bad

The size brought some headaches and there was a bit of chaos on Friday as the Con's crew struggled to get the things going. They either ran out of programs or the printer delivered them late. I missed one of my must-see  events, the Hickman's Brown Bag Lunch.

Granted, most of this was my fault with an assist from Google Maps. Google Maps beta gave us the wrong directions on our printed copy. We punted to Onstar but got there late. Things smoothed out after the first few hours as staff become more familiar with the flow and contents of the con.

The Awesome

Jim Butcher is a prolific writer, RPGer, and video gamer. His first novel, The Dresden Files, was written to prove his professor wrong. He was kind enough to run two writing classes during Space City Con. The first class titled "Blowing Things Up..." complimented the second titled "...And Making People Care About It."

Mr. Butcher is highly entertaining, honest about his personality and abilities, and willing to help others down their path toward authordom.  His class was very informative and entertaining. I'll have a series of posts with the class content and how it applies to both writing and gaming coming over the next few weeks. I took sixteen pages of notes. You can find Jim online at jimbutcher.livejournal.com and www.jim-butcher.com.

I'll have a few posts about Mr. Butcher's class in upcoming posts here and elsewhere.

In Summary

Space City Con did an outstanding job despite a much larger crowd than expected. It is a family event that even my non-geek family enjoyed. I would say this will be an annual event for us but it looks like Space City Con is gearing up for a winter festival as well!