This week I’ll be in New York City for New York Comic Con. My company has an event in the vicinity that I’m helping to organise and a couple of my colleagues will be speaking on two panels at the convention proper. We won’t have a booth at NYCC, so this convention is definitely not as hard work in terms of planning and logistics as PAX was, but there are still a lot of details to take care of. It’s been well over a decade since I visited New York City, and I have never been to New York Comic Con, so I’m looking forward to seeing both. I’ll be taking several days off after the convention for some downtime, which I’m also looking forward to.
Ahead: San Diego Comic-Con 2010
Having grown up reading comic books, I’d always wanted to attend the San Diego Comic-Con. During my university years, I gradually moved away from reading mainstream comic books, having gotten fed up with the plots and lack of characters I identified with, as well as the sheer expense and the accumulation of paper that the collecting aspect entailed. I eventually stopped buying single issue comic books altogether. I still read and occasionally buy trade paperbacks, but my days of collecting comic books are over. I still enjoy the medium, however.
Work is sending me to Comic-Con this July (21st – 25th), and I’m a bit excited. I’m aware that the convention has changed drastically in the two decades or so since the time I had originally dreamed of going. It’s more of a popular media convention now, than a comic book convention. It should be interesting, and exhausting.
Ahead: Game Developers Conference 2010
One week from today, I’ll be traveling to San Francisco to attend the Game Developers Conference. I’ll be a behind-the-scenes conference volunteer, like I was in 2006 and 2008. This means that I’ll spend the vast majority of my time at the conference doing volunteer work. When I’m not working, I’ll still be working—attending sessions relevant to my profession (volunteer work schedule permitting, of course). I’ll be in San Francisco from 7th – 14th March, though the conference takes place from 9th – 13th March. The extra days account for travel and for Conference Associate orientation, training, and debriefing. I’m looking forward to it, and I hope to get a lot out of this year’s GDC as I have with previous years.