Tis the season! While there were no large conventions in December (it's really not a good month for them - and for good reason!), there were a number of holiday events I had the opportunity to participate in. As I never got the chance to do individual write-ups for each of them, lets spend a few paragraphs to chat about the Dammit Liz Holiday Special, the Child's Play Dinner Auction, and Epic Foods.

Glamorous, dazzling, imaginative. Steamcon V was a three-day event at the Hyatt Regency in Bellevue, focused entirely on the Steampunk Genre, and it took its theme seriously. Each year, the organizers take great care in having every part of this convention reflect the idea of steampunk - from the vendors in the “mercantile,” to the panels and parties, right down to the games that we had featured in the tabletop library. The people walking around in costumes were wondrous and beautiful. This was my first ever Steamcon, and while I was mostly happily helping out around the games area, I felt like I had gotten to experience a whole new sort of event.

Join me as I explore all the things I loved about Steamcon, and all the things I was critical of!

Costumes, fandoms, and feminism - this was my first year participating in GeekGirlCon, and boy was it a good experience. The con feels smaller and calmer then many of the nerd-based cons I work at, but had this great, positive energy and feeling of camaraderie running through it for the entire two days. Many people I've spoken with think of GeekGirlCon as having a, "girls only," sort of attitude, but instead it strives to be as inclusive as possible. There were plenty of attendees of the masculine variety there, and I felt right at home.

This is my write-up of my observations at the con, and what I took from the experience. It ended up being quite lengthy, so bear with me as I babble on about my experiences.

Hello there.

Let me tell you a bit about myself, and what I intend to do here.

I am Chip. That's not usually a girl's name, but I've adopted it as my own anyway.  There are two great passions in my life: art and drawing, and event management. You can see the art I have done here, but this blog will be an outlet for me to talk about working at events.

A Brief History

I have been doing this for (almost, nearly) a decade - I tend to round up at this point. The first convention I ever attended was PAX 2004. It was just a little convention in the Meydenbaur Center in Bellevue, WA, and really wasn't all that impressive that first year, but to me it was huge, dazzling and important. It was my first time ever experiencing anything like it, and it changed my life for the better.

I volunteered for PAX the first time in 2005. I was immediately taken in by the volunteering community, and since then being an Enforcer has become part of my identity. My passion for working on events stemmed from that first decision to take part in that second year of PAX - and from there I started to branch out into other events.

In 2008, as I had just started to attend DigiPen with the goal of breaking into the game industry, I decided it was high time to start attending the Game Developers Conference. It seemed perfectly natural and downright obvious to me that I would go as a volunteer. Being a Conference Associate ended up being a fantastic experience, and a distinct contrast to the volunteer structure of the Enforcers. I love both of these organizations, and I could easily talk someone's ear off analyzing their different aspects. Every volunteer structure and community I come across immediately get compared to both the Conference Associates and the Enforcers.

Now I tend to volunteer at an event at least once per month - which ties in with how I intend this blog to go.

My Intent and goals

My plan here is to chat about every event that I help out with, whether it be large or small. I will talk about:

• A summary of the event, and my role in it
• Any great stories to tell
• What issues (if any) came up, and
• What I learned from working there

Basically, I would like to start tracking my development as I gain a skillset for event management, as well as have a space for me to gush about how much I love being a part of events. I'm positive no one will actually be reading this blog - instead, I am looking at this as a sort of record-keeping for myself.

I will have a goal of completing a post about an event within a week after an event happens. This means you'll get two new event posts in rapid succession: One for Geek Girl Con which happens this weekend, and one for SteamCon, which happens the weekend after!

Yes, I realize that means I don't actually have a free weekend until November, but at least I know I get to spend my weekends doing something that I love!