God this article is about two weeks late but… forgive me… I was WRECKED! Anyway on with the reading/writing…
So after months of work, organisation, prep and even more work, the weekend of the 1-3 July 2011 crept up on us and the nerves were well and truely set in! Despite having attended numerous conventions, running some small scale role playing games and spending hundreds of euro in trade halls, this would be our very first attempt at not only running one but actually starting one from scratch!
The task was without a doubt something we were up for but truthfully we underestimated just how much work goes into running and working the Irish Convention circuit! The weekend kicked off with the doors opening at 1pm for all our VIP ticket holders, receiving special passes, t-shirts as well as an extra special goodie bag soon after however the doors opened up for everyone else and the convention was soon swarming with geeks, gamers, otaku, cosplayers and even zombies!
The aim of @rcadeCon was not to just be another con on the circuit, we wanted to bring together all the best elements of geek culture by bringing gaming, anime, movies and music together, combining consoles with rock bands, cartoons with samurai movies and mashing it all together to make one huge weekend! If you hadn’t heard of all the buzz about the convention prior to this article then you were either in space or living in a cave at the bottom of the ocean, with six special guests attending, a huge console room and a timetable chocked and crammed full of events from opening hours on friday to the wee hours of Sunday morning… we certainly had our work cut out for ourselves!
It isn’t easy to sit down and pick one part of the weekend that stood out for me, I enjoyed so much of it, I was stressed out by all of it but without sounding corny and clichéd I can say hand on heart that the best part of the convention for me was meeting so many amazing gamers and geeks! From the amazing traders, some of whome travelled from the UK, our amazing special guests: Rob Curley, Barry Keegan, Sonia Leong, Hayden Scott-Baron, Travis Willingham and Laura Bailey, to our sponsors, partners, artists, the bands, performers and staff… All of these fine folk came together and created such a fun and electricifying atmosphere that had me on such a high all weekend!
Before I continue on though I would just like to say a big thank you to our staff, it’s never right to single one person out in a crowd and everyone of them from the trade hall staff to registration desk minions went above and beyond to ensure that all of our attendees had a great weekend but I would just like to say a particular thank you to Fiona O Reilly, Amy King and Stephen Fox, members of Eirtakon staff and committee who not only helped us pull off the whole show but offered amazing support and advice all weekend!
One person who saw the whole thing through from start to finish was the director of @rcadeCon 2011, Kayleigh Tester and she’s managed to drag herself away from her plans for the convention in 2012 to answer a few questions about her own personal experience of the Con…
I wanted to ask you about the best part of the con but I think it better to ask you about the worst part first…
Wasn’t thie supposed to be an easy interview? I don’t know, I mean the convention wasn’t perfect and there a few kinks that we plan on working on for next year, I think the fact that ended was the worst part… no wait the fact that I blew a months rent on the trade hall not because I spent money in the trade hall but because I’m now surviving on Tesco Brand everything!
And the best part?
Hearing Eden and Darren Giles play live on both nights of the Con! I’d been listening to them a lot before the weekend and they both put on amazing shows that said I loved the staged fight between Laura and Travis aka Chun Li vs. Guile
What can we expect from @rcadeCon 2012, if it is even going to be around next year?
Oh it is coming back, nothing could stop me or the folk who organise the Con from bringing it back not even hordes of thousands of the undead! Next year we’re adding a theme ‘The End of the World’ we will be bringing Battle Royale back and adding more games like that – we also promise that we will be working on some of the points brought up in the feedback survey. There were a few things that went… not so right at the Convention and we’re going to work on those to make sure that everyone gets the most out of their weekend!
If you could pick one memory from the weekend as your favourite what would it be?
I’d have to pick the Staff/VIP end of Con party on Sunday night – I was so tired but there was just such an amazing crowd of equally tired people from traders to staff and we were joined by Laura and Travis who stayed up late into the wee hours of Monday morning that or seeing the Editor of the @rcade shaking his money maker on stage!
So @rcadeCon 2011 has been and gone but the convention season is only beginning, BroCon opened its doors to huge crowds in Limerick and continued on from its amazing success last year, Nom Con looks set to be a big weekend in August, we’ve got GaelCon, Eirtakon all around the corner and thats before we even start mentioning conventions in the UK and mainland Europe!
We’re getting stuck into our plans for @rcadeCon 2012 and we hope that you can be a part of it once more so until next year, the committee of @rcadeCon would like to say a big thank you to all those who were involved in the Con and we look forward to all the madness, shenanigans and gaming next year!
Check out some of our favourite photos from the weekend below!
Just click them to make them larger!
