What a Year (or more)!

This past weekend was the 2010 Phoenix ComiCon, which concluded a pretty crazy year and a half for me.

At the start of 2009 was the 2009 Phoenix ComiCon at the end of January, where I helped set up the first ever Wil Wheaton Rock Band event there.  I was vice-chair of FiestaCon, the 62nd Westercon, which happened over July 4th Weekend and helped rebound Westercon after a low turnout one in Las Vegas in 2008.  I chaired the first North American Discworld Convention over Labor Day weekend in 2009, for which our main guest (and creator of Discworld), Terry Pratchett, declared it was the best Discworld Convention ever!  A couple of weeks ago I chaired LepreCon 36, which even though we had a dissapointing amount of attendees, those that did come had a great time.  This past weekend was the 2010 Phoenix ComicCon, which moved to the Phoenix convention center after having outgrown the Mesa Convention Center, and it was definitely bigger than any prior ones.  I oversaw the SciFi programming tracked, helped put together Wil Wheaton Rock Band again this year (which was an awesome event - yes, that is me in my Devo flower pot hat), and helped set up the Super Happy Fun Time panel with Wil Wheaton and John Scalzi which announced a special charity project they are organizing.   For the first time in quite a while, I do not have a major event in the near future I'm in charge of!  However, I am looking forward to LepreCon 37 the first weekend of May in 2011 for which we will be having the first ever Shadow Unit mini-con as part of the convention.  And, for Phoenix ComiCon 2011, I hope we can make more awesome things happen.  I also attended and was on programming for Gallifrey One in 2009 and 2010, LosCon 36, Anticipation (WorldCon 2009), and also attended ComiCon International and the first two Tucson Festival of Books.

Once I get caught back up on real life, I hope to get caught up with my online life as well.

Phoenix ComiCon Rock Band with Wil Wheaton

This post on Wil Wheaton's 's blog and the comments pretty much gives you a good idea of how much fun people had. Thanks to the help of various Phoenix ComiCon staff members, Harmonix, the Rock Band Blowout with Wil Wheaton was a big success.

Check out some of the videos some of the fans shot on YouTube.

And edited to add this wrap-up post by Wil...

A New Post of Sorts

Been keeping busy getting things ready for the Phoenix ComiCon next weekend and also trying to keep up with various other things. So here's a few random things to post here...

James Moran has posted his 2008 Gallifrey One Report which is a lot of fun to read. James was a lot of fun to talk to at the con and I enjoyed getting his point of view on it (finally!) Incidentally, the 2009 Gallifrey One convention is less than a month away now!

Coraline, the movie, based on the Neil Gamain story is coming out in a couple of weeks. They've been sending out special boxes to bloggers, but so far I haven't seen one. I guess I should have posted more about the movie beyond my 2008 San Diego ComicCon post of images of the dolls or my 2007 Neil Gaiman SD Comicon report which included the screening of Coraline footage. I've been keeping an eye on the Evil Buttons blog about special Coraline stuff being sent out or made available. I've been also trying to get one of the Coraline Keys up on Ebay (since so far that I know of, none have been distributed in Phoenix and so far, none have been provided to the Phoenix ComiCon. I was able to get three of the four Coraline toys available at Carl's Jr.

For the Phoenix ComiCon, I've been working with Wil Wheaton to set up a Rock Band Blowout with Wil, some of the other guests, and fans playing Rock Band together.