2010 Plans

...okay...so I've been pretty bad at maintaining this blog, seeing as how the last post was BEFORE this year's Expo which has already passed. Things got crazy busy leading up to the event, but I'm happy to say that we had our best year ever with over 10,000 people coming to check out the event. The energy has always been very positive, and I hope that continues!

So where does that lead us to now?

When I first started the Calgary Expo, I had a 3 year plan...but it really took 4 years to get it to where I wanted it to be. Really, I can't complain. It's always been a juggle since I run the Expo on the side, which can make things pretty tough because of the time commitment.

But I have to say I'm really excited for our 2010 event for a number of reasons. We were planning on expanding, and we'll be taking an extra hall, which essentially doubles our main exhibit room to a whopping 100,000 sq ft. That's a lot of space to fill, but I'm confident we can do it.

I was down at the San Diego Comic Con back in July, and there's a lot of people that have heard of our little event, and it makes me feel really good that we're establishing a very solid reputation. What I hope that translates to is a higher attendance, more high profile guests, and more fun.

But the real reason why I'm excited is that I'm actually leaving my day job. Technically, I've already left...but there's a few projects I have to finish up first. With more time to devote to the Expo, I think I can raise the bar even further and develop a lot of the areas that I think need more attention. I'm pretty confident in the Expo, and I think it'll benefit everyone from exhibitors, guests, to fans.

To be honest, I haven't been working on 2010 very hard, a lot of things have just fallen into place. I'm looking forward to revealing our guest lineup in the near future, and really dedicated myself to developing the event.Fingers crossed!

- Kandrix

Promo Art

One of the coolest things is getting art. It's a great way to get excited about the show. Over the past couple months, I've been receiving pieces for the 2009 artbook, as well as some promo art. In the past we've had 4-6 variations of our postcard promos, but this year we've cut it down to 2. It became quite a bit of a hassle to coordinate everything. So, we decided to have Wolverine and Darth Maul as the two characters in our promos. With Wolverine, we figured it would be a good tie-in with the upcoming movie (that's out the week after). And for Darth Maul, we've got Ray Park coming up, and people identify the lightsaber almost as an icon.

Here's the pencils for Joe Ng's promo piece of Darth Maul (which will be colored by Jim Zubkavich)

...and Mike Choi's Wolverine, colored by Sonia Oback.

- Kandrix

Even more guests...you heard it here first!

So we signed up Jewel Staite to appear, which is great because I'm personally a fan of Firefly/Serenity! Hopefully as the years go by, we'll have everyone from Firefly appearing at the show. In 2007, we had Morena Baccarin and Christina Hendricks...so we'll see what happens in 2010...

Also, we'll be announcing James Kyson Lee and Matthew Lewis on our website soon. James plays Ando in the hit tv series Heroes, and Matthew is better known as Neville Longbottom from the Harry Potter movies.

Tickets will be going on sale online too shortly, and our big marketing blitz plans are getting settled. I'm pretty excited to see how this year's show is going to shape up. Our guest roster is completely full (we just haven't announced everyone yet...:), and we're goingt o be really aggressive with our marketing. Should be lots of fun!!!

- Kandrix

Calgary Expo 2009

Hooray! Finally a post about the upcoming show....yes, I know it's been waaaaayyyy too long since the last post. There's been plenty of things going on for myself, with the show, and lots of stuff outside of it! First thing...Happy New Year!

At this very moment I'm working on a bunch of emails, updating the Calgary Expo website (with some cool guest announcements), working on some marketing materials, and trying get a bunch of the internal things organized. I've been working on the Expo casually for the last while (due to other commitments), but then someone said "I can't wait, that show's less than 5 months away!"

Whoa...wait a minute, 5 months?!? Aww crap....I don't know if I should hit the panic button or the excitement button. Of course they're side by side, which doesn't make it any easier.

A lot of things have come together quicker than last year, which is really good! But I still have this feeling that I've got to get more done. Our guest list is almost completely full (and we won't be releasing the full list for a bit yet...) and we've got more aggressive plans to get the word out for the show. I was looking at our guest list of people we've already announced, and I have to say it's looking pretty good. Sometimes I forget who's coming, then I overhear someone say they're excited that (insert name here) is coming.

Out of which, I'm really happy with the amount of people we've got that haven't been to the show before, like Frank Cho, Darwyn Cooke, Terry Moore, Steve Downes, Svetlana Chmakova, Dave Johnson, Mike Choi, Ben Templesmith, Mark Brooks, Matt Wagner, Yanick Paquette, Bryan Lee O'Malley, Hope Larson, Mark Evanier and Ron Marz.

We've also got Ray Park coming, which is awesome because he's one of those guys that covers multiple genres, and he's always a solid guest. Not to mention returning guests Jo Chen, the Udon crew, and Josh Ortega.

We've got some pretty good goals for this year's show, so I guess we'll see how everything goes.

PS. For anyone that sees this blog before the actual site, we'll be announcing a bunch of really awesome creators like Mike Allred (Madmen), Mike Kunkel (Herobear), Steve Niles (30 Days of Night) and Gavin Blair (ReBoot)! You read it here first!!!!

Now I guess I've got to finish doing that update...

- Kandrix

San Diego?

It's currently 3am....I still have to get up to go to work tomorrow morning. We're getting a bunch of things ready for San Diego, the biggest comic-con in North America. It's always an amazing show, and it keeps getting more insane every year.

This time I'll be with Paul Dini & Laurie Breitkreuz at their booth (#1803), along with a bunch of other friends. Just glancing at the schedules, there's lots to see. Once again, the wish of having a cloning machine prevails....and that's not even including the show floor.

So let's see, if I could clone myself for San Diego, I would station one of me at the booth, another 2 in the panel/programming areas, probably 4 of me walking up and down the floor, and another to get myself food. Of course the original me would be sleeping in the hotel room...

- Kandrix

I'm ready.

That's pretty much it. I'm ready to take this thing full on, take no prisoners style.

I've been away for quite a while, lots of exhaustion, and catching up to do...heck, I haven't even posted stuff about the show, but that'll change soon.

...and that's all I have to say for now. Back with some stories, photos, & more shortly!

- Kandrix

New York, New York, big city of dreams...

You know where I won't be? New York. That's right, the New York Comicon is this weekend, it's been both a blessing and curse. When I learned that New York moved to the weekend before our show, I knew that we'd have problems landing certain guests. It has been a struggle in some areas, but I think we did just fine with our lineup. I was also planning on being there, but pulled out because it would have been suicidal to try to go to there a week before the Expo...it's turning out to be the right decision.

This past week has featured multiple flight changes for guests, and changing the timing of a bunch of things. A couple guys also canceled too. We're really behind in terms of posting our programming schedule for one thing, and there's some stuff that's supposed to be ready for the show (and it's not) and it's causing a lot of added stress. I'll talk more about that in a different post.

It's not all bad things though, so really I can't complain. The program guides came in on Wednesday, and I have to admit that I'm really proud of them. They look awesome, and I think that everyone that get's a copy will be very pleased. We also landed Party Machine as a sponsor, so that'll help us out with some of our transportation needs. There's been a lot of media requests coming in, and on April 16th we had a huge surge in web traffic.

We've got another volunteer meeting today, and it's coupled with our bag stuffing, and it should be fun. Today will be the day that a lot of things come together. I really think in the next 3-4 days pretty much everything will be finished, but it'll be a pretty good workload. I'm now officially on my 2 weeks of "vacation" from my day job, but I'll have to put in at least another day of work to catch up on some work and tie up some loose ends.

- Kandrix