New Website Launched!

We launched the new version of the Calgary Expo website 24 hours ago,and it's been really crazy. It's got a lot of great backend functionality, and now we've got a few people working on the site, instead of just myself...especially since I'm not a big web (or tech) type of guy.

We started selling tickets online, and it's been amazing. And we're only a day into it!

The best part, is we just started to announce our guest of honor; Leonard Nimoy. He's the biggest guest we've ever had, and we've got it setup that he'll be doing a special appearance in Vulcan (which is about an hour+ drive away) the day before the show.

Excited is hardly the right word for all of this!

And we've added a few new key members to the team...it's going to be a great year!

- Kandrix

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