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

Breakfast Television on Citytv

Laurie and yours truly will be appearing on Citytv's Breakfast Television for a segment for the Calgary Expo, which is going to be great in more ways than one! First, it's a great way to promote the show (less than 2 weeks...gah!) Second, we're going to be on for 5+ minutes! Third, we'll be promoting an art contest with a great prize pack! And lastly...we're going to be on tv! Hi mom! We'll be on at 8:20am, channel 8 in Calgary.

A bunch of interesting things happened today. Original art for the auction showed up, so we got pieces from Darick Robertson, Jo Chen, Justin Ridge, and Hye Jung Kim. I'm also dealing with a couple of issues, mainly making sure that we get our artbook in time for the show. It's tough trying to coordinate everything because there's always lots of small details that you have to be aware of!

- Kandrix

Art Contest on Citytv

We are less than 2 weeks away now from the Expo (omg!), a lot of things that we had planned out are starting to come together, and there's still a few things that are really behind. There was a big webupdate on the weekend, went to bed at 3am, got up at 7am....Ah...the life of a convention organizer. By the time I got my first phone call, I had already put in 6 hours of work.

Anyways, here's a really cool thing. We're working with Citytv (a local television station) as one of our media sponsors. They've put together a couple ads that just started to run, and we're hoping that this will really push the attendance through the roof! Here's a quick look at it:

We've also got our first volunteer meeting today, which I'm looking forward to. We were late getting the volunteers organized last year, so it's been a bigger focus for us this time around. Should be fun!

- Kandrix

Burning Sensations....

It's been a week since the last post, and everything is coming together tightly. I'll admit that I'm feeling pretty burnt out right now. There was a major project at work (not Expo related) that took up lots of time and energy. It's got my (already) messed up sleeping schedule even more messed up, and I feel pretty drained mentally.

So I actually took yesterday off to do virtually nothing...except for watching a bunch of episodes of Battlestar Galactica season 3.

...and of course when you take a day off like that it throws everything off! Back to the fray!

- Kandrix