Thursday, January 1, 2009

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