Apologies for just dropping off the map without saying anything to anybody, but my life got completely busy for a bit! It's been crazy for all of us with the pandemic and all, I know. For me, that video game convention I run every year had to talk to our hosting hotel about shutting down the in-person con and moving it to next year at the hotel and negotiating contract cancellations and stuff...but we didn't want to break a 21-year event streak...so we decided to move the con online.
We figured we could use the online format to do Big Things, like host special guests we could never normally host at Mysterium because they lived too far to travel, etc. And we could host multiple panels at the same time, which we can't normally do because we're a smaller con with a single hotel ballroom, not with breakout spaces and multiple rooms like big ones like any of the ComicCons. So we put together a slate of attendees including Cyan founders Rand and Robyn Miller, soundtrack composers for the Myst series including Jack Wall and Tim Larkin and Marty O'Donnell, artists including Stephan Martiniere... People who not only worked on the Myst series, but who have worked for Disney theme parks, who've worked on games like Mass Effect and Halo, who've done work for Star Wars...
To contact all these people, get them to agree to show up to this online event, then to buy technology licenses, to set up how to stream out from Zoom to Twitch and Youtube simultaneously and plan to take all the comments from those chats and Discord, and feed them out to the panelists. And to plan to host casual hangouts and discussions after panels, to still make it feel like a community hangout convention. That's a lot of work.
We did it in 7 weeks.
We also hit the Twitch.com front page twice during the convention. We had almost 900 registered attendees and our biggest Twitch stream had 10,000 people.
So that has been one heck of a May-June-July for me, I have been sleeping heavily since last weekend when it happened, I have met some very famous people, it was an incredible success.
Also, hi, I miss all of you. I'm very tired, but I'm back.
AVERY! That is AWESOME! I'm a hardcore Mass Effect enthusiast so you sold me there! :) Congratulations on all of the hard work paying off!
You are Awesomsauce!!
Wow Avery that's so cool!
And oof, what a lot of work. But I'm so glad it paid off and the con was such a success!
OMG Avery-- that is incredible!! Event planning is so hard at the best of times and this is certainly not the best of times. And yet you pulled off a bigger event than normal! Next time I need an event coordinator, I know the guy to call. :D
Seriously, though - congratulations and please enjoy that well-earned rest! And yay we missed you too!!
Well done, and congratulations!
That's amazing, Avery! Congratulations for all your hard work in a difficult situation and making it such a success! I hope it's easier next year and you're able to have an in-person event once again.
I've been able to virtually attend a few events for the first time that I couldn't before due to the travel required, and along with all the other people joining in from around the world, I'm really grateful for the effort by the organisers that's gone into making them available online. It's much appreciated.
Welcome back!