This’ll be a short one this morning – I’m off to Brooklyn in a couple of hours for Flame Con. (Woohoo!) This will be the second year for this particular convention, which they project to have perhaps double the attendance of their first year.
New conventions can be tricky. If organizers haven’t had a lot of prior convention wrangling experience, the learning curve can be huge. Some cons learn and grow, some, unfortunately, run into trouble and vanish for a few years or for good.
Flame Con must be doing things right so far. They projected 1500 attendees last year for their single day event and ended up with 2200. This year, they’ve moved to a bigger venue, expanded to two days and should see attendance boom if all the signs and portents line up. It’s tricky to judge, but once a convention catches fire, growth can be scary. (Good scary – but you don’t want to outgrow your space.)
I’ll report back on how Flame Con does this year – but we watch these events eagerly. Queer-centric cons are awesome. Queer geek cons are icing on the cake.