Our First Gaming Convention!

The Philadelphia Area Gaming Expo!

Wow, what a weekend! Time to corral my thoughts and string them together in a way that makes some sort of coherent sense...Where to start... I guess at the beginning?

Well, I just spent the last 20 minutes trying to navigate the madness of Word Documents and Procreate files to create a rough timeline for myself and realized... let's not start at the beginning. Let's start at the present (and I'll save the beginning for the future).

For the last 3 years I've had this dream to create something bigger than myself to share my love of gaming with a community of likeminded people. That was the origin of my company, Hello Dorkness. This weekend, my dream manifested into reality. You see, on New Year's Day, I got a text out of the blue from Ron Meischker of the Philadelphia Area Gaming Expo. I had applied for this convention months ago, and being that I hadn't heard anything back and the event begin on January 16th, I figured I would just visit the expo as an excited patron. When I got the text, my wife and I were Ball's Deep in Baldur's Gate 3, where I'm playing as Galinda, and she's playing as Elphaba... (if you didn't read my first blog, then you may not know how much I love Wicked)... anyway... I put down my controller and asked her what she thought about doing the event. Ever my support rock, she enthusiastically encouraged me to do it. So, without a banner... supplies... inventory... or a plan... we threw ourselves into this thing 100%.

Shirts needed to be rush ordered, banners had to be hastily created, and books were an absolute necessity. We barely thought about anything for 2 weeks other than prepping for the con. Several trips to Michael's, Target, Home Depot, The King of Prussia Mall, and everywhere else you can think of, we were pretty much set to go. We just needed one thing... something to sell. So with 5 days left for the big event, we waited for the expedited shipping of our books. 4 days... nothing. 3 days... it'll be here tomorrow. 2 days... ok... we're effed.

But I wasn't just going to give up... I wanted to deliver something to the people! So I made phone calls, crafted emails and did everything I could to try and get SOMETHING. Finally, late on Tuesday night, with the con on Friday, I got an email from a printer in NY saying they could rush print my books. I was ecstatic. So, Wednesday morning I sent all of the information to the printer who did me a HUGE solid and printed the copies of my book... only... they had some pretty bad printing errors. But, when one door has its knob manufactured on the wrong side, another has a knob with perfect placement. As we pulled up to our house from our bummer trip to NY, there, sitting on the doorstep was the original order in all its glory -- perfectly printed with no errors! So even though I was down a bit of money, I was still in such high spirits to have a quality product in hand!

Which brings us to the big event. I had NO idea what to expect. Would people like my game? Would they like me? Would it be scary? Let me tell you... this gaming convention was incredible. Before the halls even opened, we had interest in our book. We made a sale almost immediately, and it felt incredible. The fact that someone liked my game enough to buy it from me... I can't even explain how that made me feel. The vendors were friendly, the volunteers were awesome, and our customers were unbelievable. From Knight Weave twins, to Vampire Photos that didn't come out right, to people coming back and saying they LOVED my game after the 2nd day of the Con... this was such an unbelievable feeling. I'm speechless... I'm overwhelmed... I'm happy. So to everyone who saw us this weekend, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for all of your love, support, kind words, and encouragement. Thank you all so much, and I look forward to sharing more with you in the future. So much love for everyone, especially my support rock, my Elphaba, my partner in all things Dork -- Jennifer my beautiful and wonderful wife. Thank you all so much for a great weekend. Can't wait for the next one!! And now... I sleep. Goodnight Moon!