All of those are fine events that bring many people great pleasure, but they're different from I-CON because they're for-profit businesses. We're a 100% volunteer organization. We have never paid anyone a salary in our 30+ year history. We do it because we find it satisfying and worthwhile.
Others may associate us with medium-specific or genre-specific things like Anime Next or Wicked Faire. Again, these are very cool events and I'm by no means criticizing them, but we're different. We are not specific. I-CON 31 will include:
- Media (TV and movies)
- Authors (written fiction and non-fiction)
- Comics
- Gaming
- Science and technology
- Anime
- Medieval and other historical recreations
- Anthropomorphics
- Performances
- More
This isn't adding a single game room to a traditional SF convention like Philcon, either. Our gaming, anime, or authors content would make small to medium-sized conventions by themselves.
(Again, no criticism of Philcon meant. I have been a speaker there several times and really enjoyed it.)
What I-CON gives, you, more than any other volunteer-run convention I'm aware of, is variety. You can find something for almost anyone. It's the perfect convention for families, in a way. One person can talk to famous scientists while another gets an autograph from the seventh Doctor , a third is playing poker, and the fourth watches anime music videos, and that's just the first couple of hours.
You can follow I-CON at the web site above (where you can join our non-spammy mailing list), or:
http://iconsf.posterous.comhttp://iconsf.tumblr.com/
iconscifi on Facebook
I_ConSF on Twitter
One unique thing our crack Marketing team has put together: an online newspaper http://paper.li/I_ConSF/1312115140
I hope to see you at I-CON!
Carl Fink
I-CON 31 Assistant Event Chair
