Genericon

Hey folks, long time no see. The Genericon staff has emerged from our post-con hibernation to announce something pretty exciting: this year the convention attracted over 2000 attendees! That’s the highest attendance number since we’ve been keeping track! We want to take this chance to once again thank everyone who came to Genericon this year and made it such a success. We hope to see you all again next year at Genericon XXVII!

The conbook is off to the printer, so we’ve uploaded a handy PDF of the finished version, complete with descriptions of all our guests, events, artists, vendors, and more. But this year, we’re changing up the way our schedule works. Instead of having a schedule in the conbook, it will be in a separate insert, a foldable “Pocket Schedule” featuring the schedule, a convention map, hours of operation, and corrections to the conbook. All that stuff in one handy, pocket-sized place? That’s pretty cool if you ask me.

Anyway, you can download both the conbook AND the pocket schedule PDF here:

Conbook (PDF, right-click and save)
Pocket Schedule (PDF, right-click and save)

Hey! You! Have you pre-registered for Genericon XXVI yet? You know that if you do, you’ll get $10 off your badge, right? (That’s non-RPI students only — RPI folks get a $10 badge either way.) We’re closing pre-registration THIS FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 22, so get your registration in now!

On the subject of registration, we’re adding something new this year; if you’ve pre-registered you’ll be able to pick your badge up before the con even starts! Stop by the RPI Union West Lobby (near the corner of 15th St. and Sage Ave.) on Thursday, February 28 from 5:00 PM to 9:30 PM or on Friday, March 1 from noon to 4:00 PM and pick up your badge (bring cash to pay for it, though). Then bring it to the DCC at 5:00 PM on Friday and walk right into the con. No crazy pre-reg lines!

If you can’t make it to the early pre-reg pickup times, no worries! You can still come to our registration tables at any time during con hours to get your badge.

Our guest announcements are all done, but the staff here at Genericon are pleased to unveil our Featured Panelist lineup for Genericon XXVI. For those unfamiliar, Featured Panelists are presenters with a proven track record of great panels whom we choose to highlight for their exceptional work. This year we welcome back some great Featured Panelists from previous years: The Con Artists, a group of RPI alumni who have run a host of great panels and trivia contests year after year; The Mandalorian Mercs, Star Wars cosplayers who give panels on building Mandalorian armor and podcasting; Walter Amos, an anime convention veteran who presented his popular panel “Hetalia History” (among others) at Genericon XXIV; and Alain (a.k.a. Hisui), one of the bloggers behind the Reverse Thieves anime blog and The Speakeasy anime podcast, who also appeared at Genericon XXIV.

Hey Genericon, your Video Game Coordinator here, and I’ve got some big news! This year, we will be holding our first-ever Genericon Bring-Your-Own-Computer (BYOC) LAN event! Video gaming at Genericon has continued to grow over the years, and we thought it was an appropriate time to take the next step towards really “modernizing” our game room. The Video Game room from previous years will be converted into a LAN gaming room, with plenty of space for computers, monitors, keyboards, mice. The rest of Video Gaming will be moving next door, where we’ll still be holding all of our typical events during the convention. We hope to run a couple of PC-specific tournaments as well this year, such as a League of Legends 2v2 Tournament and a TF2 Highlander tournament. This year’s video game room is shaping up to be bigger and better than ever before!

If there are any of you creative folks still out there in the wasteland and you want the chance to win a free badge and some awesome swag, come and submit your designs for Genericon’s Badge Art and/or Cover Art! And for the musically inclined, AMV Contest submissions are still open too. The winners of the art contest will receive a free Genericon badge and a special prize pack (contents TBD).

Badge and Cover Art submissions are due TOMORROW, FEBRUARY 1!
AMV Contest submissions are due NEXT FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 8!

Hey folks, I’d like to personally apologize for the delay in getting a lot of stuff up this year, but we’ve had some staffing complications and had to replace a lot of positions, so things have been a bit bumpy. Please bear with us, and hopefully we’ll see you this March!

Anyway, in terms of actual news, we’ve got a bunch of new forms on the site. They’ve been going up quietly for the past few weeks, but we figured we’d announce them all together:

• Traditional Gaming: Want to run any sort of traditional gaming (non-video game) event at Genericon? Fill out this form and we’ll try to get you space in one of our Traditional Gaming Rooms!
• Cosplay Contests: This year we’ve got a Cosplay Competition (winners will be chosen for Skits and Craftsmanship), Cosplay Chess, AND Cosplay Deathmatch. It’s sure to be a lot of fun, so send your applications in soon!
• AMV Contest: Yes, that’s right, Genericon is bringing back its AMV Contest! Tell all your friends to submit their best AMVs. We’ll show all the competitors and announce the winners at the con!

Phew! That’s it for new stuff on the Genericon site. Once again, I apologize for the delays. Keep messaging us via email, Twitter, and Facebook if you notice anything else falling through the cracks. It keeps us honest. See you at the con!

It might be too late. I hope it’s not too late. Listen, everybody. The world is ending, just as the Mayans predicted. With the balls of fire raining from the sky and the breakdown of civilization and all that, I doubt we’ll be able to maintain Internet access for much longer. Oh yeah, also we’re probably going to starve to death.

But there’s hope! Some of us survivors have heard about a place, a last refuge of humanity  somewhere in the ruins of Troy, NY. They say that this place is well-defended, has food enough for everybody, and more importantly, has lots of anime, science fiction, and games!

It’s called “Genericon.”

So I call on you, the remaining survivors, to meet me at Genericon on the weekend of March 1-3, 2013, to rekindle humanity’s hope for the future!

We’re now taking submissions for our annual badge art contest! [EDIT: And we just put up our Conbook Cover/T-Shirt Art Contest!] Submit your art for a chance to get free admission to Genericon XXVI and (obviously) have your art featured on our badges, conbook, and/or staff T-shirts!

We at Genericon are pleased to announce that Uncle Yo, the popular stand-up comedian whose work comprises all the reaches of the geek community, will be returning to Genericon once again!

Armed with his giant D20, Uncle Yo celebrates all brands of nerdom: anime, comic books, video games, LARPing, Star Wars, RPG’s and manga.
He may be One Piece short of a Fullmetal Alchemist, but this Jedi intern promises to “Bebop your Cowboy so hard you’ll feel it in your joystick.”

Go to press release (PDF)

Hey folks, just a little reminder that our panel applications are online! If you’d like to run a panel discussion, lecture, workshop, or anything else like that, please fill out an application and send it to our Panels Coordinator.

Click here for the panel application web form.

Are you interested in exhibiting your work in our Artists’ Alley or selling your products in our Vendors’ Room? If you said yes to either of those questions, send in your information ASAP!

Artists’ Alley Registration
Vendors’ Room Registration

Hey there folks, long time no see! I know it’s taken a little while to get the word out, but we’re proud to announce that we will hold our 26th convention the weekend of March 1-3, 2013. The theme for this year’s con will be Post-Apocalypse. The staff of Genericon XXVI look forward to seeing you all next year in what remains after the end of the world!

Link to Press Release (PDF)

We’re proud to announce that we sold approximately 1700 badges at this year’s Genericon! We’re pretty excited about the high turnout, and we hope we’ll see many of you back next year!

Genericon is now on Guidebook, which means you can get full conbook information, including the schedule and lists of guests, featured panelists, vendors, and artists, on your Android or iOS device! Plus, the app allows you to make a custom schedule and to-do list. What are you waiting for? Download Guidebook and the Genericon guide before the con starts!

To get our guide, click the banner below to download Guidebook, then search for “Genericon” inside the app. Enjoy the con!

(Please note that we are using the free version of Guidebook, so we have a maximum of 200 downloads. Be nice and try not to double download!)

ATTENTION GENERICONGOERS! WE NEED YOUR HELP!

As you may know, our video game room runs on donations from charitable attendees. We are in greatest need of:

-TVs
-Current-generation consoles (Wii, Xbox360, PS3)
-Controllers for aforementioned consoles
-Games for tournaments (see the tournament thread for the list)

We love donations of any kind for the weekend. If you have a game that you thing anyone else at the convention might enjoy and you’re willing to leave it in our capable hands for the weekend, we’d love your support!

– Zach Greene
Genericon Video Gaming Coordinator