Busy Couple of Years; Now What?

Hello again!

It’s been a busy few months, well, ok years, and I’ve been away for a while. It’s time for me to get back on the weekly posting train!

It’s been a busy couple of years.

Going back a little for some context for you all.

I’ve been running a sci-fi and fantasy convention called the Myths and Legends Con (or MALCon for short) for 6 years now. I started it under an LLC in 2013, but a few years ago I gathered with some friends and we started a nonprofit called Shiny Garden to run the con, and I shut down the LLC. In 2016 we bid for and won the right to host the 71st Westercon, a sci-fi and fantasy convention that travels around the western region of the United States. I’m used to being in charge of the whole convention with a great team under me but Westercon is more committee run, so between that and Shiny Garden Board taking some decision making off me, I felt I had more time for other things. So we started two new conventions! (This is what normal people do, right?)

What did we start? Let me tell you about them!

Denver had a Steampunk and alternative history convention, AnomalyCon, that ran for 7 years, its last year being 2017.  Within Shiny Garden we had already been planning a steampunk event, probably a winter dance so as to not conflict with the AnomalyCon. When it was announced that AnomalyCon was going away, we instead launched WhimsyCon, with a dual focus on Steampunk and Costuming, and took the calendar spot that AnomalyCon was vacating.

Billy and I also had been wanting to do a BGG.CON style gaming con in Denver. BGG.CON is held in Dallas every November (and there’s a spring one now too) and focuses on open boardgaming with a huge game library. They also have gaming vendors, some special events, and a very welcoming atmosphere. We announced that the first WhimsyCon would be March 2018 at the final AnomalyCon in March 2017. About a month later, we launched HexaCon, our gaming convention, to be held in January 2018.

In the middle of all this, Billy and I have been working on our plan to move internationally, with a 5-day visit to the Netherlands in August 2017 and another two weeks over Dec 2017/Jan 2018.

So the last couple of years have gone like this:

• After attending previous Westercons and Worldcons to promote our bid, we won the Westercon 71 bid in July 2016;
• August 2016 some of us went to Worldcon in Kansas City to promote it and  hopefully get memberships (a Westercon way of referring to passes or badges);
• December 2016, my son (the younger of my two children) finished his high school classes and moved to Florida to live with his dad. (Side note: at this point I became an “empty nester”. He came back for a visit in May to attend the graduation ceremony, and amusingly is moving back to Denver next month.)
• Jan/Feb 2017 a friend of ours moved in and we had some construction done on the room before she was able to fully move into the bedroom.
• March 2017 we announced WhimsyCon at the last AC;
• April 2017 or so we announced HexaCon;
• May 2017 we visited a friend in Seattle, WA and took a trip up to Vancouver, BC to visit friends there and check out if we wanted to more seriously pursue moving to Canada (vs. the Netherlands).
• We ran MALCon 2017 in early August 2017, left next day for Worldcon Helsinki and visited Helsinki from Tuesday to Monday; the Netherlands from Monday to Friday; and Paris from Friday to Monday. I’m working on blogs with lots of pictures from those adventures!
• Sad note: December 3rd, we lost board member, registration head, and good friend Jo Ann Byrne to illness.
• December 29 (2017) to January 14 (2018) we took a second visit to Netherlands. It was a working trip, where Billy did his day job and I worked on convention and Executive Director stuff from places that we rented in Arnhem (1 week) and outskirts of Utrecht (1 week). We were able to successfully do our jobs. 🙂
• Sunday January 14, 2018, we returned from the Netherlands;
• Thursday January 18 – 21, 2018 we ran the first HexaCon (Billy and I ran registration);
• March 2- 4, 2018, we all came together and ran the first WhimsyCon;
• April/May 2018, we had a contractor convert 2 storage rooms in the basement into a small bedroom for us to sleep in when we’re in Denver and use for storing our stuff when we’re in the Netherlands. The new room is Dutch sized so it’s great practice for us! 😀
• May 11 we finished moving out of the Master Bedroom (and a bunch of the living room) so someone else could take over that room and we moved into our little basement room.
• July 4 – 8, 2018 the Westercon 71/Myths and Legends Con 6 finally happened! Between loading all the con stuff into the hotel and then back out, we were there from Tuesday the 3rd to Monday the 9th;
• July 10th, 2018, I collapsed into a heap of a worn out person!

Now what?

The Westercon/MALCon combined convention has been the big thing taking up most of our time, but in the background we’ve been working on the international move. Now that Westercon/MALCon is over, it’s time to secure Dutch housing, assemble paperwork documents to take with us, wrap up the financial books on the convention, have our cat moved to a new home (temporary as it may be), and finish up all the other little details.

Before we get on the international plane, we’re going to GenCon first, which is a big gaming convention. It’s nowhere as chill as BGG.CON, but we’ll be working in the Exhibit Hall, which is exciting to us. We leave for Gen Con in 12 days, and then we come home on August 5th for a few days, leaving for the Netherlands in 22 days from now!

Now people keep asking if we’re all packed for the move. Not exactly, but this move for us means we’re each taking a back pack with our laptops (and international plug adapters), a couple weeks of clothing, couple of my favorite tea mugs, a few books, and a few boardgames. Everything else will be staying at the house in Colorado, along with roommates to keep an eye on it.

In preparing for the move we have a number of to do items. We have plane tickets (check) but will be doing paperwork once we get there.  We’ll be taking various pieces of info with us, like passports, marriage certificate, birth certificates, etc. I’ll be putting together the business plan, and I’ll be redoing this website to add the tour guide business that I plan on doing in the Netherlands. Also on my to do list: keeping this blog up to date. 😉

When we arrive in the Netherlands, we have a few things we’ll need to figure out. In our settling in, we’ll be learning how to buy groceries (ingredients in Dutch, asking questions of shopkeepers in Dutch), and how to cook in whatever accommodations we get; we’ll be doing the DAFT application, which includes a bit of paperwork and appointments. There are a lot of details (residence address, getting a national number, obtaining a Dutch bank account, and so on). I’ll need to figure out how to spread the word about my niche tours/tour guide business. And we will, I’m sure, spend some time learning the transit schedules (in general, also where to find info, how to get A to B), and buying bicycles. Billy is already looking up bicycle routes from one potential accommodation to the nearest grocery store. 🙂

A huge thanks…

…to everyone who has supported us in all of these endeavors over the last few years. It’s been crazy busy, so high fives and hugs to everyone for all the past work! Now it’s time to look forward to the next adventures, and I’ll be sure to keep you all up to date on how it’s all going!