Knox, TN Chattacon Report

Howdy! I thought you might be interested in hearing about my trip to Chattacon. This is a little piddly-#ss con, a 'literary con' with NO celebrity guests whatsoever. Unless of course you count authors & artists as celebrities (I don't).

They had a TEENY dealer's room (the only thing I bought was a Dragon Con magnet, now THERE'S a con for ya!).

There were a couple of mildly interesting panels, the authors bragged about their books (big whoop, so ya wrote a book) & the local fans talked about sci-fi tv shows. Yawn.

The masquerade was small but fun, with live music by the 'Molly McQuires.' The costumes were for the most part, unexceptional.

The room parties were good & the hospitality suite was fun, the place was packed on Saturday night. Free snacks & drinks, yum!

We watched several fan-films, most of which were pretty bad. The only exceptions were 'Pink Five' & 'Ryan vs Dorkman.'

At the end of the con, they held a panel where con officials asked how they could improve the con. They wanted to know how they could get more young people to attend. I suggested they book celebrity guests. They didn't care for my suggestion. One of 'em said, 'We'll have to raise the admission price if we book celebs!' Another guy stuck his nose in the air & said, 'We're a literary con, that's not what we're about.' Well, la-de-DAH! Pardon me all to h#ll.

It's nice to have a con to go to in January, I just wish it was a better con than this one.

 

What's up, everyone? Being from Chattanooga myself, I (and several others) had those very same thoughts when it came to what a "CON" should be like. With that said, we decided to put our money where our mouth is. Thus... ConNooga is born. This is totally seperate from the other Cons in Chattanooga (which are all run by the same people). Also, this is not a FanForce thing. Although we want all the fan groups to be involved, we have a small group of investors that will make sure this isn't just "more of the same".

The dates for ConNooga will be February 22-24, 2008. We're looking at a couple of different places right now, but we still have some negotiating to do before we settle. Our idea is to bring in the celebs. Have panels that people want to go to. Offer workshops to where you can learn something. Bring in musical entertainment. Have an actual Masquerade that goes beyond being just a "costume contest". We also want this to be a con where there's something to do for everyone. Not everyone that goes to a con drinks, so why should those that don't have to pay for the ones that do? We're looking into lots of different things, but if you have ANY suggestions, please let us know. We've created a forum where we can bounce around ideas with everyone as we want this to be a Con that the fans want.

I'm not going to badmouth Chattacon, as it has its place. I just think that Chattanooga needs more than just a beerfest party-con. ConNooga will be that con.

 

Fascinating! I certainly hope ConNooga turns out to be everything you envision. Good luck!!

 

Loads to do! Even though it's a year away, we're working on lots 'o stuff. Check out the site for what we have so far... and that's just the beginning! Also, we have a forum set up to where we can bounce ideas around.

If you guys want to set up a fan table, let me know. We'd love to see everyone from the Knoxville area make it down next February! We'll be up there for sure in June for AdCon.

 

I'd love to be able to have a booth there next year. We need to get more interest in this group though. It's been stagnant for too long.

 

Yeah, Knoxville's a great place and we always have fun when we make it up that way. A couple of us were at Triad Comics last Saturday for Free Comic Book Day. AdventureCon's coming up soon. Will you guys have a table there this year? It's be a great place to recruit. Heck, we had a table there last year and had a blast. No new recruits from that, but we knew we were out of our area. It was just a good place to have a "base". Anyway, hope to see some of you in June at AdCon!