US Fans: GMX convention in Nashville, Oct 2 - 4

[Grant Goggans]

I know we don't have very many active boarders in the Southeast (seems to be... one, anyway), but if you're out there lurking or you feel like a vacation to one of the country's great cities, I've been asked to be a panelist at the first-ever Geek Media Expo in Nashville, Tennessee the first weekend of October.  The con's being put on by the same gang who've been running Middle Tennessee Anime Convention for the last ten years or so, and they've asked me to take a side - which one, I'm not sure yet - in a debate called <em>Alan Moore vs Grant Morrison</em>, and host a presentation about the history of 2000 AD and British comics, meaning I need to put a PowerPoint together sometime soon.  And I'm sitting in on a talk about classic Doctor Who called <em>Anatomy of a Time Lord</em>, apparently.

http://www.mtac.net/gmx/

Hope you can come on out to the con!

[IAMTHESYSTEM]

Hello to our American cousins. Good luck in your orgy of geekdom.

[Grant Goggans]

I wanted to let the board know how this went...

I did a panel called, alternately, "British Comics" and "The Future is Zarjaz."  The con was pretty successful for a first-year show, with about 500 in attendance.  I had about twenty people for my presentation.  At the time, I thought the other two that I did, with co-presenters, came off better, but that my own was a little lackluster.

I made a PowerPoint, and I thought I completely botched it.  I had about 20 screens to roughly chart the history of weeklies from Eagle through Valiant through the girls' comics, BPW, Action and finally 2000 AD, and then just a bunch of screens with random images which were meant - NEVER DO THIS - to be playing while I just talked about 2000 AD.  In practice, of course, as a presenter, you're drawn to the visuals, so I kept getting distracted, and talking about what was on the screen.

However, I'm glad to say that it seemed to go over pretty well!  I brought doubles from my own collection hoping to give one to everybody who showed up, along with extra copies of Strontium Dog: The Early Cases and Titan's old Ro-Busters Book 2 to give away as trivia prizes.  They went over very well, and some people have said that mine was best panel of the weekend!  I got a nice comment at Examiner.com's review of the show, and somebody started a thread at the MTAC/GMX forum to say mine was their favorite.

I'm hoping that I get invited back to do it again next year, and to do it better.  I've got several ideas about making the PowerPoint more expansive and actually complementing my presentation correctly.  Getting current progs and GNs for the door prizes would be nice, too.  And hopefully, retailers in Nashville and Murfreesboro are getting some requests for the Galaxy's Greatest (and Titan's Charley's War, which I talked up a lot too) this week.