Cons Need to Look Outwards Too.

This morning I went down to Collector’s Con here in Eau Claire. It’s a fun little con, and I stopped by last year too. I thought about selling there (since I’m at, like, literally every other con in town) but a week after Evercon was just too much to plan for.

I’ve done two cons in a row before, and it almost burnt me out. I need at least a weekend off between.

This is convention season though, and events are packed tightly together. Maybe too tightly together. Because, as I literally just said, I was at Evercon in Wausau last weekend. That same weekend I had friends at Anime Milwaukee. Oh, and I also had friends at MarsCon (the Minnesota one). The region had a long running Gaming Con, Anime Con, and Scifi Con happening simultaneously.

And here’s the thing — those are all cons I would go to… and that I’d want to sell at. I mean, sure, AMKE has a highly competitive artist alley and my odds of getting in there are nil, but it’d be nice to, like, have a shot, y’know? And I’m trying to get into scifi cons, but there just aren’t that many anymore. With all three on the same weekend, I had to make a choice.

There was a point in time where con organizers went out of there way to make sure they didn’t conflict with other events. Hell, we used to worry about being a few weeks away from another con. When events ended up on the same weekend, it was an anomaly. Now? Well, let’s just say these three cons will all be on the same weekend next year too.

It’s just… it’s just frustrating.

Like all three of these events have organizers who I am sure care deeply about the community they serve. Like I genuinely want all of these cons to succeed, but I feel like they’re not thinking about the other cons in the region. Like the stronger the entire scene is, the stronger they become. When the Wisconsin con scene was at its strongest a decade ago, it was because all of the events were working together.

I just really hope 2028 won’t see this pattern repeat. Because, y’know, I’d like to go to MarsCon or AMKE again some day.

But maybe that’s just me.

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