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HPLD Nerd Con 2018

So, this past weekend, on Sat 6/16/18, @lechevaliermalfet attended the HPLD Nerd Con in Havana, IL. It’s a free, small-scale con hosted by the Havana Public Library District. We heard about it through Facebook, thanks to La Vie Cosplay’s facebook posts and decided, “why not?” Havana isn’t too far from home, really. We had fun, got some free stuff, and @lechevaliermalfet won a door prize, too! It’s a great event for first-timers, younger con-goers, or those who want a relaxed atmosphere. Click that “Keep Reading” link if you are curious and wanna know more.

Since I found myself getting scattered as I wrote this, I’m putting little headlines over each relevant portion of this review.

Size

I want to be up front and clear that when I say this is small-scale, I do mean it. Everything happened in one room in a Havana Park District facility. I stood on one wall and took the following three photos, which show the size of the room pretty well (I hope).

As you can see, they had a decent number of vendors for the size, some gaming, a panel area, and crafting / reading to kill time. Board games were also available for check-out from the registration table. Honestly, I thought the space was really used pretty well. I think I only noticed one issue from it. It wasn’t a deal-breaker for me, but it definitely was something that I think could be improved for next year.

The panel/Q&A area should be partitioned off from the rest of the room.

That’s it. See, the panel area are those chairs off to the right in that final photo. It isn’t a big area, and panelists did have microphones. BUT, sometimes the wall of sound from the rest of the room would overwhelm the sound of one voice coming through a mic. @lechevaliermalfet and I theorized that maybe some temporary partitions would help with the noise. Panels Speaking of panels, I admittedly only took one photo (I know, shame on me!).

There were 3 panels on that schedule, but I would argue that the General Cosplay Q & A that La Vie Cosplay held was actually a 4th panel. As such, I think it would have been nicer to have it running in its own time slot, instead of concurrent with the Robotics panel. I think it would have created a nice line-up too, with 2 cosplay panels and 2 non-cosplay panels alternating through the day. But that’s my opinion and I’m also selfish, because I love learning more about both cosplay and robots.

We attended two of the three panels: the Robots panel, which was interesting but ran very short, and a panel on wigs for cosplay that La Vie Cosplay presented. Both were definitely interesting.

Merch

Besides panels, there were obviously talented dealers to look at and potentially buy from. We did walk away with some stuff, too:

Honestly, I hadn’t even expected to see much I wanted to buy, let alone walk away with what we did (along with a small thing each for @someoldmemory and @el-draco-bizarro)

Giveaways (Scavenger Hunt, Swag Bag, Raffles)

If you still had time to kill (and we did), the con was running a nerdy scavenger hunt. I’ve got a photo of my card below. Please excuse the crappy quality - I took some of these photos after the con, once I was at home, when I realized I wanted to document some of this.

The scavenger hunt didn’t take @lechevaliermalfet and I long: I think for each of us, it was under 10 minutes. But it wasn’t really aimed at us, you know? I think younger con goers probably got more of a kick out of it. What entertained me was seeing where the images were placed - I saw a few of them before I even actually made the connection with the scavenger hunt.

Once you completed it, you could draw a prize from the giveaway table (that’s why there are 2 little aliens in that photo - we got them as prizes).

They were well stocked! And if you take note of that Slytherin printout, you’ll see the ‘L’ was bolded - that was one of the clue cards for the scavenger hunt!

I loved that giveaway table. You see, you could choose one free item whether you won a thing or not. Just because you were attending the con!

For a first con, especially to a kid who may not have money to spend on dealers, the idea of getting a free item from the table (and more, if you won the scavenger hunt or an hourly raffle) is pretty cool. I mean, I’m 32 and my inner 8-year-old was going nuts.

Actually when we registered, we got a little swag bag with our badge:

Again, I had expected to walk away from this con empty-handed or maybe with a print, at best. So getting a swag bag when i walked in the door was a win for me!

The con also ran raffles every hour. @lechevaliermalfet won one of the first drawings and got to choose from the small handful of 18+ prizes.

I also walked away with a comic, though I don’t think mine was quite as epic. Still, it turned out to be an interesting read anyway.

Cosplay

I did show up as Twilight Sparkle. And yes, my Spike was with me, though he was in my bag (which wasn’t with me) when I took this photo.

There were other cosplayers - the event page on Facebook has a nice group photo. But since many were (or at least appeared) to be under 18, and because of the relaxed atmosphere, I wasn’t running around snapping photos like I might have at a larger con.

There was a cosplay contest scheduled at the end of the day, but we opted to skip it.

Badges

The badge was a little big, but I like it. Assuming I ever get around to putting badges in an album, I’m not sure this one will fit. I also noticed they didn’t date the badge, which means they can probably re-use any leftovers for next year.

The lanyard is some cut-up Spiderman-patterned cloth. I love the simplicity of it, and it’s still so much cooler than a generic cord lanyard.

Pokemon Go

This was the same day as the Tyranitar Community Day. But given where I was, I only managed to get one Tyranitar, since I only lured in a handful of Larvitars with incense. Tbh, if I hadn’t had a crapton of candy, I wouldn’t have even gotten my one. Also, Central IL was under a Heat Advisory, so I really wasn’t inclined to leave the building to go walk around - or at least lounge on the nearby playground while waiting for Pokemon to show.

The experience as a whole

It was fun. It was relaxed. It’s definitely not aimed at me, and that’s perfectly okay, because it was still done well enough to be enjoyed by all. This is perfect for kids dipping their toes into the convention waters or for parents who want to know what the fuss is about. It’s a great introduction to the con atmosphere and community.

Would I do it again? Maybe. For me, driving just under an hour to kill three to four hours is definitely something I’d consider. I don’t know that I would recommend it to anyone who’s got farther to go, unless they’re stopping by while en route somewhere.

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