User:ConnectiCon/sandbox

ConnectiCon is a fan-organized, 3-day, multi-genre convention focusing on board games, card games, tabletop and live action RPG's, collectible card games, miniature war gaming (historical, sci-fi, and fantasy), console games, online humor sites, animation, comics, science fiction, fantasy and related genres.

Since inception in 2003, ConnectiCon has grown from having 800 members to nearly 6,000 members in 2008. 

History
ConnectiCon began as a bit of a pipedream in 2001 after the University of Hartford Science Fiction & Fantasy Guild (The Guild) members attended I-Con at SUNY Stonybrook. Some of The Guild's members Mathew Daigle, Matthew Weber, Jeffrey Sylvan, Paul Gilbert felt that the University of Hartford should host a similar convention during the summer, initially The Guild attempted to work with the local gaming convention, RuneCon, organized by the owners of War & Pieces in West Hartford, CT to move their event to the college campus and co-host the event, negotiations failed and the idea of a convention at the University of Hartford was tabled.

After attending Otakon in the summer of 2002, Origins 1997[], I-Con 2001 and 2002[], it was Otakon, and the historical information relating to Otakon that led Mathew Daigle to believe that the University would be an ideal location to start a convention, especially with an option to move the event to the Connecticut Convention Center (once construction was complete), if the event outgrew the space available at the University of Hartford campus. For his senior project in the Spring of 2003, he developed a business plan to create ConnectiCon, and actively pursued the organization and promotion of the event scheduled for July 2003. Mathew recruited Briana Benn, Matthew Weber, Jeff Sylvan and Paul Gilbert to help organize the first ConnectiCon.

To promote ConnectiCon, the original staff attended other conventions in the region that had similar fan bases, in the hopes that those fans might attend ConnectiCon, Mathew Daigle attended AnimeBoston 2003, an historic anime convention with record attendance. It was at AnimeBoston 2003 that the direction and scope of ConnectiCon truly began to take shape. While promoting the convention from the Artist's Alley at AnimeBoston, convention organizers met Michael "Mookie" Terraciano (creator of the online comic Dominic Deegan) and Tim Buckley (creator of the online comic Ctrl-Alt-Del). It was in those early days that the organizers of ConnectiCon felt that the focus of the convention should be on providing the creators of online comics their own venue to meet and interact with their fans, and the fans of the genres that their comics represent.