I made my way down to Calgary this weekend for the Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo. It’s much bigger this year as the con is now a two-day event, with extended programing and dozens of guests. Pretty good for a con that only started two years ago. I talked briefly with Events Coordinator Kandrix Foong.

“Going into our third year, we’re expecting a massive jump in attendance again this year. I believe our success is due to two main things. The first, is that there’s nothing like this event in Western Canada. The second, is our extensive guest list! We’ve got 75+ guests from all over coming into the event, and a few of them rarely make appearances,” said Foong.

“There’s a lot of new stuff this year at the Expo. For starters, we’re expanding to two-days, which will be an adventure in itself! We’ve got our 2008 exclusive artbook featuring contributions from 39 artists. There’s a charity auction, a photo-op session with our media guests, and expanded programming.”

I made the three hour trek from Edmonton last year to attend this con. I asked Kendrix about the convention’s attendance over the years. “In our first year, our out of town attendees was very limited. It was primarily driving distance, so Edmonton would pretty much be the furthest away. This year, I know that we’ve got a fan flying in all the way from Italy to meet Michael Rosenbaum!”

And I had to ask about CCEE’s gorgeous cowgirl logo.

“She was designed by artist Alberto Ruiz, we’ve named her ‘Alberta’, so it’s kinda like tribute to 2 things at the same time!”

I’ll be floating around the con over the next couple of days taking pictures making sure I get in on some Jo Chen (my idol!) and George Takai goodness. If you figure out who I am, make sure to say “hi!”

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 26th, 2008 at 3:20 pm and is filed under Conventions, Creators, News & Views, Pop Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.