Our Kickstarter campaign for TsunamiCon 2024 is up and running, so it’s time to get serious about our fun and games.
TsunamiCon has always been a grass-roots, community-supported event. We’ve managed to keep it afloat for 10 years with sponsorships, contributions from the community, pre-sales via Kickstarter and other outlets, and the love and support of our fellow gamers helping us to spread the word and bring more folks to the table. My organization has never made a dime off of this event, and we haven’t the working the capital to support it any other way. Any additional funds are invariably rolled right back into the event to make it bigger, better, and more entertaining.
As always, this year brings us some new challenges. First, we’ve been obliged to move further into the year, placing us in a difficult position just after Thanksgiving and at the threshold of the holiday season. This will make our con a destination for holiday shopping for geeks and gamers this year, but may play havoc with availability amidst our regulars – particularly those who travel to Wichita for the event. It is important that we bring in new gamers, so spreading the word is more important than ever.
Second, we’ve had to change hotels. Again. This is largely a financial decision, but also influenced our scheduling options. The Broadview is a beautiful hotel with a nice ballroom, which turned out to be more than we needed during the one prior event at this location in 2022 (just back from the Pandemic, when attendee numbers were very low). We’ve taken a stab at redesigning the space to better accommodate vendors and gamers, and I’m optimistic, but if I could afford to pick up additional space I would. I might put together a poll to help us determine how best we would use that space, as well.
Costs are still high, but I was happy that I could set our Kickstarter goal a little lower this year. If we can bring in $7500, I am confident that our basic costs will be covered. In the days ahead, we’ll be highlighting some of the rewards and perks we have available on our Kickstarter page, with more to come if we can beat our funding goal and start working on stretch goals. Help us get the funds together now, and we’ll do everything in our power to provide you a first-class game con experience for the holdays.
Huzzah!!