The tragedy of
The Bruce Festival.

Last year Tangential Vision co-founded and produced an ambitious public event.  Mary and I organized and directed the volunteer base, generated large amounts of public art installation content, researched and packaged great sums of historical information.  We located talent from other towns, and lined up professional services.  We sacrificed our health and economic well-being.  We put our business itself on the line to make this event happen.  We did it to help a client and friend with a problem.

Mary and I finally achieved our dream of creating a large event together, and we created the root of something which had the potential to grow to become a great long-term event.  The plans we had for it to expand and grow would have turned it into a one-of-a-kind unique experience for the audience.

Event management is how Mary and I met.  We were very excited to have an organic client relationship with a wealthy patron who would enable us to create a convention together.  It was the perfect setup for a long-term arrangement.

OUR HISTORY

I’m going to take a moment to talk about our history with conventioneering and how Mary and I met.

Mary and I met at a convention.  We were both involved in helping to organize and promote this show, the Denver ComicFest.  That show had existed for nearly fifty years at that point, and several of the showrunners were personal friends of mine.  It was enormous, taking over two entire hotels in Denver’s wealthy Tech Center.

During that event, Mary was marketing a newer convention north of Denver called the Fort Collins Comic Con.  It was larger than the Bonner County Fair.  She was the primary organizer and panel content coordinator for this show, and became a part of marketing under these circumstances.  One of the other main organizers, the vendor coordinator of the event, credited her publicly with doing a lion’s share of work, as she ran not only the panels but helped in many other areas leading up to and during the event (he would later be my best man at our wedding). The owners also publically acknowledged her contribution to the event.

Public credit for talent is not only common, but also expected.  This is just normal professional courtesy, people don’t generally need to ask for attribution, it is just given.