Today we’d like to introduce you to Jessica Merriman.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
Anime O-Tekku, Georgia Tech’s anime club, toyed with the idea of a campus-based convention for years. In 2004, this idea was brought to fruition. A club officer and an alumnus from O-Tekku, along with a tiny dedicated crew of dedicated staff started putting on events that eventually grew into a full convention. Even now, Georgia Tech alumni still comprise a good portion of the volunteer staff. These volunteers worked tireless to bring the first MomoCon to the public in 2005; they were greeted by 700+ eager attendees. In the years that followed, the volunteer staff brought forth new ideas and introduced new guests to the convention scene. Each year they strived to make each event better than the last.
I, myself, was the leader of the group for the first events and initial MomoCon, and since it has grown to 4 days, 42,000+ attendees, and is now housed at the largest building of the Georgia World Congress Center downtown!
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
MomoCon was fortunate enough to find great reception in the southeast fan communities growing over 50% for several years. Reaching over 10,000 attendees in 2011, MomoCon was listed as the 10th largest anime convention in North America by AnimeCons.com. Due to rising venue costs and the growth outpacing the limited income received, leadership was forced to no longer offer MomoCon as a free event.
Recreating MomoCon as a paid convention in 2012 provided the opportunity to do things never capable of before: adding a third (and fourth!) day of the convention, bringing in stellar celebrities from several fandoms, expanding events to include more aspects (such as a rave and martial arts programming), and moving to downtown Atlanta in gorgeous hotels and ultimately in a large enough venue to contain the entire event – the Georgia World Congress Center (GWCC) is one of the largest convention centers in the United States. Previous MomoCons were spread across several buildings on Georgia Tech’s campus.
Challenges with moving venues, managing attendee expectations, balancing budgets, and providing the best experience have followed us throughout the years.
As you know, we’re big fans of MomoCon. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
MomoCon is known as inviting and inclusive as an event and is a more diverse event (both in the scope of interests and makeup of attendees from all walks of life, ages, demographics, and more) than even other conventions in the fandom space.
We’d love to hear about how you think about risk taking?
Every event we produce is a large risk. Will people attend? Will we provide a good experience to drive word-of-mouth growth? Can we manage the crowds, programming, performers, etc.? Having only one event to iterate on every year makes it very challenging, so we attempt to put as many new aspects into a given year to test as possible; sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t. But there’s not a better way to innovate than to try.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.momocon.com
Image Credits:
Images from the MomoCon Volunteer Photography team including Jaime Munoz, Whitney Conley, Adam Krveoski, Sage Shirley, and Lavantai Wynn
