To address the elephant that’s been sitting in the room — and please understand that I say this with the utmost respect: there really is no secret party that we’re hosting this year.
Really.
But to back things up a bit:
Last year, Main Menu played host to one of the most successful parties in TwitchCon history: a 1300 Person Masquerade Party on the historic Queen Mary in Long Beach, California. Thanks to the literal dozens of sponsors, we were able to host this event cost-free so that all 1300+ guests could enjoy some good talks, fabulous drinks, and a purposeful lack of deafening music on that particular Friday night ♥
The purpose of these events have always been to create networking opportunities and meaningful chats between friends, colleagues, and industry members without the hustle and bustle of the convention floor standing in our way. But after 4 years of hosting these events, we wanted to experiment with how we accomplished that concept.
At PAX East, we went a little bit louder — and hosted a very quaint Karaoke mixer on a very chilly Saturday night in Boston. While it was great to see (and hear) some of our closest friends sing their hearts out all night, it was IMPOSSIBLE to find a venue that could hold more than even 150 people (when most of our PAX mixers sport 350+).
So, for PAX West, we went with a concept that we loved: the Main Menu Cafe. Some food, some drinks, and just a giant space for all of our friends to gather and chat. While the location was a little hard to find (who puts the lobby of a hotel on the 3rd floor?), this proof-of-concept event is something we want to continue in the future.
But come TwitchCon, we ran into some roadblocks. First, we knew TwitchCon would be our first event without our dedicated Event Coordinator handling the brunt of the work — and while we’ll be looking for a new coordinator for 2019, a majority of this work fell on me to handle. This was not foreign water as the Masquerade was a joint effort between Brandon and I, but definitely a lot more work than initially expected.
But the 3 main reasons we’re not having an event this TwitchCon are as follows:
1. Competition. Every large scale company is jumping on board to host an event of their own during TwitchCon — I mean, what better way to show you care about the community than hosting a kickass party at the convention where most of us will be at? We experienced this last year with 3 major companies all competing with our Masquerade (and one even had the audacity to host their own Masquerade?! THANKS GUYS haha)— it became an event overload no matter what day you planned something on (Except for Sunday — Which we should all communicate better about…).
Also remember that we’re still a broadcasting team — we’re not a major corporation with a budget — we’re just a group of like-minded content creators wanting to create meaningful opportunities and somehow pull it off event after event… But that leads into the next point:
2. Intent. TwitchCon is seen as the celebration — the end point for conventions for many of us (with BlizzCon just a week after). Networking and business-related discussions are less important as everyone just wants to let loose and have a good time. We realized this, which is why 2017 we aimed to host the biggest, most badass Masquerade we could — and we made it happen. But that leads us to the most important point…
3. Funding. When these Main Menu mixers started back in 2014, they were funded completely out-of-pocket. Our team members would contribute what they could so we could create networking opportunities for not only ourselves, but for our colleagues. Dozens of jobs, hundreds of sponsored streamers/events, and thousands of connections were made because of our mixers — and we’re so proud of that.
But something most people don’t realize is that not all of our mixers since 2014 have been fully sponsored — in fact, only 2 of them were. Which means the remaining 15 events still involved us paying out of pocket to make these opportunities happen. Every event was still partially sponsored, which made the cost much more manageable, but this was the first year where we ran into some serious financial roadblocks.
I’m not here to place the blame on anyone — and to those that jumped in at the last second to save our bacon, I genuinely thank you ♥ But this event — TwitchCon 2018 — Was the first event where all of our planned sponsors had backed out in the recent weeks, leaving us with the decision of “Do we take the risk and hope someone hops on board in the final 2 weeks? Or do we bite the bullet and take TwitchCon 2018 off this year?”
We opted for the latter.
There are so many great activities and events happening this TwitchCon 2018 and we’re genuinely excited to attend as many of them as we can — heck, we even know of some of our broadcasting colleagues that are hosting their own events this year and we couldn’t be more proud ♥ I hope their events go as swimmingly as possible (and — in all honesty — if you need any help, feel free to reach out ♥) but it’ll be nice for our broadcasting team to finally take a convention off to enjoy with our communities.
“But what about 2019, Kasper? Are you stopping Main Menu Mixers entirely?”
The short answer is: Of course not! As long as there’s a desire to attend our networking mixers, we will do our best to make them happen — and if any potential sponsors are reading this post, PLEASE feel free to reach out for stats/metrics/quotes/etc.
As we move into 2019, we will be hiring a new Event Coordinator to take over primary planning duties and be looking towards PAX East, West, TwitchCon, and possibly even E3 as our 4 main networking events.
But as for TwitchCon 2018? Let’s grab a beer or a bite — I cannot wait to see all of your faces there ♥
