March 26-28, 2010

I-Con returned to Stony Brook University’s campus this year for its 29th convention. This was the first time attending this event for me. By public transportation, it should have been about two hours outside of New York City.  Two hours, that is, unless you miss a train and have to wait for the next one.

When I arrived on location at mid-afternoon most people were already there and were indoors because of the cold weather.  The con layout included multiple buildings spread throughout the Stony Brook campus.   Everything took a bit of walking to get to, so quite a bit of time was taken just going between buildings.

The rest of the team couldn’t make it for panel coverage, so I was only able to get photo coverage of this event for Saturday.  As far as cosplay went, I-Con was a mix of fandoms. You can catch all of that in the photo gallery.

The only event I attended was the Cosplay Competition, which was filled to capacity.  It was somewhat disorganized in the beginning.  It was a mix of skits and just costume modeling so the crowd was confused when groups simply walked up, did a few poses and walked off instead of performing.   But they had Michele Knotz and Bill Rogers help host the show keeping the crowd upbeat.

After all the competition skits were presented, they had some exhibition skits and put on all the AMVs to kill time.  Unfortunately the AMVs ran so long that I was unable to stay to see all the cosplay competition winners.  Having missed the train in the morning made me anxious to check the  schedule that evening.   Seeing it was every two hours  it was a mad dash for the 10 p.m. train along with a group of attendees.

I-Con was overall a good convention. Being a multi-fandom convention allows all of the local Long Island residents a chance to get together in one large convention rather than try multiple niche groups meetings.  If you’ve never been to I-Con there’s always I-Con 30 next year.