#Fanboy expo 2021 how to#

When I do previews of cons, I try to get the message out that, “convention cancellations are a fact of life,” and they’re not signing their lives to you. It’s a shame when things like that happen. It hurt you when Ric Flair ended up dropping pretty close to the last minute. They weren’t packed, but it was a good amount of people. GNN: I’ve attended a lot of conventions and I’ve volunteered at a few, including two of your shows. So, it really has been a learning experience since then. When to do photo ops, I mean, we didn’t have photo ops or anything. For example, I didn’t know who would buy Saturday tickets versus who buy Sunday tickets. And it’s different now than it was even back then. One of the, “I didn’t expect that,” things was that I didn’t understand how people would come in and flow through the convention. That was one of the bright spots, and I would’ve gotten kicked in the teeth worse if it hadn’t been for him so. So, we became friends because we’re about the same age, and we’ve been friends ever since. And the deal that he had with the guy that he was with fell apart. He had done Lexington before us, and he was doing this one. It was Jason David Frank’s second convention. Some of them are shareable, some of them not.īut I’ll tell you a couple of the bright spots on that.

Anything you learned right out of the gate, like anything in particular from that first con?ĭH: There are several things I learned right out of the gate. GNN: You said your first con kicked you in the teeth. Before the pandemic, in Knoxville, we were running about twenty-five, thirty thousand people show at the show. Do you know what I mean? This year, we normally are spaced out pretty well, but we have four events in 79 days. I can’t even imagine trying to get dozens of celebrities, and, I mean, it’s got to be close to hundreds of vendors by this point, right?ĭH: Right. I mean, I organize small teams at work, and getting four or five people on a phone call or a meeting or in a room together is not an easy undertaking between schedules and the admin-type stuff. And I got absolutely kicked in the teeth because I had no idea what I was doing! (Laughs)

#Fanboy expo 2021 how to#

You know how to put one of these on, let’s do this.” And that was back in 2012. I knew the manager/promoter of it really well, and when that con kind of fell apart, I just said to him, I said, “I’ve got all the connections to the celebrities and so do you. And I set up at this show in Knoxville, Tennessee, called Adventure Con, and I always did really well in Knoxville, Tennessee. A nice size comic show back then was five to seven thousand people, and that was a good show.

And I used to travel and just set up at shows, and they weren’t how they are now.

So, I started moving over to more of the celebrities’ side of the autograph world. So, if you wanted to get Emmitt Smith, and you wanted to participate in the signing and get a hundred of those, you couldn’t do that anymore because they were promising a thousand to him or whatever. And I started becoming an autograph dealer and, again, mostly sports at that time.īut then the sports companies like Steiner and TRISTAR kind of started taking over the whole industry. I was actually an autograph hound back in the 90s, mostly sports, but some celebrity stuff. How did you get into the con game…actually, that doesn’t sound so good! How did you get to the convention game? That sounds a little better!ĭave Heynen (DH): Well, I actually had been an autograph dealer. I’d like to start by getting a little bit of your history and the history of Fanboy Expo. It was an interesting chat, for sure! There are links throughout the article that’ll take you to information about the Orlando Fanboy Expo, and other Fanboy Expos across the country. We chatted about what’s happening at the convention, how David got into the convention business, what it takes to run an event, and some of David’s more interesting guests and experiences. I got a chance to talk to David in advance of Fanboy Expo’s Orlando, Florida stop (August 20 to August 22). His goal is to create a smaller, more intimate experience where nerds, geeks, and fans of all things pop culture can hang out and interact with stars of television, movies, comics, wrestling, and more. While his events might not have the huge star power of San Diego Comic-Con, that’s not his goal. An Interview with Creator of Fanboy Expo, David Heynenĭavid Heynen started as an autograph collector, moved on to becoming an autograph dealer, and now runs a multi-city pop culture convention, Fanboy Expo, that caters to nerds young and old.