PAX Your Bags, Nerds
For the first five years I lived in Seattle, I avoided PAX like the plague - I mostly viewed it as a massive nerd-boy orgy with a spattering of uncomfortably ogled nerd-girls trying to somehow intermingle awkwardly. But, three years ago that all changed when I met a few good folks from LoadingReadyRun -- a Canadian based online sketch comedy troupe down in Seattle for the Penny Arcade's yearly charity auction. I figured, hey, I'll give it a shot, and now the 3-Day gaming bonanza that is The Penny Arcade Expo takes over my life in strange and awesome ways.
The expo itself takes place primarily at the Convention Center downtown, but also makes use of some of the surrounding auditorium spaces for the larger guest-speakers/panels that run throughout the day. Everything from pen-and-paper gaming to sneak preview console games can be found littered about the designated spaces. There is a well planned out schedule of events that span the 3-days and panels cover topics like girls and gaming, making an online comic, and breaking into the industry. Over 70,000 gamers of various interests and backgrounds from all over the world turn out for PAX every year to see what's new in games and to meet old friends and make new ones.
Some of the highlights of PAX 2011 will be this year's keynote speaker David Jaffe creator of God of War, the infamous Gabe and Tycho of Penny Arcade, and the PAX 10, a showcase for independent games. This year, I look forward to seeing how the convention remedies last year's problem of having too many events spread out too far across the city. The "main stage" was way over at Benaroya Hall and caused me and many others to divide our attention and time between standing in long lines across town our stating at the Convention Center and skipping out on some amazing speakers. This year the keynote address and other larger panels will be held at the Paramount, thus hopefully remedying some of last years' issues. But, with over 70,000 people in attendance, I fear the issue of lengthy and sweaty lines will remain.
If you're going to be there with your smartphone (see that, I made a funny), be sure to come prepared with various PAX apps and follow all the PAX related twitter feeds to get updates on lines, what's happening when, layout of the Convention Center, etc. These are all great resources, that is, if your iPhone or Android can even manage to penetrate the network soup that this saturation of geeks creates.
