I've copped a fair bit of stick over the years for my love of all things related to Harry Potter. But this was nothing compared with the outright sniggers that met my declaration that during my year off work I would travel to Orlando Florida to spend 5 days at a Harry Potter fan conference.
"Do you have to dress up?"
"Aren't you a bit old to like Harry Potter?"
"Won't it just be a big gathering of nerds?"
My answers to these questions from my friends were:
"Not unless you want to"
"Absolutely not" and
"Of course! But what's wrong with that?"
The subtext of the third question is something that has interested me for quite a while. The idea that any "normal" person would not want to associate themselves with an activity that is considered to be "nerdy" is a popular one in our culture. To those who like to think of themselves as too cool to be called a nerd, I'd like to share author (and Vlogbrother) John Green's ideas on the matter. He said that, essentially, to be a nerd is just to be really, really openly enthusiastic about something.
When you think of "nerd" as a synonym for "enthusiast" it seems like most people are a nerd of some variety or another. And thank goodness they are, because what a mind numbingly boring existence it would be if there was no enthusiasm in the world. I know people who are music nerds, theatre nerds, computer nerds (geeks), Australian poetry nerds, vintage car nerds, craft nerds, rock climbing nerds, film nerds, scrapbooking nerds, political nerds, surfing nerds, gardening nerds, rugby league nerds, photography nerds and (of course!) book nerds.
So what was this crazy Harry Potter conference called Leaky Con anyway?
When I said I was going to attend a Harry Potter conference, many people wondered why it wasn't in the UK. The simple fact is that no other country in the world can match the USA for boundless enthusiasm. Before Leaky Con 2011, there had already been 10 Harry Potter conferences in the USA dating back to Nimbus in 2003.
In 2009 my favourite Harry Potter fan website, 'The Leaky Cauldron', decided to run its own conference in Boston. I have been listening to the weekly podcasts from the Leaky Cauldron, appropriately named Pottercast, since 2008. I desperately wanted to go - but no money and the fact that I'd just started a new job kept me from attending. After seeing videos online and listening to podcasts about the first Leaky Con, I was devastated. It sounded like an amazing celebration and I really felt I had missed the best Harry Potter conference that had ever been run. Then a miracle occurred....
The Leaky Cauldron announced that it would be running another fan conference in 2011. Leaky Con 2011 would be held right next door to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter theme park in Orlando and it would be held on the weekend that the final film was coming out. It was like the stars had aligned. I didn't know where I would be traveling during the rest of 2011, but from 2009 I knew that I would spend the middle of July 2011 in Florida.
Since they announced Leaky Con 2011, the organisers had been slowly releasing more and more details about the conference. My excitement was growing exponentially with each new detail. Every great wizard rock band was going to be performing, the Potter Puppet Pals were going to be there, Team Starkid were going to be there, The vlogbrothers were going to be there, John Granger was going to be lecturing, there would be a special Pottermore presentation AND.... Just when it couldn't get any better for a book nerd..... The organisers announced that on the day before Leaky Con started they would be running a young adult fiction literary festival called Lit Day!!!!
As I hopped into a minibus that would take me from Orlando airport to the Royal Pacific Resort on Tuesday the 12th of July, I was quite nervous. In some ways two years of build up was too much. I decided that Leaky Con couldn't possible live up to my expectations and was just talking myself into trying to enjoy whatever the week held instore for me when I saw them. Two young women were boarding the minibus and they were wearing T-shirts that said 'Dumbledore's Army'.
"Um... Are you guys going to Leaky Con?" I asked
"YES! ARE YOU?"
Then others joined in our excited conversation and we soon realised that 10 of the 12 people on the bus were in Orlando just for Leaky Con. Within seconds we were all yabbering away about what we were most looking forward to, our favourite podcasts, our fears for how they would butcher the last movie and when we saw Hogwarts Castle in the distance... all hell broke loose. It was then that my worries melted away and I began to suspect that Leaky Con may just meet my expectations after all.
There were some ticketing issues at the start of Lit Day but the long queues gave me time to meet more Harry Potter fans, so I wasn't all that worried. I'd always rather suspected that it wasn't possible to be a serious fan of the Harry Potter books and not be a good person - and every single person I chatted to in those lines confirmed my theory. There were teenagers attending with parent chaperones, many college students, a lot of people in their twenties and some older fans such as myself. I know it sounds like a cliche but at Leaky Con age, looks, nationality - none of it mattered in the face of a shared devotion to all things Potter. Leaky Con was my Mecca.
I love a literature festival (surprise!) and Lit Day was exceptional. Wonderful, hilarious authors talking about characterisation, plotting as well as the ins and outs of the editing and publishing process. In one of the panel discussions the authors were discussing their favourite novels and as they mentioned titles such as The Great Gatsby, The Catcher in the Rye and Pride and Prejudice the thousand or so people in the audience cheered loudly for their own favourite title. It was a bit like Superbowl for book nerds.
Early on Lit Day I had the very good fortune of sitting down next to a lovely Potter fan from Scotland. Sarah and I had both travelled great distances on our own to attend and soon realised that we had much in common. The highlight of Lit Day for me, apart from meeting the wonderful Sarah, was attending a discussion called "I was a teenage author". In this panel authors such as John Green, Stephanie Perkins and David Levithan read out some of their own teenage writing....and it was more hilarious than any stand up comedy performance I have ever attended.
Lit Day ended with a keynote speech from Arthur Levine, the american publisher of the Harry Potter novels at Scholastic, and then a cocktail party where I got to discuss plotting and character development with David Levithan! I was in total nerd nirvana and Leaky Con had not even officially started yet.
"Do you have to dress up?"
"Aren't you a bit old to like Harry Potter?"
"Won't it just be a big gathering of nerds?"
My answers to these questions from my friends were:
"Not unless you want to"
"Absolutely not" and
"Of course! But what's wrong with that?"
The subtext of the third question is something that has interested me for quite a while. The idea that any "normal" person would not want to associate themselves with an activity that is considered to be "nerdy" is a popular one in our culture. To those who like to think of themselves as too cool to be called a nerd, I'd like to share author (and Vlogbrother) John Green's ideas on the matter. He said that, essentially, to be a nerd is just to be really, really openly enthusiastic about something.
When you think of "nerd" as a synonym for "enthusiast" it seems like most people are a nerd of some variety or another. And thank goodness they are, because what a mind numbingly boring existence it would be if there was no enthusiasm in the world. I know people who are music nerds, theatre nerds, computer nerds (geeks), Australian poetry nerds, vintage car nerds, craft nerds, rock climbing nerds, film nerds, scrapbooking nerds, political nerds, surfing nerds, gardening nerds, rugby league nerds, photography nerds and (of course!) book nerds.
So what was this crazy Harry Potter conference called Leaky Con anyway?
When I said I was going to attend a Harry Potter conference, many people wondered why it wasn't in the UK. The simple fact is that no other country in the world can match the USA for boundless enthusiasm. Before Leaky Con 2011, there had already been 10 Harry Potter conferences in the USA dating back to Nimbus in 2003.
In 2009 my favourite Harry Potter fan website, 'The Leaky Cauldron', decided to run its own conference in Boston. I have been listening to the weekly podcasts from the Leaky Cauldron, appropriately named Pottercast, since 2008. I desperately wanted to go - but no money and the fact that I'd just started a new job kept me from attending. After seeing videos online and listening to podcasts about the first Leaky Con, I was devastated. It sounded like an amazing celebration and I really felt I had missed the best Harry Potter conference that had ever been run. Then a miracle occurred....
The Leaky Cauldron announced that it would be running another fan conference in 2011. Leaky Con 2011 would be held right next door to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter theme park in Orlando and it would be held on the weekend that the final film was coming out. It was like the stars had aligned. I didn't know where I would be traveling during the rest of 2011, but from 2009 I knew that I would spend the middle of July 2011 in Florida.
Since they announced Leaky Con 2011, the organisers had been slowly releasing more and more details about the conference. My excitement was growing exponentially with each new detail. Every great wizard rock band was going to be performing, the Potter Puppet Pals were going to be there, Team Starkid were going to be there, The vlogbrothers were going to be there, John Granger was going to be lecturing, there would be a special Pottermore presentation AND.... Just when it couldn't get any better for a book nerd..... The organisers announced that on the day before Leaky Con started they would be running a young adult fiction literary festival called Lit Day!!!!
As I hopped into a minibus that would take me from Orlando airport to the Royal Pacific Resort on Tuesday the 12th of July, I was quite nervous. In some ways two years of build up was too much. I decided that Leaky Con couldn't possible live up to my expectations and was just talking myself into trying to enjoy whatever the week held instore for me when I saw them. Two young women were boarding the minibus and they were wearing T-shirts that said 'Dumbledore's Army'.
"Um... Are you guys going to Leaky Con?" I asked
"YES! ARE YOU?"
Then others joined in our excited conversation and we soon realised that 10 of the 12 people on the bus were in Orlando just for Leaky Con. Within seconds we were all yabbering away about what we were most looking forward to, our favourite podcasts, our fears for how they would butcher the last movie and when we saw Hogwarts Castle in the distance... all hell broke loose. It was then that my worries melted away and I began to suspect that Leaky Con may just meet my expectations after all.
There were some ticketing issues at the start of Lit Day but the long queues gave me time to meet more Harry Potter fans, so I wasn't all that worried. I'd always rather suspected that it wasn't possible to be a serious fan of the Harry Potter books and not be a good person - and every single person I chatted to in those lines confirmed my theory. There were teenagers attending with parent chaperones, many college students, a lot of people in their twenties and some older fans such as myself. I know it sounds like a cliche but at Leaky Con age, looks, nationality - none of it mattered in the face of a shared devotion to all things Potter. Leaky Con was my Mecca.
I love a literature festival (surprise!) and Lit Day was exceptional. Wonderful, hilarious authors talking about characterisation, plotting as well as the ins and outs of the editing and publishing process. In one of the panel discussions the authors were discussing their favourite novels and as they mentioned titles such as The Great Gatsby, The Catcher in the Rye and Pride and Prejudice the thousand or so people in the audience cheered loudly for their own favourite title. It was a bit like Superbowl for book nerds.
Early on Lit Day I had the very good fortune of sitting down next to a lovely Potter fan from Scotland. Sarah and I had both travelled great distances on our own to attend and soon realised that we had much in common. The highlight of Lit Day for me, apart from meeting the wonderful Sarah, was attending a discussion called "I was a teenage author". In this panel authors such as John Green, Stephanie Perkins and David Levithan read out some of their own teenage writing....and it was more hilarious than any stand up comedy performance I have ever attended.
Lit Day ended with a keynote speech from Arthur Levine, the american publisher of the Harry Potter novels at Scholastic, and then a cocktail party where I got to discuss plotting and character development with David Levithan! I was in total nerd nirvana and Leaky Con had not even officially started yet.
Yay! LeakyCon - your blog is a lot of fun to read!
ReplyDeleteThanks to you I was inspired to start a Blog myself.
Obviously I've only written about LeakyCon! I'm not that surprised to see we've written similar things (I only read your LeakyCon blog today so I promise there was no copying!)
If you're interested - www.sarahrundell@tumblr.com
Sarah
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