ICT Comic Con (9/11-9/12) & Great Plains Renaissance Festival (9/25-9/26) Volunteer and Event Planning Thread

EcoFest has been rescheduled for May 1st, 2022 due to the rising Covid numbers.

I want to volunteer for the Ren Faire booth as well, I’ll see if I can get off work to help on the 24th. I have also mentioned the Ren Faire to the magic club and a few members were interested in performing some close up magic, but I have not received anything affirmative as of yet.

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I am still trying to figure that part out. I’m going to contact some friends who had booths there in the past and see when they did setup.

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Thank you, good to know.

Can edit your post put me down for all the days of Comic-Con and Renaissance?

You guys are rocking these signups!

I have updated the charts with all those who have requested to help out.

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Updated to add James Lancaster to the Renaissance Fair.

Also, big thank you to Dean Day and Doug Wilson! Dean Day cranked out the stakes for the side walls for the tent and Doug Wilson has agreed to take on the creative lead of cranking out the sign for the ICT Comic Con and other future events!

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Had some help from Scott tonight with cranking out the 4 stakes for the high wind lines.

So we now have everything together to make this tent stand upright, we just have the posts to crank out and the walls to sew up.

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The post lists the hours for Festival days as us starting at 8:30a, however the event doesn’t begin until 10a. Should this be updated to 9:30a on 25th and 26th?

I will be up there at 8:30 setting up other stuff for the Renaissance Fair but yeah, I’m doubtful it will take us more than 30minutes to setup, baring faire weather…

Also, just got the brochures from Spirit and some Masonite for the lasers.

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Rustin, I just got the 24th off of work, so please feel free to sign me up for set up for the ren fair!

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Well, making some progress on the stuff for the Renaissance faire, but now we’re a week put from the ICT Comic Con.

It sounds like we’ll at least have a lot of items for a show and tell as well as brochures. I haven’t pulled out the vinyl MakeICT sign yet, but I’ll see if I can dig that out tomorrow and make sure it’s still in good shape.

I managed to cut the poles for the tent tonight but the corners still need to be routed, and then sanded, stained and sealed.

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Haven’t found the vinyl sign yet, but does anyone know where the power supply for the other sign is?

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The vinyl sign used to be with Barb’s outreach stuff, I believe.

That’s where I looked… There was a black vinyl roll by the two pop up tents, but that black vinyl didn’t seem to have anything on it.

If you find it, please let me know.

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If memory serves that’s el wire. So does the el wire terminate to a box or a plug. I was thinking that had a sequencer. Is there a bunch of electronics hot glued on the back?

There is a box attached to the back of the sign with a pair of barrel jacks.

There was also a power supply sitting near it with line tacked on to a piece of wood for negative and positive terminals, but I did not see anything that plugged into the barrel jacks.

Seeing that EL Wire sign brings back some fond, early-days memories.

FWIW, EL-wire brightness diminishes over time, and I’d be surprised if that wire is still visible during the day. Also, let’s be honest, it’s not a very attractive sign - it never was. At the time it was made, we were hosting monthly build-nights with Instructables. They would send us free products (like the EL wire), and in return we’d build something with it and write up an Instructable that linked to the products. It was a neat partnership and made for some fun evenings.

The sign didn’t need to be attractive back then because it had a cool story about the Instructables partnership, a group of people hacking a thing together with whatever we had lying around, and then someone taking the time to write it up and share what we learned with the internet. Most of the people doing outreach stuff were the same people doing the Instructables build-nights, so it wasn’t just a cool story - it was our cool story, ya know?

I’m mostly just reminiscing, I guess, but I do have a point. That sign carries some charm for me, and although it’s ugly, it came with good talking points about our community and activities. Symbolic, I guess - like our little organization, the sign was certainly lacking polish, but it was functional and assembled by passionate people having fun together. That sign embodied the “we’re not here to impress anybody - we just want to make cool stuff and share things” energy of our young org. It moved with us from Bluebird to East Douglas, where it hung in the front window for some time and then in the lounge.

I doubt any of that charm comes through to passersby at outreach events today though. Personally, I think it’s time for a new sign. That old EL-wire sign should be retired somewhere with other memories, like the Cow Car.

Maybe some members want to make a new one? Maybe we just want to buy a banner or something? That old sign was a fairly honest representation of who we were at the time - a new sign should represent the us that exists now.

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Been a lot going on.

Got confirmation that there will be a setup on Friday from 10am to 8:30pm for the ICT Comic Con.

Anna DiSalvo cranked out a sign for the event and is using some of the donated Masonite to make another sign for the renn fair (though I think this one would still work great for that event as well).

For the renn fair, I’m still working on the poles for the tent as well as the sides (still need to cut the walls to height and start sewing them), but I finally got a photo of what the tent looked like before it’s parts were scavenged for a bigger flashier tent…

I could still use some help this week with prepping little give away kits for the ICT comic con, but there are a lot of meetings I am going to be tied up with this week… I could definitely use that amazing electronic expert’s help on getting those going (@james.a.seymour ).

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I can help with the sewing. Just let me know what you decided.

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