“As the summer sun rises over the city of Detroit this June, it will shine on the sleepy heads of cultured geeks from all over the world as the annual gathering of gamers, card-tossers, wine lovers, beer aficionados, foodies, artists, and friends known as Expo Icrontic begins.”
That’s what we wrote last year for Expo Icrontic, and it still holds true this year.
Expo Icrontic started eleven years ago as a gathering of gamers, to bring the Icrontic online community face-to-face in real life so that friendships could be cemented. Since then, it has grown from a LAN party to a full-blown convention, with all kinds of hobbies and cultures intermingling. It has grown such that some of the people that attend are not even gamers. Past Expos have featured a variety of activities including a golf outing, historical Detroit bike tour, food tours, boardgaming, duct-tape engineer challenges, fitness workshops, visits from technology representatives, wine and cheese tastings, and more. There’s something for everybody, and Expo Icrontic 2014 will be no different.
The theme of Expo Icrontic 2014 is “Icrontic Communism”. We like to joke around that, for years, the Icrontic community has been an example of “communism that works”. When community members need help, other Icrontians chip in. It’s just the way we are. We decided to run with that theme this year and offer a whole new way of pricing tickets: Pay what you can. Turns out, most of the people who have registered have chosen the top-tier ticket to help subsidize tickets for those who need them. We’ve also got generous Icrontians offering up airline miles for a first-time attendee, and providing tons of swag and prizes for attendees as well.
As in past years, we will have a huge variety of events; popular old traditions such as the duct-tape challenge, LAN gaming tournaments, swag and prize giveaways, Magic: The Gathering tournaments, organized tastings, the annual Tastes of Detroit food tour, and more.
The ticket fee includes a spot for a PC, a chair, a network connection, power, a T-shirt, access to the Chinese Auction door prize giveaway (which, historically, has been filled with some pretty damned spectacular prizes from some big name sponsors), and all access to events that don’t carry external costs. Events that have extra fees associated with them are the food tours, the bike tour, rope course, and the tasting events.
OFFICIAL EVENTS LIST:
If you are attending, click on each event to RSVP “in”:
- Icrontic Minecraft Hunger Games (Race to the finish in small teams!)
- Expo Icrontic Wine Tasting (Chenin Blanc)
- Adventure Park outing (ropes course)
- Men’s shaving workshop (safety razor)
- Expo Icrontic Beer Tasting (Belgian golden ales)
- Boardgaming Room
- Two James Distillery Tour (Detroit’s first distillery since prohibition)
- Detroit street art bike tour
The official event calendar can be found on Sched. Travel information can be found here.
Last year we had over 60 people attend. Every single one of them will tell you what a great time they had. Come join us in Detroit for an absolutely awesome four days and see for yourself what an amazing group of people the Icrontic community is!
Expo Icrontic is Wednesday, June 18th through Sunday, June 22nd. See you there!
Articles RSS