The Convention Fans Blog

Early in 2010 we wrote about the new Vulcan Events fan con production company and the controversy raised by their name choice. For the moment Vulcan began publicizing their first event they began drawing growls from the already established Vulkon Entertainment.

And it’s a bit confusing for fans when you’re called “Vulcan Events” but all your conventions are called “Away Mission”. And it’s so Trek-centric a name that no one expects to see any of the other science fiction fan franchises represented at all.

Apparently the grumbling of Vulkon Entertainment and the feed back of fans sunk home and Vulcan Events (whose title I totally wrote, in this article’s first draft, as “Vulcon Entertainment”) has announced a name change for 2012. Bummer for them, because they clearly were attached to their Treky moniker, but better in the long run.

Here’s the Relevant Part of the Press Statement Released Recently

…

VULCAN EVENTS is now THE AWAY MISSION

Those of you that attended Sir Patrick’s Q&A session were present for the official announcement. Unfortunately, we did not have the time to go into to many details since everyone was anxiously waiting Mr. Stewart’s presentation. We wanted to take a moment here to fill everyone in on the company’s name change.

As I mentioned in the opening of this email, I, Javier Garcia, have been involved in the convention business, in one way or another, for about 10 years. My business partner, Fernando Martinez has been at it for over 20 years. When we started Vulcan Events, we did so because we were nostalgic for this type of “fan friendly” “weekend getaway” style of convention which is sadly disappearing into extinction replaced by the “Comic Con” style convention. It had been almost 2 years since we had seen an event in Florida where you could visit with old friends, meet some new ones, and share your love for all things sci-fi. A place where you could meet some of your favorite celebrities and really get a chance to talk to them and pick up a few autographs without having to stand in line for hours just to be rushed through before you even got a word out. Where you could share your experiences in a much more intimate group of hundreds rather than crowds of thousands.

We have always been very transparent as to who we are and what we were trying to achieve. Unfortunately it seems there has been some confusion among the long-time Florida convention goers about who we are and what we are all about. Between this confusion, the fact that we cover so much more than just Star Trek, and since we plan on experimenting with other genres in the coming year; we felt that a new company name would be a better fit. Thus “The Away Mission” was born. Starting in 2012, we will host AWAY MISSION: ORLANDO, or AWAY MISSION: TAMPA, or AWAY MISSION: whatever city we might be visiting.

For our first event in April/May of 2010, we brought you Christopher Lloyd, his second convention appearance in the US. For our second show in March of 2011, we brought you Casper Van Dien, his first convention appearance ever! And of course just two weeks ago, we brought you Patrick Stewart (making his first appearance in Florida in over 20 years), and David Warner making his second convention appearance in the US. We have delivered consistently on all of our promises and hope you will continue to put your trust in us. We mean business and we are here to stay. We hope that you will continue to support us as we move forward and grow–and by grow I mean by moving into new cities and new genres, not in size; we think our events are just the perfect size as they are!

In the coming months you will notice the transition of our website, Facebook and Twitter pages to reflect the name change. You will still be able to reach us at www.vulcanevents.com but our new web address, as of January 1st will be www.away-mission.com. We will continue to update everyone as the changes are made to Twitter and Facebook.

Please be assured that this is the only change we are making. Javier, Judy, Fernando, Marc, Vern, Topper, John H. and the rest of the gang will continue to deliver the best convention experience in Florida for years to come.

To Summarize

Since I know you just skimmed through all those big blocks of text, I’ll summarize for you…

• Vulcan Events is now called The Away Mission.
• They’ll be updating their web presence and marketing over the next few months.

• Speaking of web presence, on January 1st of 2012 the official web site address will become “www.away-mission.com“.

  Which should be interesting, since “www.awaymission.com” is an app development company. And “www.theawaymission.com” has been registered already. I forsee some issues since fans are bound to forget the silly dash and others will assume “the” must be part of the address since it’s the production company’s name.

• The Away Mission’s science fiction conventions will be held in different cities and each will be named using an “Away Mission: City We’re In This Date” naming convention.
• The Away Mission’s mission statement will remain the creation of cozy events with a friendly, family-of-fans feel.

It’s always good to see a convention production company respond quickly and positively to fan feed back. And their plans for sci-fi events in 2012 look exciting.