Today, ReedPop announced that following a slew of cancellations from guests, exhibitors, pros, and fans, they would be postponing the convention until the summer, hopefully once COVID-19 concerns have been squashed.
ECCC has grown not only into a fan favourite, but a pro-favourite and one of the biggest shows of the year that creators rely on financially to support themselves. Our hearts go out to those trying to figure out what to do next, so a few of us have been working on a solution to help those who have been left in a lurch.
Take a look at the following links and resources to help get in on the online con that is happening, and hopefully help make up some of the lost revenue from the show itself:
- VVS run by Jen Vaughn
- A network of folks across Seattle with cars (Redmond, West Seattle, Downtown, Everett, Cap Hill) and joining artists with those folks to schedule pick-ups of any merchandise artists/vendors may have shipped in advance of ECCC to their hotel, to friends, to AirBnBs. We’re going to get all of the boxes to one location in a warehouse and then print return labels once they’re weighed.
- For artists who do not have a storefront set up and do not have time, Rowan Rowden is offering to host their items on her website (dualwieldstudio.com).
- Stephanie Cooke from Creator Resource has a roster of creators to support located here.
- Unifying the hashtags by using #ECCCONLINE
- Coordinating potential online panels via Twitch, Google Hangouts (TBD), and hosted on Creator Resource.
- Andrea Demonakos also helps artists by running their storefronts for them and is doing a thread on how to set up storefronts for artists.
- The Armory, Is giving creators open use of the email distro list that they’ve grown over the last few years.
- High-profile Twitter creators are starting threads to help smaller artists promote their work:
- With travel and canceling/rescheduling being a nightmare, more and more artists/creators are trying to post their experiences with how they got cancellations/refunds.
- Steve Lieber has a thread on portfolio reviews, for those who might’ve spoken to him at the show and asked for advice.
- Iron Circus Comics has Comfy Con 2020 going on. Details here.
- A #LatinxCreates hashtag has been started for Latinx creators affected by ECCC.
- PDX Popup Con is happening. Check out more information here.
- Hannako is doing a pin thread for #ECCConline
- Andrea has done two more rad threads for creators opening stores!
- Another high profile creator asking for ECCC artist’s stores!
- Comfy Con has been renamed to Pajama Con
- Oni Press is doing an online pop up
- Adron Buske created an online directory called Convention Prime to create a shoppable list of artists and companies that were gonna be at ECCC.
- Jazzlyn Stone has started a thread for streams happening this weekend.
- A COVID-19 Freelance Artists Resources Google Doc has been created with information on emergency funding, and more.
- Over the last day we’ve been reaching out to storefronts, coffee shops, etc. trying to set up submission guidelines and procedures for hosting ECCC artists’ work in miniature popups. We’ll have a running list of storefronts and their submission guidelines hopefully by end of weekend.
Andrea Demonakos, Rowan Rowden, Jazzlyn Stone, Jen Vaughn, and myself are coordinating efforts as quickly and efficiently as possible. Stay tuned for updates on all of this over the coming days.
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