Minnesota has a huge geek community. As a writer for Twin Cities Geek, I have been fortunate to write about various conventions throughout the state. At the beginning of November, I attended Twin Cities Con at the Minneapolis Convention Center. Twin Cities Con is similar to C2E2 or Planet Comic Con except that I don’t have to travel far to attend. It has been notoriously difficult for Minnesota to host a bigger convention, and there are many reasons for that. If you’re interested in “the tea”, trust me, I have it.

The first bigger convention I remember was Wizard World, which apparently rebranded to Fan Expo. Wizard World was held in the 2010s at the Minneapolis Convention Center. This is the convention I know the least about on this list. I don’t know the exact reason why this convention didn’t stick around, so if you have anything to add, I’d love to hear it in the comments.

After Wizard World was Fan Fest and/or Fan Fusion. This is a convention hosted in Phoenix, but the company wanted to host a convention in Minnesota. Fan Fest / Fan Fusion hosted two conventions, one in 2017 (branded as Fan Fest) and in 2018 (branded as Fan Fusion). It seemed like both conventions struggled with attendance. I don’t have exact numbers to back this as a fact; this was more of an observation I made when I attended the convention. Additionally, I had conversations with others who attended that made me come to this conclusion. There were many reasons for this. First of all, the conventions were held at the Saint Paul RiverCentre. For those who have never been to Minnesota, Saint Paul is the slower city. Don’t get me wrong, Saint Paul is a beautiful city, but if I were planning an event, I wouldn’t have picked a venue in Saint Paul. The second issue with Fan Fest / Fan Fusion was the cosplay policy. The cosplay policy was one of the strictest cosplay policies that I have ever seen. The way the cosplay policy was written was targeted towards women and went into detail about how women’s bodies needed to be covered up. Many thought that it was sexist because it focused so heavily on women specifically. Additionally, many props were banned. For example, I couldn’t bring the bright orange plastic toy guns I use in my Lara Croft cosplay because they resemble guns even though they are very clearly toys. To Fan Fusion’s credit, there was an incident at their Phoenix event where someone did bring a gun into the building to try to kill Jason David Frank. It’s completely valid to feel protective of your event and want to keep people safe; however, it wasn’t communicated in their cosplay policy. If it were, I don’t think it would have been an issue. Finally, if that wasn’t enough, the event was scheduled for August. No one in Minnesota will want to attend an indoor event in August. Our Summers are so pretty, and everyone is outside, soaking up the sun or going to a cabin up north. It showed that the company planning Fan Fest / Fan Fusion didn’t know anything about Minnesota.

After Fan Fest / Fan Fusion, GalaxyCon took a chance to plan a convention in Minnesota. However, they ended up getting the short end of the stick because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on a conversation I had, there was some contention with the city of Minneapolis. I don’t know if this convention made their money back, but I heard that could have been a contributing factor as to why they didn’t return.

This brings us to Twin Cities Con. Twin Cities Con and the organizers were smart. They took feedback from the local community and figured out which local conventions were being held on what dates. This way, they could plan Twin Cities Con on a weekend without any other competing events happening. Twin Cities Con is held in November, which is perfect! The weather is colder, and more people are trying to find indoor events to attend. It’s before the holidays, but not too close to the holidays. I consider Twin Cities Con the con to end the year, since there are no other conventions I attend after it. Additionally, this gave Twin Cities Con time to market their event at local conventions earlier in the year.

I’m so glad that Twin Cities Con has found success in Minnesota. It’s nice to have a bigger convention here because traveling to cons out of state can be taxing. Twin Cities Con was a blast this year, and I can’t wait for next year.