Two Vulkon Conventions in Tampa This Summer

In July 2004, I went to my first Star Trek convention. Well, to be more exact, it was a sci-fi convention, but there was still a lot of Star Trek in it. I had always wanted to go to a convention, but I never had until that point for the simple reason that there are very few conventions in or near Tampa. However, not long before the convention, I came across the website for Vulkon, which puts on sci-fi themed conventions in a few cities across the country. These aren’t your huge, Las Vegas scale conventions, but that may be what makes them so great. You’re not surrounded by large crowds of people. Instead, it’s a much more intimate atmosphere, and you’re surrounded by generally nice people that care a lot about sci-fi, and you still get to see lots of big sci-fi stars. That convention I went to in the summer of 2004 included many well-known people, including Christopher Judge, Connor Trinneer, Garrett Wang, Patricia Tallman, Jeffrey Willerth, Manu Intiraymi, Dean Haglund, Michael Forest, Robin Curtis, Lee Stringer. Christopher Judge was very funny and interesting, and Garrett Wang was more amusing than I thought possible. He does some very good impressions of the Voyager crew. I also managed to get some very hard-to-find figures and such at the convention for very cheap. The only down side to that convention was that I wasn’t able to see Connor Trinneer because he was there on the other day of the convention, whereas Christopher Judge was there only on the day I was there. I had such a great time at that convention that I was very disappointed to find out the following year that there would be no sci-fi convention in Tampa for 2005. However, it looks like Vulkon is making it up to us this year by giving us not one but two conventions in Tampa this summer. According to the upcoming conventions page at the Vulkon website, there is a convention planned for June 23-25 as well as one for July 28-30, with Alexis Cruz, known for his role as Skaara on Stargate SG-1, already on board for the latter convention. If for nothing else, this should be an exciting summer just for sci-fi conventions.