So it started as an offhand comment by Jonas as we were driving back from Montreal. "You should come to Philly for Wizard World." At the time, I wasn't able to come because of lack of money and having to find a job. Lo and behold less than a week later I had a job offer and I was ready to go to Philly.

Drove to SardonicSamurai's house (and beat him home from work) to meet up with him and spend the night there. Nothing much to it besides the Art Portal being released that day so we were checking it out.

The next day Jonas arrived and we were off to Philly a bit before noon. The drive itself was uneventful but at least there were oatmeal cream pies (Fuck yeah!) We drove straight to the Newgrounds Office where I met mostly everyone who was at the meetup. The entire staff was there, along with a few artists and voice actors such as HappyHarry, Egoraptor, The-Swain, Afro-Ninja, Luis and TomaMoto. Introductions were initiated, beer was consumed, fun times were had (as far as I can remember) I felt a little awkward during conversations at times (and all throughout the trip too) since a lot of people were talking about their flash and game projects, and me not having any experience in those things, didn't have much to say or contribute. It was still interesting to hear the others brainstorm on potential ideas though.

I will also say that after seeing the office, it's very understandable how work for the website can at times fall to the backburner, but that's also saying that I've never seen a workplace where the line between work and having fun was so close. After a bit, we headed down to the hotel near the convention center to check in to our room and we also got to check out a nearby sports bar.

Over the course of the next three days, we were setting up and running the Newgrounds booth at the convention. It was tiring work, but a lot of fun. Mostly we were showing people the games and movies that the site had on it, and selling NG stuff. I just had a good time talking about the website and about the content here. We made a lot of people laugh with the movies, and even more were interested in the three games we had on display (Portal Defenders, Castle Crashing the Beard, and NG Rumble). We met a few NG users along the way and hopefully introduced a few more people to the site. Over the course of these nights, we went out to several bars and continued to have a fun time. In particular I liked the place we went where you could draw on the walls with crayons, and dollar Pabst Blue Ribbon beers.

After the convention we were hanging around the NG office for another day, working on projects, playing video games, and barbecuing. I myself got to spend a night on one of the infamous sumo bean bags, (Comfortable as hell btw) and even got a free shirt. (Thanks again Tom, though you should have taken the money when you had the chance)

In short summary, the staff behind this website and the other artists and users who were there are some awesome people and I think most everyone had a good time. If they decide to keep on doing Wizard World next year, I will definitely try to be there again.