Intervention Banner (Image: interventioncon.com)
No, I am not suggesting that you work on having that intervention with your kids for their Mario Kart habit. I fully support Mario Kart! I am referring to an upcoming convention where you can feel good about bringing the geekling along.
The con is called Intervention, a clever portmanteau of Internet Convention. It is the brainchild of Onezumi “Oni” Hartstein and James Harknell and conceived as an Internet content creator convention. You can check out the great GeekDad interview with Oni by Corrina Lawson. From the Intervention website:
Our goal is to bring together fans and different independent creators to party, educate, and appreciate the opportunities the Internet gives to all of us. We are similar to the Sci-Fi/Anime/Other fandom cons that we love so much, but we are focused on people who use the internet as the primary way to distribute their work and talk to their friends.
This is Intervention’s second year and is being hosted at the Hilton Washington DC/Rockville in Rockville, MD the weekend of September 16th through 18th. Something new starting this year is a specific track for Children’s programming. Oni has approached a team from GeekDad and our sister site, GeekMom, to help design the Children’s programming track. I will be at Intervention, along with our Managing Editor, Matt Blum, and (my wife) GeekMom contributor Helene McLaughlin. There are a steady stream of children’s programming events including:
- Lego Art and Gaming (sponsored by Lego)
- Science of Art
- Draw Your Own Comic Book Character
- Science Q&A
- Spy Science Experiments
The full list of Children’s Programming is available on the Intervention website. Oni and Harknell have taken the idea of including children’s programming seriously and it is a major track. We have oriented the children’s programming towards ages 4 through 12, although geeklings of all ages are welcome. We only ask, per Con rules, that kids under 13 be accompanied by an adult. This is actually very important to us at GeekDad and GeekMom, as a big part of what we believe in is parent involvement with raising geeklings.
There will also be tons to do at Intervention for adults, including programming about web content creation. And the GeekDad/GeekMom contingent will be involved in some programming for parents and other adults! The three of us will be on a panel called “Raising the next generation of nerdlings: Tales from GeekDads and GeekMom.” I will also have a panel, along with Sara Mitchell of NASA Blueshift, about how surprisingly easy NASA makes it to access a huge library of data from many missions. The full programming list is available on the Intervention Programming page. There are some 18+ only panels and there will be bouncers making sure the little ones don’t get in the room for those panels. Also, be sure to check out the full guest list page. There will be some awesome folks attending that you won’t want to miss.
On behalf of Matt, Helene, and myself, we hope to see you at Intervention! It is going to be a lot of fun and please feel free to approach the GeekDad/GeekMom crew to talk to us and ask us questions. We are passionate about what we do! We will also be active on Twitter so be sure to follow us at @cerebus19 (Matt), @hcmclaughlin (Helene), and @bjmclaughlin (me).
