The Con Factory: Behind the scenes

I think by now you all know we love to attend conventions. You get to meet the actors that play in the movies or TV shows you love or grew up with (I can tell you I've met some of my childhood heroes in the past years and it was awesome!). You get the chance to get an autograph or do a photo op and you  get a chance to hear them talk about their work and their look on life. But that's not all. At a convention you get the chance to meet a lot of other amazing people too. At comic cons you can browse through the merchandise stands and take a look at some great movie props. And at fan events you get the chance to meet a lot of people who all share your passion for a certain franchise. What's not to love! We write about our convention adventures, but we also like to give you some more insights about the people behind the scenes. Today we are going to talk about what it's like to organize a convention. To do this we contacted The Con Factory and talked to the lovely Patricia. So sit back and let us take you into the world of: The Con Factory!

WolfCon is a two day convention of The Con Factory for fans of the tv show Teenwolf. Although we haven't done a series tip about Teenwolf yet, Carola and I are both watching the show and we absolutely love it.

The story revolves around Scot McCall (Tyler Posey), a somewhat awkward teenage boy at the Beacon Hills High School. At one night his best friend Stiles Stilinski (Dylan O'Brien), who is also the son of the sherrif, takes Scott into the woods to find a dead body. During an attack Scott is bitten by a werewolf and he inherits the werewolf curse himself. Being a werewolf has some pretty awesome side effects. Suddenly Scott is faster and stronger than he ever was, he is cured from his asthma and is promoted to co-captain of the Lacrosse team. This all sounds pretty awesome, but being a werewolf also means Scott turns into a very angry and relentless werewolf out to kill everyone on his path, every full moon. He also finds it very difficult to control his anger in his daily life and has to do his best to control the wolf within. The only way to find a way to control this is to put his trust in the strong and eccentric werewolf Derek (Tyler Hoechlin).

Well so much for Teen Wolf, let's get back to The Con Factory and WolfCon. The first edition of WolfCon was held in the Park Plaza Hotel - Amsterdam Airport (2-3 May 2015). The guestlist for this first edition consisted of: Holland Roden (Lydia Martin), Tyler Hoechlin (Derek Hale), Ian Bohen (Peter Hale), Max Carver (Aiden), Charlie Carver (Ethan) and Ryan Kelley (Jordan Parrish).  It turned out to be a big succes and  little more than a year later The Con Factory organised the second edition: WolfCon 2.0. (July 30th and 31st in Amsterdam, The Netherlands). And again they had an amazing guest list: Holland Roden, Charlie Carver, Max Carver, Ryan Kelley and Ian Bohen returned to Amsterdam for WolfCon 2.0. But there were some new names on the list too, being: Dylan Sprayberry (Liam Dunbar), JR Bourne (Chris Argent) and Khylin Rhambo (Mason Hewitt).

Next month, on the 29th and 30th of July, The Con Factory will return to the Park Plaza Hotel - Amsterdam Airport (Lijnden, The Netherlands) for WolfCon 3.0. The guestlist so far: Max and Charlie Carver, Holland Roden, Ian Bohen and Ryan Kelley. Keep an eye on Facebook and Twitter for further announcements.

Next we asked Patricia what to expect, when you visit a convention of The Con Factory?

"At our conventions you can ask the actors questions when they are on stage, you can do photo shoots, you can get an autograph and you can do a meeting room with them. Furthermore we have a lot of special activities which you often cannot do anywhere else, like a party, playing Pictionary or other games with the actors etc. We always try to be original and come up with new ideas". So what is your favorite WolfCon memory?  "Pfff hard question, I have so many, I especially like the party where we play games with the actors"

Well that sounds like a lot of fun, right? But what about other conventions. A few weeks ago we did a post about a petition for a Once Upon a Time convention (we would love this so please sign here). We asked Patricia about these petitions. How does it work? "It is always difficult to choose a show to do a convention for, together with fans we hope that through these petitions we get a better idea of how many fans are seriously going to buy a ticket for a certain event. If there is enough interest the Con Factory can look further into the possibility of organizing an event for that particular show". 

So how do you pick the TV shows and the guests? " It depends on the interest of the fans, on the availability of the

actors and on the budget needed to do an event for a particular show. We always try to keep in mind what fans want, but a lot depends on things like budget and availability".