Pop Expo

PopExpo is OttawaComiccon's kind of unnecessary little sister con. It takes place in the same venue but with half the space and a small fraction of the attendance. Sales can be decent at this con but it is SLOOOWWWW. Hours could go by without anyone walking down the aisle.

This year's (2015) PopExpo was especially bad. For some reason they split the artist Alley into two sections, one by the main entrance and one far off to the side in a spacious and very empty-looking room. The two alleys were divided by all the dealers as well who were in the main room. There didn't seem to be ant rhyme or reason for the separation and all it did was ensure that he 20-odd artists stuck in the side room (myself included) were forgotten about. Many people who did find me said they'd gone up and down the aisles of the main Artist Alley for almost an hour trying to find me and had only wandered into the extra room by accident.

Even when the layout is better though, I would recommend this con to locals only. It's not a money making con but it's a good one to check out if you've got stock you want to get rid of and in terms of smaller Ottawa cons it is miles and miles better than any of the others in town.

Popexpo 2015 was my first convention to table at, and it was an enjoyable experience. The staff were fine. This year they split the artist's alley into two sections completely separate from eachother, which may have confused a lot of attendees and maybe divided them in a way that was unnecessary. The whole event was really slow and kind of boring. It kind of felt like attendees were there on Sunday out of obligation, not because it was a fun thing to do. The venue itself was also nice, several rooms for panels and a wide open space for artists and vendors. I split my table and was able to recoup my table costs fairly easily, but because attendance was so low that isn't saying much. I don't recommend this event for out of towners.