Gen Con is more than gaming; it’s the hard work of 20 people to make the show work!
My name is Renee, you may know me as Honest and Unbiased. There’s so much value in the people who run Gen Con year-round. My experience with the marketing department for Gen Con makes me feel the need to spend my whole opportunity of writing my yearly blog post just to point it out.
First, I need to make an honorable mention of Madeline. Through small, personal, and fun interactions via stories on Instagram and a big, giant welcoming hug at every event I’ve met her at over the last couple of years, Madeline’s warmth and creativity show through in her collaborations and a genius marketing strategy all over Gen Con. If you’ve met her, you’d know exactly what her hand has touched because, while you might not be able to pinpoint it, her essence is there throughout Gen Con.
She’s the reason I laugh as hard as I do throughout the year by watching her Instagram stories, but she’s also the reason why I’ve learned as much as I have about content, strategy, marketing, and branding because she’s a wealth of information, and she gives freely while pointing people in the right direction to help themselves with their own marketing. She is kind and thoughtful, and I’m so happy to see her every year at Gen Con.
While I could go on about Madeline, this post is an ode to Dani.
Dani Kennedy is the changer of lives. From the moment I began interacting with the Gen Con page on TikTok about 4 years ago, I knew there was something different about the person behind it. There was thoughtfulness in the responses, curated content with jokes that poked fun at the board game industry as a whole, and an exhaustion with what happens to staff during the convention that resonated with staff and attendees alike. Then, still, there was a level of heart that shone through in every interaction, making people feel seen and heard. If there was a question, if there was a need, Dani was there.
My early interactions with Dani started as an online professional relationship that developed into something far more important to me. From the early stages of potential collaboration and jokes in comments and messages on videos, there was a light-heartedness about Dani that was just there. She is warm and overwhelmingly welcoming toward absolutely everyone, and there are few words to describe how much she cares for the entire community and just people in general. For those reasons, I dedicate the entire blog post to sharing how much she has changed the industry for us small-time content creators in the Content Creator Takeover program, how much she has changed my life, and what she means to me personally.
The Content Creator Takeover opportunity was comprised of a few content creators whose main focus of their content was board games. And then there was me, a niche-less content creator who focused mostly on food, family, and lifestyle content, unless I happened to be at a convention. She brought me into the fold, and when I felt like I didn’t fit in, she set me up with a welcoming group of people who showed me the industry.
Then she gave me creative license with no pressure to create whatever content I chose from my point of view. With that opportunity, I learned what it was like to be a full-fledged content creator in a new space and what that esteem and validation felt like from a new platform. For once, I felt like I had a voice and a message, and like all those earlier visits where I didn’t quite know what I was doing, had finally paid off. I was able to reach the community I wanted to and really share what Gen Con meant to me. The community welcomed me, and while I can’t say I fit in exactly, I knew I belonged here.
Dani reminded me that I belong at Gen Con and that my point of view, while different, matters just as much as the next creator who chooses to focus on their craft. Dani is the breath of fresh air in an otherwise stale hallway between Lucas Oil and the Convention Center. She is what I call good people. Dani is behind the scenes and the DNA that makes up what you experience on screen. She is the countless takes of a Hamilton video, she is the Swiftie bracelets that she spent hours making to hand off to strangers, and she is the epitome of what it looks like to have the right person, in the right place, to support a community of 70K+ attendees to make sure the convention and our experience is unlike any other year.
For most, Dani is a smiley lunatic running around a convention floor for a week and sharing moments of exhaustion in her Instagram stories. For me, she is the heart of Gen Con, and I am so grateful she is my friend.
For more from Renee, check her out on TikTok and Instagram.
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