Each year SDCC has grown by leaps and bounds. There are longer lines for everything, the floor is consistently packed and the ticket prices keep going up and up, not to mention it is getting harder to get a ticket. Having attended the con for the last18 years and seeing it grow, not always for the better, I become increasingly disheartened with the whole process. But, the one thing that has been nice to see over the last few years is how much the Gaslamp District has gotten into basically becoming an extension of SDCC. And it is nice to be able to find new, undiscovered gems. Happily, I found one of these gems this year.
About a year ago, Zachary Levi of NBC's Chuck fame started a website, TheNerdMachine.com, in order to bring nerds together to share news, talk about cool events, gadgets, etc., and provide a comfortable online forum for nerds to meet and converse. This year Levi, in conjunction with the website Break.com, decided to turn Jolt N' Joe's, a billiards bar located in Downtown San Diego, into NerdHQ.
They moved out all the pool tables to set up gaming consoles, a cool little schwag booth and a stage (that may have already been there, but it had been years since I had been actually in that bar so I couldn't say). But, the coolest thing that came out of NerdHQ was the series of panels held upstairs from the bar everyday during Comic Con. For $20 per ticket, you could attend a panel featuring the likes of people such as Felicia Day, Seth Green, Nathan Fillion, the rest of the cast of Firefly, Jared Padelecki and more.
I know what you might be thinking. Why would I want to attend a paid panel when there are so many great free panels at SDCC? Well, for one, no lines and no having to get in line at 5am just to ensure you got a seat. You bought your ticket online and it was based on the order you bought your ticket in that you were assigned a seat. Second, the room only had room for around 200 seats, which means there really were no bad seats. And perhaps the best thing, that $20 you spent to be 10 feet or less away from the nerd of your choice without having to sit thorough countless other panels you didn't care about to ensure that you saw them, all went to benefit the charity, Operation Smile.
Unfortunately, I did not find out about this cool little venture until a good portion of the panels I would have like to have attended sold out. And a great many of them were during panels at the convention center that I had already planned to go see. I did get to see the panel of "The Geek Girl I would most like to be stranded on a desert island with", Felicia Day. That was one of the main highlights of my SDCC 2011 experience. I was less than 5 feet from her in an extremely intimate setting. And while I also saw Ms. Day on the Eureka panel the next day, it just didn't have the same magic the Nerd HQ panel held for me.
I am really hoping they make this a yearly thing. In addition to the panels, I heard they had some killer parties in the downstairs bar at night where you could hang out with Alan Tudyk and play video games with him or where you could schmooze with the likes of Wil Wheaton, Felicia Day, Zach Levi, Seth Green and many many more. At SDCC 2012, NerdHQ is probably going to be the place to be and I expect that this might be exactly where you will find me.
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