Dragon Con 2023, which was held over Labor Day weekend in downtown Atlanta, is not just a casual get-together featuring pop culture, fantasy, sci-fi, and gaming – it’s a well-oiled machine involving 2,400 volunteers, a multi-million-dollar infusion of capital into the city, and an impressive charitable giving effort that has raised huge amounts of money for local causes.
A behind-the-scenes look into the organizing of this sold-out event reveals the passion and hard work the thousands of dedicated volunteers put into making it a growing, thriving convention.
Mary Simpkins, the assistant director of media engagement, has been an attendee for more than 10 years, and a volunteer for the last eight. She started out as a reporter for a now-defunct geek coverage site, and it morphed into her involvement with the media team, which organizes press before, during and after the event and lining up interviews with radio, television and print journalists.
Each volunteer is required to work a minimum of 20 hours at the event, but Simpkins said she easily surpasses that even before the convention starts.
“We start planning for the next year immediately after the last one ends,” she said.
Cassidy Cobbs, who started attending the convention in 2009 and has been volunteering as the assistant director of information services, coordinates the help desk at the five hotels and America’s Mart, where the weekend activities take place.
“We answer all kinds of questions, including ‘What is there to do around here?’ that is asked more than you would think.”
She also assists people with navigating through the Dragon Con app, which lists the hundreds of panels available to attendees. Cobbs said she loves the customer service aspect of her volunteer job, as well as meeting people and checking out their elaborate, themed costumes.
She said the convention despite its size and diversity, in itself is mostly a laid-back affair, with little drama.
“I did get a complaint from a person one year that they had been hit by pickles,” she recalled. “But for the most part, what the help desk does is answer questions.”
She and Simpkins and their close-knit group of friends also participate fully in the event. Each brought a dozen or so costumes to wear throughout the convention, which they sew or buy in coordination with each other over the course of the year.
In the past, they have expressed their creativity in posing questions and then answering them through their costumes – for example, if the Game of Thrones characters were in high school, the costumes reflected the type of sports they would play. Cobbs, with another group, also imagined and concocted a “Harry Potter” Quiddich team through the lens of “A League of Their Own.”
And it’s not just creating the spectacle, it’s observing the creativity displayed by the other 70,000 attendees that makes each year a unique event.
“One year I saw two guys dressed up as Will Smith and Bill Pullman do a scene from ‘Independence Day,’ and it was so perfect and the most incredible thing I’ve ever witnessed,” Simpkins said.
One of the lesser-known parts of Dragon Con is its charitable efforts on behalf of local causes. This year, the organization raised more than $200,000 for its official 2023 charity, CURE Childhood Cancer.
According to a statement from Dragon Con, “With monies still being collected, the convention’s charity efforts have raised at least $200,000 for CURE Childhood Cancer, which works to advance promising research, lobby for important legislation, and provide tangible support to thousands of childhood cancer patients and their families in the Atlanta metro area and across Georgia.”
The final total, according to the release, will likely surpass the previous record of $206,000 raised in 2022 for Open Hand Atlanta.
Over the past decade, Dragon Con has raised more than $1.23 million for its annual official charities. Funds are raised through convention-based auctions, special merchandise sales, special events, and a dollar-for-dollar match from the convention up to an additional $125,000.
In addition, LifeSouth, which celebrated its 20th annual Robert A. Heinlein “Pay It Forward” blood drive at Dragon Con, attracted more than 3,700 donors donated to the drive – including its 50,000th donor – which resulted in about 10,000 blood components. The annual drive, consistently ranked as the largest convention-based blood drive, benefits LifeSouth, which serves more than 25 hospitals in the Atlanta area and 125 hospitals in the Southeast.
“This year’s convention was just joyful. Our fans, like Americans everywhere, have made the most of post-COVID travel worries and brought the best of themselves to Atlanta,” convention co-chair Rachel Reeves said. “They brought all their awesomeness – great attitudes, enormous generosity, and spectacular cosplays – to help make this year’s Dragon Con one of the best in recent memory.”
The greatest reward, according to Simpkins and Cobbs, is coming home exhausted after little sleep, hard work, reconnections with friends, and the utter joy of a job well done in 2023.
And the planning for Dragon Con 2024 is already underway.