SEMOcon offers virtual alternative

The annual SEMOcon event in Butler County will have a different appearance this year out of concern over COVID-19 spread.

Instead of an in-person convention at the Black River Coliseum, it will take place online on Sept. 19. It will be free for those interested in attending or being a vendor.

Social Media Manager Christopher Pense said organizers are still working on identifying exactly what that will look like, but they plan to offer all the things normally included in a convention.

“We’ve had mostly favorable responses with some obvious disappointment, even in the favorable ones,” he said. “People are understanding, especially with the numbers that seem to be rising instead of lowering right now.

“We just had to make a call before it got too late. Even if it was safe, now we’re a year behind in planning because we waited to see what would happen.”

The three main staples of a convention, he said, are the vendors hall, panels and a celebrity presence, and gaming.

The current plan, he said, is for the vendors hall to give individualscontrol over how they reach customers.

For some vendors, Pense said, it will look like traditional online shopping with pictures of the items. Others plan to do sales through live streams at specific hours, and still others will have a hybrid of the two.

The live stream options, Pense said, have more of a convention feel.

“They can interact with the attendees,” he said. “‘Oh hey, look, we have this really cool prop from here… this is from this one show, it’s been authentically signed,’ whatever else. They can tell all these cool stories for these rare items and stuff like that.”

Attendees will receive a list of vendors with information about each, such as what they sell, how they’re selling things and contact methods.

The panels, including celebrity Q&As, will take place over Zoom, he said. They don’t have specific panels organized yet, but are working on it.

Normally, panels happen in sizeable rooms with people at the front conducting the discussion and an audience.

Through a Zoom-style format, panel members will be on it and have the same discussions as they would normally and attendees can still ask questions.

“The thing we really like about Zoom is that even if you’re technologically not inclined, you can even call from phone numbers to at least listen in on them,” Pense said.

Celebrity panels would be very similar to the regular panels, except it’s a celebrity answering questions and telling stories.

This area of the event, he said, they’ve discussed being able to use in future years when the convention returns in-person.

“Potentially in the future, because we are a smaller con with a smaller budget, this may be something we can do in the future once it’s safe to come back together,” he said. “On top of these low-level celebrities we’ve got, we also have this big-level celebrity who’s going to be doing a panel live via satellite.

“ … Maybe we can get somebody like Robert Downey Jr. for an hour because we don’t have to pay for a flight and this and that.”

As for gaming, Pense said, that will also be available online. SEMOcon organizers are working with Valkyrie Gaming out of Poplar Bluff on figuring out exactly what that will look like.

“They will be conducting some kind of online, live streaming style gaming that you can interact with as well,” he said.