My name is Kevin Bachelder and I’ve attended Dragon Con every year since 2005. I founded the Dragon Con Newbies Facebook discussion group back in 2011 to help a few friends who were coming to con for the first time. The group is a newbie friendly place to ask questions about how to get the most out of your Dragon Con experience. Over the past thirteen years we’ve grown to more than 8,300 members and we now have a team of people (group admins Sue Kisenwether, Kim McGibony, Michael Falkner and myself along with several group moderators) helping to run the group. We have a great mix of experienced con attendees as well as many newer attendees so there are several people there to help out their fellow con goers who are new or newish to the con. All con related questions are welcome. No need to worry whether your question has been asked before.
You can find the group here – https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragonconnewbies/
Please keep in mind that this is a fan run group. We are NOT an official Dragon Con resource.
We put on several events at the convention each year to help out the newbies. We do walking & rolling tours of the convention as well as Q&A sessions. The events below will also be listed in the official con program and smartphone app.
Here are our 2024 events for newbies –
Thursday (noon-4pm) Newbie Walking & Rolling Tours –
https://www.facebook.com/events/8184886464903049
Thursday (4pm-5pm) Newbie Q&A Panel –
https://www.facebook.com/events/481636218117671
Friday (10am-11am) Newbie Q&A Panel –
https://www.facebook.com/events/826406809600229/
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If you’ve been coming to Dragon Con for more than 5 years and would like to help us out by being a tour guide on Thursday afternoon please check out the link below for more details and a signup form…
https://bit.ly/newbietourguidesignup
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Below is a list of just a few of the most helpful resources about Dragon Con. Many more are shared regularly in the newbies Facebook group.
Please keep in mind that Dragon Con is a fan run convention so while it would be great if all the helpful information was in one place the reality is that the community at large is the best resource for helpful tips, advice and information. Therefore, things are often spread out over several websites. Some official and some not.
Official sites –
Dragon Con website – http://www.dragoncon.org
Review the fan tracks page (http://dragoncon.org/?q=fan-tracks-view) for information about the different programming tracks. There are also links to the tracks individual websites, Facebook pages, etc. Dragon Con is like having 40+ different conventions all happening at the same time and in the same place.
Review the guest list (https://www.dragoncon.org/people-to-see-2/guests/) regularly as new guests are added on an almost daily basis as we get closer to the convention. There’s even a link there to sort the list by announcement date so you can see the newest additions easily.
For information on disability services at con you can find lots of helpful information here.
The official Dragon Con Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/DragonConOfficial/) and discussion group (https://www.facebook.com/groups/officialdragoncon/) can be great resources. Keep in mind that the discussion group is a large community (53,000+ members) covering a wide variety of topics. In late 2020 the con also set up a Discord server that you can find here.
Unofficial sites –
We did a newbies tips panel as part of Dragon Con Goes Virtual for the 2020 online con. You can watch it on Dragon Con’s Official Facebook page – here.
Here’s a quick 2 minute video that can give you and your friends an idea what Dragon Con is really like – What is DRAGON CON?
The Unique Geek podcast (http://www.theuniquegeek.com) does a series of podcasts and blog posts every year beginning in July called “50 Days Of DragonCon” where they do interviews with track directors and other people connected to the con.
The ESO Dragon Con Report (https://www.dragonconreport.com/) is a monthly podcast series from the folks at the ESO podcast. They discuss all kinds of topics related to con.
If you need to contact us please send us an email at info [at] dragonconnewbies.org.
Hope to see you at con!