Month: June 2019

Pure Speculation is nigh! This Friday marks the Festival’s fifteenth year celebrating nerdery in Edmonton, and we’re excited to see everyone!

The panel and demo schedule is up now, and while there are always last minute adjustments it should remain pretty solid. There are some excellent panels you won’t want to miss. Our Guests of Honour are bringing you some truly exciting discussions and presentations. And all the panels surrounding the GoH presentations are strong, presented by local nerd experts.

And for the first time in a while, we have tabletop role-playing back at the Festival. You can sit in and play with our GoH Mike Perschon, or check out a game by local RPG designers Mikey Hamm and Cat Mcdonald. If you’d like to play in any of them we recommend emailing us to book your seat (pure.speculation@gmail.com), but you can certainly show up and take your chances. There will also be board games for you to grab and play if you just need to pass time between panels.

As well, Peter Daly from the Edmonton Reptile & Amphibian Society will join us to display some delightful creatures. This is their second year at the Festival, and we love having them and their animals out for folks to see and learn about. As we mention elsewhere, because they are displaying their animals we can’t allow outside animals into the Festival, excepting service animals.

A special treat for us and you: we overlap Dine the Ave this year! The 118^th Avenue area has some great restaurants, and Dine the Ave gives you some great deals at those places. So if you love nerdery and food, this is your chance to visit with us and then drop in at your favourite (or brand new) eatery to enjoy some of Edmonton’s best food.

Everything is shaping up to be a great Festival this year! I hope we’ll see you out, and if you have any questions in the meantime, you can catch us at pure.speculation@gmail.com.

See you Friday!

Hello, Spectacles! With Pure Speculation 2019 a few scant weeks away, I wanted to thank everyone who is taking part in the festival this year! We have an amazing day-and-a-half planned for you all, and I think you’re going to have a great time.

First, a big thank-you to our three Guests of Honour for 2019: Rhonda Parrish, Mike Perschon, and S.G. Wong.  I could gush for paragraphs about how amazing a trio of creativity they are. But I don’t have to because you’ll have a chance to see for yourself at the festival! Their panels are up on the 2019 Panels & Demos page. In addition, you’ll have a chance to play some role-playing games with Mike (and other area GMs) in our tabletop area in the Merchant Hall.

In addition to panels and events with our GoH, we have a line-up of other excellent panels, demos, and special events from community members. You can see some of them on the 2019 Panels & Demos page, with more coming. And we have room for a few more, so if you’d still like to present something at Pure Spec this year, please fill out the Panel/Event Proposal Form. Space is filling fast, though, so please don’t wait too much longer.

We also still have some tables available in our Merchant Hall! This has always been a popular part of the festival, getting nerdy artists, merchants, and social groups from around Edmonton in touch with all of you. You can check our current line-up on the webpage, and if you’d like to book a table of your own, please fill out the Vendor Registration Form. We’d love to have you!

Last but not least, a huge shout-out to our volunteers, all of whom help us run the festival smoothly and safely. This is a great option if you’d like to get a bit more hands on with your festival experience, and you can volunteer for as little as two hours. We have some excellent perks for our volunteers as well, which you can check out on the Volunteering page. There you’ll also find the form you need to fill out to volunteer for this year’s festival.

I’d also like to give a big thank-you to the Alberta Avenue Community League for hosting us again this year. They are a wonderful and accommodating community hall, and have been a great home for the festival for the last three years.

Check back on Friday, when I’ll talk about more about some special events we have going on at the festival this year! And as always, if you have any questions please contact us at pure.speculation@gmail.com.