ETSUCON, my beloved

Located in Johnson City, TN, ETSUCon is a smaller student-run pop culture convention on East Tennessee State University campus. ETSU is where I went to school, and it offers tickets free to students and relatively cheap to the public, this year being $45 for the full 2 days. It's a local event for me that I try to do every year I can. Here are my thoughts after completing the 2026 show.

Attendees and staff

While it's never been a PACKED event, ETSUCon has always been a slow-and-steady kind of event, where you get rushes every now and then but the majority of the time there's enough breathing room to actually speak to attendees that come up. I can talk about their cosplays, show off what I'm drawing, and direct their attention around my table depending on what they seem interested in. While back-to-back sales are always nice from a financial standpoint, it's also very overwhelming and hard to keep track of sales, and almost impossible to have any meaningful dialogue with attendees. I really value the general attitude of the congoers as well, since its a majority of young-adults who understand the value of creative works and usually have had experience serving the general public themselves, so they treat the artists with respect and kindness. This is absolutely reinforced by the staffers who are extremely attentive, making rounds to check on artists without helpers in case they need water, and volunteers offering to help with setup/breakdown to make things easier. 

The staffing itself is an interesting topic. Since its student run there is usually a few veteran staff members that have done previous years, but it seems the majority of staff is actually student volunteers. I've done this event a few times now and it seems the main event head is finally retiring (Bless Nick and all his hard work) and the previous vendor coordinator Ace is taking over. Shifts in leadership usually make me a bit nervous, but based on my interactions over the years, I have no doubt that Ace will do a great job playing ringleader to this strange circus. Throughout the weekend they were introduced to the vendors as "blue hair, pronouns, cane", which while of course it got giggles, it shows me that staff is especially attentive to being inclusive and accepting since it literally affects them too. Not that I've ever had an issue, in fact ETSUCon is one of the very few events where I have NEVER faced any bigotry or accessibility issues throughout the event.  

Merch talk

This year ETSUCon had 4 celebrity guests, 2 of which directly aligned with my table and interests. Chris Tergliafera (Gundham Tanaka and Ryoma Hoshi from Danganronpa) and Sarah Anne Williams (Sayaka Miki from Madoka Magicka) were announced so I stocked up on my Danganronpa buttons and made two new Madoka prints to help bring attention to my Madoka buttons. Chris was an absolute pleasure to meet and I ended up getting an autograph and gifting him one of my Gundham buttons. The businessman in me says its good to network myself within my niche and market myself to guests to make them unique prints for their autograph booths, its also uniquely fulfilling to gift someone artwork that I made inspired by them and see genuine excitement. It feels reaffirming in a way that's hard to explain. 

Funnily enough, my best selling print this weekend was a brand new one inspired by my new cat Dongle. My "I am on the verge" print sold the most out of any item aside from my adopts (which I'll get to in a moment), which shows me that my audience loves my shitpost content. While cute/sexy illustrations are fun to flex my skills, part of the joy of the content I produce is that its funny. Many of the series I make artwork for may not entirely be comedies, but its usually something with levity and comedic moments. I think going toward I'm going to lean into this with more "silly" merch going forward, especially stickers!

Speaking of best sellers, my mystery fursona badge adopts were an absolute hit. I planned to make 20 badges to sell, actually finished 16, and I was completely sold out of all of them about halfway through Sunday with folks coming back for more after they were all gone. It's so fun just making little characters for folks, and the joy when they open it is unparalleled. I definitely want to do more of these, and keeping them at $25 each seems to be a sweet spot where they still move quickly. I hesitate to raise them higher and lose the impulse value, but I also want to experiment with things like holographic laminate or unique hardware, so I may do some "premium" mystery badges for a higher price point that are, say, guaranteed fullbody and at least one unique effect? I'm unsure exactly what so far, but it's something I want to play with. 

My criticisms

My main concern is, as always, the layout of the vendor call. Due to constraints behind the scenes, the vendor hall has remained a single relatively-small room of roughly 30 vendors in a circular formation from the entrance doors to the exit. One path follows the perimeter of the room from door to door with vendors on either side of you, while an inner circle of vendors is accessed through two openings near the exit. Think of it as three rings of tables: an innermost center circle with their backs all facing each other, a semicircle ring of tables back to back to each other, and a final outer semicircle of tables with their backs to the outer wall.

I was in the inner semicircle, facing the center of the room situated in a corner. When I'd first arrived I was a bit concerned about getting around my table as part of my table was directly blocked by the other corner, but staff quickly took action and shifted things around so everyone had space and no one has blocked. While I still did very well, my location definitely lead to many people walking by my table without even glancing my way, since the walkway from my corner to the tables across me was much wider than the rest of the aisles, but I don't see a way to combat that without expanding their hall. I'm not involved with staff at all behind the scenes so I'm unsure exactly what their options are, but for the moment it seems this will continue to be the layout. 

Wrap up

All in all while I wouldn't recommend ETSUCon for someone that has to travel long distances and get a hotel, its an amazing opportunity for a local artist to showcase their work to your local community and work yourself up to larger events.