Writer, Agilist, Elder Geek
Behold, the Hall of Education! Go forth and learn!
OK, that sounds corny. No, I wouldn't use that introduction for . . well anything . . . but that's what I've christened an professional-geek oriented Idea I want to suggest for your conventions.
The Hall of Education (come on work with me here).
I hear the term "Media Con" be used more and more lately to refer to those cons that are just, well . . . everything. You know a con may have started as SF, or fantasy, or anime but after awhile it's about many media in all but name. Comic cons are certainly evolving into "geek media", and there's cons dedicated to broad media interests, or broad but specific slices (such as pulp fiction, etc.).
So in my roundup of the way cons can go farther, of course I had to speculate on what the more general/media conventions can do for career events. This includes those cons that were always general media or evolving that way.
Gaming conventions are the peculiar state these days. They have a long, honorable, interesting history. Yet, in a time of computer games, they may seem a bit outdated to some outside of the fandom (at least to those outside the fandom). I also have seen, at least in my area, a revival of interest in non-electronic gaming, making me wonder what trends this portends.
Now, as I've been recently addressing ideas on how various kinds of conventions can “go farther” (thanks to Convention Career Connection), gaming–oriented conventions are really interesting to speculate on. They are, in many ways, traditional and focused. Yet, in other ways gaming has such a long history of innovation and change, such a long history of interesting people developing unique entertainment, there's also a lot to talk about career-wise.
(I should note, in order to talk about gaming, I am focusing on cons that deal with war-gaming, pen-and-paper RPG, etc. Video Game events will fall under another essay.)