GeoCon began in the fall of 1992 at a meeting of the Evergreen State College Gaming Guild. At that time the Gaming Guild was still quite young and wondering what it could do to generate more interest. One of the members said "Hey, lets have a con!" Thus was GeoCon born. The convention is called GeoCon because the mascott of the Evergreen State College is a large Puget Sound Mollusk called the "geoduck." So naturally the con is named GeoCon (pronounced "Gooey-Con").
The first GeoCon was held on October 24th, 1992 in Library 4000. Officially this was known as GeoCon 0 (or "GeoCon Nought"). The con was put together within a week, with most of the work being done on no budget with only three days notice. There were approximately 70 attendees (myself included). The only events were a ShadowRun™ tournament run by Leif Wahlborg, a short costume contest (where I won "most annoying costume" for AJ Rimmer from Red Dwarf), and the ritual watching of Star Trek: The Next Generation™. It wasn't much for our first con, but it was judged a success by all.
Within a few weeks of GeoCon 0 the Gaming Guild was already planning for GeoCon 1, which was scheduled for April 2nd through 4th, 1993. This was the start of our scheduling woes due to other conventions in the Pacific Northwest. For the next few years we were always the week before, or the week after NorWesCon, arguably the largest Con in the Pacitic Northwest. Starting with GeoCon 4 we moved our date to the end of February to avoid this conflict.
Sadly, GeoCon is no more. GeoCon 8 was the last. But I plan to continue these pages and would also like to collect your individual Memories of GeoCon as well as any photos or memoribilia you might have.
