In many circles, Dragon Con is legendary. Held every year in Atlanta, Dragon Con is a fandom epicenter where people from around the world gather to celebrate their unique and shared passions for pop-culture. The convention organizers actively welcome a broad swath of interests across sci-fi and fantasy, movies and music, comics and fan-fiction. From cosplay to gaming and from music to tech, there is a huge variety of topics and interests available to explore.
This might seem like an unusual place to find Doug Soltis, a distinguished UF professor and curator here at the Florida Museum. It was his third year attending, and he was excited to dress up and do some outreach.
This year’s five-day convention boasted an attendance of roughly 72,000 people. Mixed in with the gaming tournaments, costume contests, film screenings, musical performances and markets, there are workshops and panels for guests to deep dive into special interests.
In partnership with UF’s Digital Worlds Institute, Pam and Doug Soltis, along with the Museum’s Rob Guralnick and Mississippi State University’s Ryan Folk, recently released TreeTender2, a follow up to the first TreeTender short film.
During this year’s Science Track at the convention in Atlanta, Doug showed TreeTender and then joined Darius Brown from UF’s Digital Worlds Institute in a panel discussion with attendees.
Last year, Doug, Pam, Rob and Ryan attended Dragon Con together for outreach, and Doug and Pam have traveled with the TreeTender movies at a wide variety of events. We’re excited to see where they appear next!
More
- Florida Museum: Soltis Lab
- TreeTender.org Home
- UF College of the Arts: Digital Worlds Institute