Comic Con brings family and friends together, especially this year.

Since securing a four-day Comic Con pass with preview night included, I have been making plans to meet up with people from all walks of my life. It dawned on me today that even if I don’t go, Comic Con bears a huge impact on my life both socially and familialy. 

I know my home is prime real estate for going to Con (for those with cars at least). So I have always wanted to house friends during their stay rather than having them pay astronomical prices for a downtown or Mission Valley hotel. Well… this is the year.

I have friends from college staying over for Friday night that I haven’t seen in  nearly two years. Then I have a cousin who works at the zoo (practically next door to where I work and live) who I haven’t seen in at least two years, as well, that I hope I’ll connect with. Plus there are dozens of other friends I hope to run into at this monstrous event. You say, that’s nearly impossible… friends usually get lost from each other in the mayhem, not find each other.

Well, this year Comic Con is stepping things up a bit. You can pre-plan what events you plan to attend and share them with your friends in the social media of your choice. I love the fact I can directly compare my friends’ schedules with my own making it more likely that we will actually meet up.

A couple of downsides to the way they have it set up:

1. You can only sign in with one social media site… which mean that if I am signed in through Twitter, I can not see what my friends who signed in through facebook are doing. Lame but I sort of get it. I wish there was a way to tie the two together. Let me know if you somehow figured this out.
2. The app for the iPhone/iTouch they created has a lot of bugs and does not include many of the “My Schedule” functions. Again, I understand they were working under a short time frame, but I think they shouldn’t have built it half ass. It is better to have no app, than a crappy one.

With my few complaints out-of-the-way, I am truly excited to reconnect with my family and friends in this mega-event of the year. Thank you Comic Con!