The First XKCD Meetup
On September 23, 2007, the popular webcomic XKCD had its first meet-up. The date was given as an Easter egg in a normal strip, which gave the time, dated, latitude and longitude of a playground not for from the home of Randall Munroe, creator of XKCD on a Sunday afternoon in September. It was only 500 miles away, so the night before, two friends and I grabbed some snacks and jumped in the car. We left around 9 pm on Saturday night and found ourselves in Cambridge by 3 in the morning. We parked the car on an empty floor of a Brandeis University and slept in the car.In the morning we turned on the GPS to look for the playground of the get-together, stopping first for breakfast at Dunkin' Donuts. By 11 in the morning, we had arrived at the park with eyes full of wonder. The playground had been renamed in honor of the comic strip, and was decorated with various references and homages to the strip. There were only a handful of people there, who we found to be nerds from as close as Cambridge, and as far away as Russia. We dropped in-references to the strip, made nerdy jokes, and generally had a blast.
At 2:38pm, the appointed time, Randall Munroe, the strip's creator, showed up. The crowd of several hundred nerds seemed to bewilder the parents and their tots at the playground for a relaxed day at the park. There was nerdiness and zaniness, things were autographed, friendships were made, and a good time was had by all. Nearly everybody was super-friendly and just prepared to share a good time. After the meet-up, photos were posted on Flickr.com under the tag "XKCD meetup". The forums were still abuzz about the meet up for weeks following.
It was probably the most fun meet-up of strangers I had ever attended, and what makes it better is that it was all grassroots organized and free to attend. People brought what they thought would make others happy, and took delight at their fellow fans' joy. If I took two things away from this trip, its that fandom is a great unitor of people, and that internet forums can be an incredibly powerful and free organizational tool.
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