So, who are you guys?
We’re an NGO from Rijeka, Croatia, founded in 2005 with a simple mission statement: gather local geeks into one place, have fun and organize a con.
Rikon 2017 organizers and volunteers with GoH Emma Newman and Peter Newman
That’s it?
Well, in short. But since you asked…
Over the years we’ve had many projects and initiatives, from a campaign to include Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings in elementary/high school curriculum to participating in promotional events for local premieres of Lord of the Rings films and Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. We also participated in the promotional campaign for a renowned local SF author, Zoran Krušvar’s dark fantasy Izvršitelji nauma gospodnjeg, for which we made several music videos inspired by stories from the book. We also participated in the International Tabletop Day global event and had provided regular gaming & quiz events at a popular local café.
Our flagship event is Rikon convention, which will in 2020 proudly bear the title of that year’s Eurocon – something we’re very thrilled about.
Between 2014 and 2015 we organized Mjesec Fantastike (Fantasy Month), especially aimed at children and youth, with events ranging from creative workshops (from origami to fairy and dragon wings) to literary events in cooperation with City library to lectures on and demonstrations of medieval armor and sword fighting techniques.
3D and filming workshop at Mjesec fantastike 2015
We’ve been publishing a fanzine Eridan, whose 20th issue came out for Rikon 2017. Eridan‘s aim has always been to provide an entry point for new authors and artists and provide them with exposure – and we’re very proud that works that appeared in Eridan had over the years received multiple nominations and even won several Croatian genre awards. In the past several years we’ve opened it up to foreign submissions – and we’ve discovered foreign authors find it totally cool to have their stories translated and published in such a small language as Croatian.
We also give out the Artefakt genre award for literature and special achievements in fandom, and we’ve cooperated several times with the local children’s library on the version of the award for children’s genre fiction.
Artefakt 2017 winners
In short, we’re just a bunch of geeks who love what we do and we think we’ve gotten quite good at it.