San Jose embraces Comic Con built to specs of Silicon Valley
Growing event isn’t focused on Hollywood hype
Silicon Valley Comic Con was a success in its first year in 2016 — perhaps too much of a success.
The convention’s CEO Trip Hunter remembers his panic on Saturday, the busiest of the three days last April, when costumed conventiongoers were arriving faster than ticketing could process them. The event’s social media team tracked Hunter down, reporting, “It’s starting to go negative.”
“I ran outside and saw that line — it looked like there were 4- to 5,000 people there,” Hunter said. “I knew there was a Rite Aid a couple of blocks away, I just ran and bought cases of water. I came back, walked the line handing out water, and just let people vent.”
The story captures a lot about SVCC, which returns to the San Jose Convention Center from Friday to Sunday, April 21-23. Even as it scales up for 2017 — events this year will expand to nearby halls, and also a park — it’s a convention that plans to retain the personal local touches.
Part of that is the will of Steve Wozniak, the Apple co-founder who backed the convention, insisting on a science and technology mission.
Part of it is the decision not to court Hollywood studios. While Silicon Valley Comic Con will host stars including William Shatner, “Star Trek’s” original Captain Kirk; Grant Gustin of the hit series “Flash”; and ’80s stars John Cusack and Robert Englund, best known as Freddy Krueger from “The Nightmare on Elm Street” horror films, as well as most of the cast of “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” it won’t be focused on promoting future superhero movies like Comic-Con International in San Diego.
San Jose has embraced the Silicon Valley Comic Con and its mission to also highlight science and tech leaders as if real superheroes were descending on the San Jose Convention Center.
San Jose Councilwoman Dev Davis, a mother of preteen children, was tapped to lead a ceremony this week proclaiming “Silicon Valley Comic Con Day.” Officials agreed to raise the SVCC flag over San Jose City Hall. It was a far cry from San Francisco, which repeatedly evacuated WonderCon because of alleged fire code violations.
“For San Jose, we love events like this. We love the opportunity for people to see our city,” Davis said. “I think it’s a fantastic way to merge technology and pop culture here.”
Last year’s convention was already an opportunity to discover San Jose, a city that doesn’t get its cultural due. With limited food options in the hall, costumed revelers walked several blocks to find sustenance. Davis said the annual convention rivaled Super Bowl 50 for impact on the local economy.
For 2017, the convention will spill into the city, fulfilling Wozniak and Hunter’s dream for a TED conference-meets-South by Southwest experience. The Civic Auditorium, which seats about 3,000 and is a block away from the convention center, will act as one of the main conference halls. Cesar Chavez Park will be fenced off for exhibits and movie screenings — including a 20th anniversary celebration of the movie “Contact,” with SETI Institute astronomer Jill Tarter (the inspiration for Jodie Foster’s lead character) providing commentary.
This year’s theme is “The Future of Humanity.” Hunter thought finding and booking scientists would be his hardest job at Silicon Valley Comic Con, but he said astronomers, physicists and other science superstars have been enormously receptive to the question: Where will humanity be in 2075?
“When you start asking a bunch of scientists and futurists and technologists that question, they love it,” Hunter said. “There’s no right or wrong. They get to expound on where they think things will be. I think the same thing happens when popular culture and popular media imagines the future. It’s about imagination and creativity.”
It also ties in nicely to Bay Area convention history. The second major science fiction convention in the Bay Area — the Star Trek Space and Science Convention at the Oakland Municipal Auditorium in 1976 — combined “Star Trek” stars with NASA scientists and astronauts, including Al Worden.
The NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View is a sponsor of the 2017 Silicon Valley Comic Con, and Shatner, now 83, was the headliner for the 1976 convention and will appear at his second SVCC. And then there’s astronaut Buzz Aldrin, second human to walk on the moon, who is slated to appear at this year’s convention.
Hunter, a longtime marketing executive who worked with Wozniak at Fusion-io computer hardware and software company, gets more than a little awestruck at the mention of Aldrin. He mentions a framed photo his mother took when Aldrin landed on the moon in 1969, of 7-year-old Hunter in a bathrobe watching the event on television.
The convention has grown quickly to one of the Bay Area’s bigger cultural events, but he hopes it always remains personal.
“I hope that exists on some level for everybody who goes there,” Hunter said.
Peter Hartlaub is The San Francisco Chronicle’s pop culture critic. Email: phartlaub@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @PeterHartlaub