FigiGo Went To TwitchCon!

FigiGo went to TwitchCon Amsterdam... Here's what our experience was like!

As a startup the idea of going to such a huge event was daunting at first, there was so much to learn and prepare for the event but if one thing was certain it was that we would have a great debut event! In preparation for the event, we designed some cool showpiece models, designed a background for the booth and created a bunch of keyrings to giveaway (Which were super popular). Unfortunately a couple of days before the event our 3D printer decided it didn't want to work anymore so we couldn't print as many keyrings as planned. If you were at the event and didn't get your hands on one just email us and we can send you a keyring in your next order!

The FigiGo team flew out from Stansted on Friday and landed in Amsterdam around 10:30 pm ready for the most boujee taxi ride to the hotel. In Amsterdam, all taxis must be electric so our taxi was a tesla! By this point, we were all so ready for bed. We got to the hotel, had a walk around the block to wind down from the busy day then got right into bed.

As we were doing the event on a budget we found the cheapest 3-bed room which turned out to be 1 Hour away on TwtichCon. We needed to collect our Twitch Exhibitor passes, at 7AM. Which meant we were up and out of the hotel by 5:30AM. (Brad really wasn’t impressed about the minimal sleep.. In which he expressed his views for the whole day). We met Dawn, (aka our translator and photogragor) Collected our passes at 7AM sharp… but we weren't allowed into the Venue until 9AM? (Thanks Charlie) So naturally we headed to a local Cafè and grabbed some breakfast.

We headed to the Venue for 9AM, we were blown away by the booths already set up. The initial experience of walking around the venue while it was all quiet was surreal and would definitely be something that we won't be forgetting. This was a great opportunity to make our first vlog of the event and an even better opportunity to explore this incredible venue.

10am came around very fast and soon enough the venue was swarmed with people. We soon had to snap out of the amazement and put our game faces on! We all had such a lovely time meeting so many cool people, everyone had different stories of why they love the community.

It soon became obvious that the community was so open to new ideas/products as everyone gave us so much love for what we do. As we have worked so hard on FigiGo and TwitchCon it felt so rewarding seeing how passionate and excited people were getting about our products. Our booth was a bit tucked away in the corner of the event so we had Joe walking around in front of our booth with our articulated dragon which grabbed lots of peoples attention. Twitchcon provided an exhibitor lounge for us so whenever any of our team got hungry/thirsty or tired it was lovely to be able to take a quick time out to regenerate. The team knew it would be a long and tiring day but I think we were all surprised how draining it would get standing up, talking all day.

If the booth ever became quiet it was nice for some of the team to go and explore other booths which was great to make new contacts and to hear their experience in the industry. Everyone was super friendly and gave us plenty of advice on their experience and ideas for the future events.

As day 1 slowly came to a close the team packed up ready to celebrate a successful day. After the event closed we headed straight into town where uncanny.gg hosted an awesome after party. It was great to let our hair down and chat to more great people. Uncanny were so nice. We were so glad to have been invited. We made great friends with their team and loved chatting to them all night. If you haven't heard about uncanny before, they create tools for streamers to automatically make montages of their games and watch them live as they play using some very clever AI, if you are  streamer i would really recommend checking them out.

Our experience for the first day was so incredible, we headed home and got straight to sleep as we were all so tired after a 13 hour day. Our whole bodies ached and our social batteries were dead so on the way home the team was having a silent hour to relax lol.

On the second day we chose to wake up a bit later and get to the event around 8am instead (Brad was a little happier with this, although still not impressed). We initially thought the second day would be quieter but if anything it was actually even busier. We met loads of new amazing people and friendly faces from Saturday too. As we had a team size of 4 we generally kept 2 people at the booth while the other 2 explored other booths or relaxed in the exhibitor lounge to get energy back.

Day 2 went by too fast, before we knew it the event was over. This has made us so excited to go to comicon in October and hopefully we will get to witness another TwitchCon (Maybe even the NA TwitchCon if we're lucky). We packed up our booth, said goodbye to our neighbors and left to drop our stuff at the hotel. We had quick showers then headed straight back into Amsterdam for some food and drinks. We ended up at a lovely little Italian restaurant in the heart of Amsterdam which served some great food. We then left and went to a bar in the square, our team had a great final night celebrating a successful weekend.

On Monday we went out in the lovely weather to explore Amsterdam. We went to a lovely cafe for breakfast then to a really cool body museum which showcased preserved bodies. We got to their airport 3.5 hours early expecting a bit of a queue but what came next was something we would have never imagined. The queue for security covered both floors of the airport and out the front doors. We queued up for 3.5 hours then Joe got stopped by security to test the figurines. We had to sprint to our plane as we were already 15 mins late but luckily lots of people were very late so the plane waited an extra 30 mins for people. Short sprints like these really show how unfit we are hahaha.

We made it home safe and all reflected on such a great weekend. We can't wait to attend more events like these and see many more new friendly faces. This is just the beginning of FigiGo, we can't wait to see more of you guys in future events to come!

Check out our twitchcon vlog!