Way back in 2010, I was chatting with my friend Tyler Dion about something we’d noticed and talked about: Vermont was home to a whole bunch of geek-related events — gaming days, literary events, author readings, museum workshops, and so forth — but there was no one place where you could find it all. Thus, Geek Mountain State was born. The site has been a fun experience in the time since it started, but now, it’s time for it to come to a close.
The reasons here are entirely practical: time. When we started this site, I was working a desk job and had plenty of free time in my off-hours to troll through the local corners of the internet to find neat things (I’ve always seen it as a micro-version of io9). Fast-forward nine years, and everything is completely different. I’ve left that desk job to become a journalist — really, doing some of the same things on a much bigger scale — I’m working on writing a book, I have a family, and have a bunch of other projects in the works and on my plate, and over the last couple of years, the site has become less and less of a priority. I haven’t been able to keep the site up and running to the extent that I’d want to, so the time has come to shut things down.
I’m not going to delete the site, but I am going to close down the @GeekMtnState Twitter feed and the Facebook page at some point in the near future. If you want to keep up with what I’m personally up to, you can follow me at @AndrewLiptak or on Facebook. You can follow Tyler on Twitter at @Blinovitch.
This site started as a sort of clearing-house for all things Geek in Vermont, but it became something else for me entirely. We ran a whole bunch of events with the Vermont SF Writer’s Series, had a bunch of in-person gatherings, promoted and helped run other events, and covered the ups and downs of the Vermont nerd scene. I’ve met a ton of people through local conventions, Twitter, our own events, and random encounters.
Through this site, I’ve met some of my best friends that I’ve ever had. It’s helped me learn how to write a lot of copy for the web, and helped me figure out how to write a short story or two. I want to think that we played a tiny role in helping connect fans to local authors, or to introduce someone to a game night or cosplay or something else that they now enjoy. It’s certainly done that for me.
Thanks for reading!
Geek Mountain State 