Ryan Millsap, Chairman & CEO of Atlanta-based Blackhall Studios, is one of today’s top entertainment executives! With a vision for Blackhall that’s ambitious, energizing and boundless, Millsap is blazing a trail through the heart of the South – and setting his sights on the future of entertainment. Listen and learn as Ryan Millsap journeys through the myriad industries, people and landscapes that traverse the complex and dynamic world of film production.
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Ryan: Welcome to the Blackhall Podcast. I'm Ryan Millsap, the chairman and CEO of Blackhall. Today we have Jess Merriman, the founder of MomoCon -- the huge anime conference that takes place here in Atlanta in the spring. We're excited to have her on. It's incredible, the kind of growth that you have seen with MomoCon.
Jess: Yeah, it's been exciting. We started out with about 700 people on the Georgia Tech campus 15, 16 years ago, and now we're over 40,000 in unique attendance.
Ryan: That's amazing. Tell me a little bit about your background with anime. Where that came in your life, and where that passion was born.
Jess: Sure. I've been a gamer my whole life, but anime was a later-in-life type thing that I got into, I guess, in late high school / early college. I got really into it in college. I found a lot of social connection there with people who were into the medium. I've always appreciated animation as a medium. But anime is kind of special and unique, and I got really into it. I appreciate the art style; I appreciate the differences -- because it's a medium more than a genre. A lot of people think it's a genre, but it's way more complex than that. And I've met a ton of people through it that are just great people -- really excited fans.
Ryan: Tell me more about the complexity. It's not a world that I know a lot about -- anime.
Jess: Sure. A lot of people think of anime specifically as, “I'm watching a horror movie, so I expect things from a horror movie. I'm watching an anime, so I expect things from an anime.” Whereas anime is more analogous to movies in general. There's a lot of different genres. There's adult oriented things, there's kid oriented things; there's avant-garde animation, there's really cookie-cutter type stuff; it varies a lot. A lot of that doesn't make it to the US or doesn't get as much prominence in the US, but it's all there, and there's a lot of different flavors of it.
Ryan: We’ve got Mitch Leff here as well, from PR Wizards here in Atlanta.
Mitch: Good day to you.
Ryan: Yeah. Glad you're here.
Mitch: Thanks for having me.
Ryan: What have you seen relative to the growth of anime in the US?
Mitch: Well, I'm not as much an expert as Jess is on anime. I grew up with some of the older Japanese shows, but Jess has been pushing me to get myself updated. So I've been on Netflix, kind of catching up on some things, and it's some fun stuff. I probably had a 30-year gap in my anime attention. But I'm catching up.
Ryan: Are you doing all the PR for MomoCon?
Mitch: We're doing the PR for MomoCon. This would be the third year that we've been working with them.
Jess: And they're great.
Mitch: Really looking forward to another great year. And we'll talk about some of the cool new things that are happening this year. But it's great to have a fun client that has so many interesting things going on -- so many visuals, so many different elements. It really gives us a lot of different ways to tell the story -- with television, with radio, with newspapers, and with online media outlets.
Ryan: I mean, it's fascinating to me that tens of thousands of people all come to Atlanta to explore their love of this particular “not-genre.”
Jess: Medium.
Ryan: Medium. What are some of the emotional elements that you think bond people over this medium?
Jess: Well, I think this is true of any kind of shared fandom, but more so I think in this space, because there's not a lot of broad appeal for this fandom. People who are into things like anime and games -- more anime than games, certainly -- don't find a lot of people in their everyday life that are watching it. Their parents are probably not watching it; their friends may or may not be watching it. It just depends. So, finding a group of people that shares that similarity and having the social aspect of it, being able to connect with them on a on a fundamental level about things that you enjoy is something that they don't always get. And it's really appreciated when they come out to it. Having that face-to-face interaction, having unique experiences together.
Mitch: I love watching the people and going. I've been to Dragon Con for years, and MomoCon for the last couple of years, just watching the people. And I mentioned to Jess a couple years ago that, about a month before MomoCon -- they have a couple of different Facebook pages -- you start seeing the people who are doing the cosplay, and they are so into it. So excited; so committed to it. There's some very technical conversations that go on about, you know, “what about this for this costume,” and “how do I do this for this costume?” I mean, you can talk more to that, right?
Jess: It's a whole different experience if you're a fan of a character. If you're a fan of, let's say, Captain America, it's one thing to be a fan of Captain America. It's another thing to make an entire costume of Captain America -- to go through that process, put the blood, sweat and tears into it, and show that off -- and have people stop you that are thrilled, absolutely thrilled, to meet you. Just because you are dressing as a character that you either love, or you personally identify with, or you really appreciate. There's tons of that at the event. Tons of it.
Ryan: So, MomoCon: break some of it down for me. Like, what are the events? What are the things people participate in? I mean, obviously they're not just coming to walk around and see each other -- which is one of the things that’s probably fun; the social aspect -- but what are the elements that make up MomoCon?
Jess: There's a lot of different elements. I would be here all day if I described every single one of them. But we have a focus on three main branches: animation, gaming, and comics. And we have things related to those three. We have professionals who work on animation. We have voice actors from animated properties -- both English and Japanese. We have creators of video games. We have a whole indie game showcase. We have video game tournaments. A huge arcade. We have the second-largest game hall of any event in the entire United States. And it's about to get bigger, too -- which is a scary thought, because we're about to move to a bigger venue in 2020.
Mitch: That's this year: 2020. That's now.
Jess: I know. It's so close. Don’t remind me.
Mitch: How much bigger are we going to be?
Jess: We are almost doubling the size of our space. We're moving from Hall A in the Georgia World Congress Center to Hall B.
Ryan: What's that change? How many square feet?
Jess: The exhibit floor alone, not counting the three floors and the Omni event space, is going from about 350,000 to over 600,000ft² worth of space. And we're using the four floors above it, including the huge Thomas Murphy Ballroom that seats 4500 on the top floor.
Ryan: How do you keep up with this project? I mean, this thing is massive. How many people are organizing MomoCon?
Jess: We have a fleet of volunteers. Over a thousand volunteers, day-of. And it's very exciting. Then we have a leadership infrastructure. But myself and the co-chair, Christopher Stuckey, are the main folks behind it.
Ryan: Is this a full-time job now? Like, you finish one MomoCon, then roll right over and start planning the next one?
Jess: We're actually already planning for several years out. We have things in place already for 2021, in conversations before now -- well before 2020’s event. We have a five-year plan, and we have a growth trajectory. Even though we've got all this new space, we're already thinking about how we grow into Hall C on the bottom level, because they're all connected. The Georgia World Congress Center actually has really good space -- contiguous space -- in all three halls that can be connected on the bottom floor.
Ryan: So, this passion project from when you were an undergraduate at Georgia Tech has just rolled right over into an entire career.
Jess: I wouldn't have expected it when we started, for sure. We had really good access to the Georgia Tech Student Center the first year, and we were like, “I bet we could do something fun.” So we did. And then it was really successful. Then it got even more successful. It was terrifying for a while -- and it's still kind of terrifying, I'll be honest. And then we moved to the downtown space. Honestly, when we started moving to the downtown spaces, we started thinking bigger: like, “if this is not going to stop growing, let's plan for it.” So, when we moved downtown, we got the opportunity through the CVB -- Convention Visitors Bureau -- here in Atlanta to look at the Georgia World Congress Center as an option -- earlier than we thought we were going to be able to, with their help. And it was really great, because we could move in immediately when we moved in in 2015. We've been plagued by space issues our whole entire history. We run out of space really quickly because our growth is very, very large. So immediately we moved in. In 2015, we started the conversations about, “what does it mean to get bigger space?” and talked about Hall B, and now it's actually happening.
Ryan: Where does MomoCon rank among anime conferences?
Jess: Well, technically, we're not generally judged alongside anime conferences in top-ten lists and things like that, because we're not purely anime; we're multi-genre. But if you were to rank us in the anime space, we would either be number two or number three, depending on who's counting.
Ryan: So, are there other conferences that you compare yourself to? What's your competition?
Jess: We cross a lot of genres, so there's a lot of competition in different places. Anime conventions are one vertical that we sort of compete with. Gaming conventions are a vertical we sort of compete with. Comic cons are definitely a vertical that we compete with, and we have friendly relationships with a lot of the local area conventions.
Ryan: So, what does ‘Momo’ mean?
Jess: ‘Momo’ means ‘peach.’ And we’re in Georgia. The Peach State.
Ryan: Oh, I love this.
Mitch: I love explaining that to people.
Ryan: So ‘Momo’ means ‘peach’ in Japanese.
Jess: It does. And we thought it was cute. It sounds adorable.
Ryan: It's very cute.
Mitch: Well, one of the things we should talk about is the career fair, because that's so important, especially as the industry grows in Georgia. We try to train people and educate people for careers in this industry. Let's talk about that a little bit.
Jess: Yeah, absolutely. On Thursday we started doing a career fair. It's for game media and entertainment spaces primarily, and we welcome a lot of Atlanta-based companies out to it. It's been very successful. We have several hundred job applicants that come out each year, and it's very, very popular. It was a way that we wanted to try to give back; to help people get into these industries that they're so invested in, from a fan perspective.
Ryan: Do you by chance know the folks at the Georgia Film Academy?
Mitch: Yeah, I know them.
Ryan: Well, Jeff Stepakoff -- I saw him the other day, and he was telling me about how they're developing a parallel track to the film track for gaming. I think it'd be great for you guys to get to know each other.
Jess: I think it would, too.
Mitch: Yeah, I'll connect you guys.
Jess: That'd be great.
Ryan: I think you'll find that they have wonderful ins to the education community and ways to start integrating gaming -- gaming thinking and training -- into high schools, colleges, et cetera. You know, it's funny -- when we talk about Georgia Tech, I've recently been having a lot of conversations with people about the fact that, I think, Georgia Tech should start a very serious film program, and that Georgia Tech could be poised to create one of the premier film programs in the world.
Jess: I think that's an interesting idea. I actually took a film class when I was at Georgia Tech, and I enjoyed it a lot.
Ryan: Was it a film theory class, or it was a technical film class?
Jess: Film theory.
Ryan: It was film theory. See, what I think that Georgia Tech has an amazing opportunity to do is to become the premier technical film school.
Jess: It makes sense.
Ryan: Right -- where you're talking about animation. Post-production. All the special effects that get layered in. And training up the kind of minds that you know are at Georgia Tech, that would naturally relate.
Jess: Well, I think I think that's a good vertical. I know Georgia Tech, several years ago, added a computational media program that kind of touches on some of that space. And I think that would be a good way for them to have an option within that program. I think it sounds great.
Ryan: So, when you talk about MomoCon, where are people coming from? Is this something where the whole world is gathering in Atlanta?
Jess: Not, not quite the whole world. But a lot of people from a lot of places -- a huge percentage is within driving distance, just because our event is primarily regional. But we have people from all states in the United States, and we have somewhere between 15 and 20 countries that come out, largely for our large-scale Smash Bros. fighting game tournament. We have people from all over the world competing in that. The top players in the world.
Ryan: Smash Bros. is a particular...
Jess: It's a game on the Nintendo Switch, and Smash Bros. Ultimate is the current incarnation. And we have made what's considered a ‘major’ in the Smash scene. So, it's one of the biggest tournaments in the world. People come from Japan or Mexico.
Ryan: For what kind of prize? Money? Prizes?
Jess: Right now, it's a $10,000 prize pool, for the entire event. And we do the finals on our main stage. It’s broadcast on Twitch, and it's pretty cool.
Ryan: Tell me a little bit about the financials. How this works. Like, what does somebody pay to come to MomoCon?
Jess: Sure. Right now, it's anywhere from $35 to -- I think our price tier is at 68 right now. 68 would be the earlybird price tier for all four days, inclusive. And then single days are priced individually. People can come and participate in almost all of the events within Momocon for no extra charge. The only things that have extra charges are some workshops -- which charge fees for materials. Some of the fighting game tournaments have about a $10 buy-in, and that goes toward the prize pool. And then some of the autographs from the guests have a fee, but some of them don't.
Ryan: What kind of guests are going to be there?
Jess: Well, right now we've announced some big guests in the gaming and animation space. We've announced people from the popular show ‘Achievement Hunter’ on Rooster Teeth's network. We've announced Phil LaMarr, who's a really accomplished voice actor who's in a million things. He's the voice of Samurai Jack. He's in ‘Futurama.’ He's Static Shock, for those people that like 90’s nostalgia shows. Recently, we announced the voices of Mickey Mouse and Goofy -- the people that are currently the official voices for Disney, which is pretty cool. And we have a whole bunch more coming.
Ryan: Who is that? Do you know, off the top of your head?
Jess: Oh, yeah. Mickey Mouse is a guy named Bret Iwan, and Goofy is Bill Farmer. It's the 25th anniversary of ‘A Goofy Movie.’ So we also have the voice of Max, Goofy’s son: Jason Marsden. Forgive me if I said his name wrong. So, we'll have a miniature cast reunion for that. We have a couple of other cast reunions coming up as well, coming down the pipe, but I can't talk about them till I get the guest sign.
Ryan: What parts of MomoCon are the parts that you get to totally geek out on? The parts that you’re most excited about?
Jess: My favorite part is the end, when I can stop stressing so much.
Ryan: Ha!
Jess: But I usually take time to do something fun. The arcades -- specifically, the Japanese arcades -- they have a lot of weird, wild games that you're just not going to get to play anywhere else.
Ryan: Tell me some of them. I've never been to a Japanese arcade.
Jess: It's crazy. So, you think about things like DDR, where people are stomping with their feet on the machine; that's pretty standard and typical. But they have one called Dance Rush, where it's just a whole flat floor, and you're dancing on it, and it's registering where your feet are instead of specific arrows. They've got one called Scotto, which sounds really simple. It's kind of like beer pong, the arcade game, where you’ve got little ping pong balls and you have to bounce them off of different things to get them in a hole -- and it's surprisingly really fun. A lot of rhythm games. There's one called U-Beat where you've got a cube of lit-up squares, and you have to hit them in a certain order; the order keeps getting faster, and it's really fun. And then they have racing cabinets like ‘Initial D,’ where you're car racers that are very high tech.
Ryan: Do you think the Japanese are more fun than us?
Jess: Depends. Their entertainment is kind of fun, but I've been to Japan several times, and their day-to-day life is definitely very...
Ryan: Structured?
Jess: Structured is a good way to put it.
Ryan: But you think that they find ways to let their inner child out?
Jess: Yeah, absolutely.
Mitch: I like the classic arcade games. That's what I love.
Ryan: You mean like 1942? Galaga? Mrs. Pac-Man?
Mitch: Yeah.
Jess: I love Burger Time.
Mitch: Pinball machines.
Ryan: I love Nibbler. Do you remember the game Nibbler?
Jess: Oh, no, I never played Nibbler.
Ryan: Where you're the snake that grows as you eat things? But you have to make sure that you don't run into yourself.
Mitch: Yeah, I do remember that one.
Ryan: You bring all these kinds of old classic games; set these up. And that's part of this.
Jess: It is. We work with several partners. We're actually working with a whole new arcade partner this year for the rhythm games because they're so popular. The lines have gotten too long, so we're doubling the size of that section of the arcade.
Ryan: Rhythm games -- like DDR. Is that what you mean?
Jess: DDR is a good example. Anything that that's rhythm based. A lot of them are Japanese, but we also have sit-down cabinets for fighting games, for things like Tekken or Street Fighter; things like that.
Ryan: I've definitely played Dance Dance Revolution with my daughters. They love that so much; they think it's the funniest thing ever.
Mitch: The funniest thing is watching you do it, you mean?
Ryan: Exactly right. You know, for them, it's actually like they're enjoying it. They look great doing it. But they think it's hilarious when I do it.
Jess: Hey, you’ve gotta have no shame. That's the key. We actually have a whole ‘Just Dance’ stage set up, where we have a stage with lighting, so people can go perform. It’s got a little mounted TV so they can see the Just Dance prompts. And we have a big competition for cash prizes. Some of those people are amazing for home dancers, you know -- doing their own pictogram choreography. It's amazing.
Ryan: Well, that's the whole idea of something like MomoCon, right? It's an opportunity for people to come from all over Georgia, and all over the world, to express themselves in a way that they don't normally get to express themselves.
Jess: Absolutely.
Mitch: Yeah. I mean, we’ve got the car side of it too, right? I like the classic kind of fantasy / sci-fi cars that are there.
Ryan: Tell me about that. That sounds like... Batmobiles, or?
Jess: Absolutely. The Batmobile is one of our regulars. He's great -- the guy that owns it is fantastic. We have a fan car showcase, and it's everything from what you would call ‘skinned cars,’ where somebody’s picked an anime character and skinned their car in it. There's several of those, all the way to, like, the Mystery Machine and the DeLorean, and movie replica cars. We have a pretty big showing. It's going to be growing in 2020, because we'll have more space and the ability to do it.
Ryan: Have you guys reached out to Dan Cathy? You know, he owns one of the Batmobiles from one of the movies.
Jess: I did not know that.
Ryan: It's amazing. That should definitely be part of what you guys are doing.
Jess: Taking notes here.
Ryan: Take a note. Reach out.
Mitch: The Dan Cathy Batmobile.
Ryan: I believe, actually, Truett bought it. I might be wrong, but I think Truett was the one who bought the Batmobile.
Jess: Interesting.
Ryan: So, tell me some of the things that you have in the next five months -- your countdown. What are the things that are still hanging over your head to get done before MomoCon begins?
Jess: Oh, man. My to-do list is a mile long. We produce a lot of printed goods. We do a lot of materials. We're trying to work with a lot of partners right now. We have all this new space, and it's an interesting problem. We have so much interest from outside partners that we're trying to lock down and confirm -- to have more events and tournaments and big stages and things -- that we're almost out of space already in the new space, planning for 300,000 more square feet. So it's an embarrassment of riches, and I'm happy to have the problem. But we have to pick and choose. Do we have more free play consoles? Do we have more stages? Do we have this event? Do we have that event? So, that's a challenge.
Mitch: Well, and -- not even on the floor -- but you've got, I mean, how many dozens and dozens of presentations and panels? All those kinds of conversations, on all different kinds of topics.
Jess: We're taking panel applications right now from fan panels. We also run guest panels, and we cultivate our own panels. And it's over 800 hours’ worth of content over 7 -- no, 19 rooms this year; 19 rooms -- some of which run 24 hours, the entire event, because we are a 24-hour event. It's a large undertaking.
Ryan: Cast a vision for me. Where is MomoCon in five years?
Jess: Oh, man. It's hard for me to think that far. I mean, I'm already planning for the space. We're looking to move from B and continue into C -- and utilize the C building of the Georgia World Congress Center, at least the exhibit hall, for it. They just built a new connector that's 1000ft² from B to C. We’ll move into that section. Then we'll move into the C section. And at that point, our exhibit floor alone will be, I think, over 1,000,000ft² when we add into it.
Ryan: Let's say I can hand you a magic wand and you can wave it, and you can get anything from MomoCon that you ever dreamed of. What would totally light you up?
Jess: The biggest expansion that we want to move into -- that we're already kind of making steps into -- is to have people that run major game tournaments use us as a venue. It can offset some of their costs by not having to rent out a venue for this major tournament series, and then we can have the benefit of having this big, prestigious, major tournament series. So, having any number of huge games displayed with their finals at MomoCon -- with a big pot and big production and big streaming -- and just making it a really awesome experience for all the fans.
Ryan: I think Atlanta is ready for that.
Jess: I think so too.
Ryan: We've got gaming teams, and money that's behind building out those gaming teams. And I know that that Atlanta is considered one of the easiest places to get to on the planet for everybody who wants to fly to an event. So it fits together.
Jess: Absolutely.
Ryan: Tell me about other women in this business.
Jess: Sure. In the fandom space, there are several people who have started events that are women; I just don't think it's very visible. The founder of MegaCon in Florida was a woman, and she recently sold to ... Informa, based out of Canada. It's a large corporation. One of the founders of A-Con in Texas, which is the oldest existing anime convention in the US, is, is a woman. Her name's Mary, and she's really cool. And there's a lot of people that were in the inception -- in the buildup -- of large local events like Dragon Con. Sherry Henry, who we work with at Dragon Con, was definitely an integral part. It's not always as visible, I guess, from the outside, who is helping run these types of events. But it’s a lot of women.
Ryan: So, with Dragon Con, you guys kind of barbell the best weather in Atlanta, right? They go in the fall. You go in the spring.
Jess: I mean, you say that, but it was 100 degrees outside in May last year.
Ryan: Yeah. Well, it was 60 degrees at Christmas, so I don't even know what to do with the weather anymore.
Mitch: That was our selling point for MomoCon last year: that we were air conditioned. Come inside and come to MomoCon. It’s Memorial Day weekend. Who wants to be outside in the heat? But you can be inside at MomoCon, right?
Jess: I bought a whole pallet worth of water for people. Like, they didn't have to be outside -- they wanted to hang out outside. But, just to make sure that our attendees were good, we had little tiny water bottles that we were giving out to them -- “Please stay hydrated.”
Mitch: What's fun is, I was walking out one day, and, at the Omni Hotel right next door, there was a guy in a suit who was obviously coming out of some sort of business meeting. And then there was a whole group of MomoCon people in costumes. I was just watching this guy kind of looking -- going, obviously, “I didn't know there's something else going on here today that I didn't know about.” And they were just going by; they weren't talking to each other. But it was kind of fun watching the interaction of him kind of trying to figure out what was going on here that he didn't know about.
Ryan: So, you mentioned that there's one anime conference that you think is bigger. Where is that one? In Japan?
Jess: No. Anime Expo in Los Angeles. They have over 100,000 people.
Ryan: Wow. What time of year is that?
Jess: July 4th. It's right around July 4th.
Ryan: Okay, so they could come out to this in May, right? MomoCon Atlanta; May. And then you go out to LA. Do you go to all these conferences -- all the competitive conferences?
Jess: We go to several of them. We're probably doing 20 to 25 conferences a year, of various types. Some of them are business-oriented; some of them are consumer-facing; some of them are anime, gaming, comics, whatever.
Ryan: So, when you're not running one of these, and you're just going as a participant -- walk me through what you love to do. Do you make costumes?
Jess: I do not. It's been a long time since I've been just as a participant. We usually go to either promote at regional events or talk to companies and make meetings at bigger events. But when I was a fan, I really liked going to see the new premieres of things that were coming out. I used to play Smash Bros. at least a little bit competitively, so I used to play in tournaments. I always like unique programing. If somebody has got a cool event, like dodgeball, or -- we work with another local event called Station Con that's coming up in about a month, and they do an eating contest, and I definitely help. I help emcee it, and it's really, really fun.
Ryan: What kind of food are you doing? Hot dogs? Are you doing marshmallows?
Jess: It's always a secret. Last year, the secret was fruit salad, but it was uncut. Giant pieces of fruit, including a pineapple with the edges cut off. And you had to eat it like corn on the cob. And then you had a whole miniature watermelon that you had to break over your knee because you didn't have any utensils. It’s all kind of weird.
Ryan: What stuff right now are you, like, a fangirl about?
Jess: Well, I just started a new game. I really like 2D, indie-looking, older-style-looking games that are coming out. Independent games are such a great thing right now. There's so many creators; there's so many opportunities for them to put things out on things like Steam, where they don't have to have a big team. It can be one person in a room making a game, and they put out something really great. I got really into a game called Stardew Valley, which was made by one guy, and he sold so many copies, it was obscene. Then it got picked up on major consoles -- and it's just an amazing game that one guy made. The fact that we live in an era where he can just put that out there and get so much exposure without going through this bureaucratic rigmarole of getting into stores, or getting on discs, or getting on systems -- it's amazing.
Ryan: That's a perfect example of something that should be happening at Georgia Tech, right? There should be an amazing game programming degree at Georgia Tech. Where are people getting this training?
Jess: Well, actually, Georgia Tech has some tangentially related majors. I know a lot of people that went to Georgia Tech and were computer science or computational media majors, and then they moved to the West Coast, because that's where a lot of the jobs are in the game space.
Mitch: And Kennesaw -- Kennesaw State has a computer science / game design degree also. That's been kind of growing in the last couple of years.
Jess: I want to say SCAD has some game design stuff as well.
Mitch: They do, yeah.
Ryan: You know, yesterday I went to SCAD for the first time and met the team there. Fantastic people. The place is gorgeous, really. I was blown away with what high-quality facilities they had.
Jess: Yeah. I don't know that I've been to the Atlanta campus, but I'm from Savannah originally, so I'm very familiar with SCAD proper -- I don't know, ‘SCAD Home Prime,’ whatever you call it.
Ryan: Right. So now, where do you see the intersection of entertainment and gaming? What's your take on how this is all coming together?
Jess: Well, the gaming market is a really big market that I think more traditional entertainment mediums didn't know what to do with for a long time; they didn't understand pieces of it. But now it's merging into the esports space, which is in the process of learning about production and casters, professionals on camera, play by plays. Things that, for example, sports media has had, what, 50 years’ worth of experience doing. And they're working with former people from different places in sports media to help up the level of that. Whereas I know that some sports places are looking to reach a younger audience that maybe isn't into the same type of things that an older audience is in the sport space, and are looking into e-sports stuff getting broadcast on national television, and different tournaments, and things like that.
Ryan: So you've now built this incredible, annual event: MomoCon. If you could go back and talk to your 18-year-old self, what things would you tell your 18-year-old self today?
Jess: I would tell myself to start this event sooner than I did. I started this event when I was 20, actually.
Ryan: Oh, early.
Jess: If I could have gotten two more years there, I could have gone a little further.
Ryan: Well, what are other things that, looking back, you say, “God, I wish I would have known this faster.”
Jess: Well, I don't think I really appreciated the value of having the right people in the right places. How much it matters to know somebody's strengths and weaknesses and work with them and make them feel appreciated -- like, on a base level -- when working with them on a project like this, and understanding that everybody has a value: both, you know, intrinsically into the organization, and they need to feel appreciated. They appreciate that a lot. That'd be a good piece of advice.
Ryan: What did you study at Georgia Tech?
Jess: My major at Georgia Tech was management. And then I got my master's from Georgia State in Computer Information Systems.
Ryan: So, can you design video games?
Jess: No. Absolutely not.
Ryan: Okay. What is computer information systems?
Jess: It's designing more generic systems for planning out from requirements to making it look the right way for people that are actually coding to make the system. So, translating requirements into a roadmap for coding.
Ryan: Okay. One of the things I always love to ask people when I don't know them very well is: tell me a little bit about your philosophy of life.
Jess: My philosophy of life? “Experience everything that you possibly can” is my philosophy of life. I love to travel. I love to meet people. I've never met someone that I didn't find interesting in some way. I want to talk to and learn from as many people on the face of this earth as possible.
Ryan: That's beautiful and humble. It's amazing when you open yourself up like that, and you start to be really curious about other people. Well, I've really enjoyed learning about MomoCon. Actually, before this conversation, I knew nothing about an event that has almost 50,000 people, of which it sounds like the majority are Georgians, coming to an event every spring. Thanks for taking the time. And I really appreciate you being here.
Jess: Thanks for having me.
Mitch: Thanks for having us.
Ryan: Yeah. Glad you guys could join us.
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