With less than two months to go until TFNation 2017, the excitement is building both here at HQ and among our attendee community. With many of you planning tickets, travel and accommodation, you are bound to have questions and we are doing our best to answer those as quickly as possible. Honestly, it’s great to hear from so many folks looking forward to August.

Last week we released advice on alternative hotel booking, while a travel guide will be with you shortly…. but what else can we do to offer guidance on the aspects of a convention? How can we offer you a greater insight into the individuals who run the event, the artists you hope to meet and possibly hear from other notable figures from the UK community…. How about our very own podcast! And helping to run it is one of our newest team members, in the rugged form of Adam “Grufflock” Nicol!

The TFN Podcast will be producing shows in two formats, with each addressing a different aspect of the event build-up TFN FACTS and TFN CHAT.

TFN FACTS will be bite-size shows, 10-20min long, hosted by “Dadum” White, running through advice for convention-goers. Our recent hotel post is already available on there, with a little more depth and detail than we could fit into the social media post. Future shows will cover travel, what to expect at the event, budgeting your funds, food and drink, guest interaction if you are nervous and some helpful dos and don’ts of socialising at the event. We hope this will build into a handy guide for all of our attendees, both new and experienced.

TFN CHAT is where Gruffy comes in, with a format mirroring the social aspect of the convention itself. Each episode will feature a special guest popping by to have a chat with our bearded host. With an open conversational structure, we aim to highlight different aspects of some of the individuals you will meet in August, as well as giving you more insight into the team that run the event and why we do what we do. Our first show features TFNation’s own Billy Edwards and reveals a very different side to “the guy with the stripes” you see at the event. The second show features the delightful Alex Milne and…. Well I will let you listen for yourself! In addition to hosting this show, Gruffy will also be involved with some of our convention events…. details to be announced soon.

In Gruffy, we have arguably one of the biggest contributors to the UK TF community. Heading up the Old Oilhouse group from 2009 to 2016, he has hosted hundreds of shows covering numerous subjects, styles and formats. His recent work has seen him focus more on his audio production company, Riveted Sounds, as well as works for Audible and Youtube. He hasn’t given up on podcasting though, and can be found on two new series The Creaks (an journey into the supernatural unknown) and The Fluffenhammer (covering the world of 40k Warhammer) as well as lending his dulcet tones to our new TFNation series.

You will notice we have a few shows up already. This is to let us work on the format and see what works best for our attendees…. And because Dadum is rather rusty at podcasting :-) but we are looking forward to shows from both presenters and we hope you get something out of them too!

Head over to http://tfnationpodcast.libsyn.com/ and have a listen!

The TFNation Crew