If you have heard me talk about Quake over the years, it's no surprise to you that I attend Quakecon. Why do I put in so many hours of volunteer efforts for an event like this? Because of my love for Quake 1 and the series thereafter. If I knew back in 1997 that the Quake community would still be so rich and full as it is today with an event like Quakecon I would have attended the first Quakecon. Thankfully, I have met a couple of these rare species that knew what Quake had to offer back then, and some of them still frequent the event every year. I have met thousands of Quake gamers over the past 13 years and Quakecon honestly gives me a chance to give back to a game that brought me so many wonderful memories inside the game and meeting such gamers in person, so that's why I spend so many hours volunteering and less of them sleeping. There honestly are so many awesome things happening around me during Quakecon each year.

So, it's getting to be around that that time of the year again. I head to Texas again in the coming week just to volunteer blood, sweat, laughter, and tears again this year knowing that the only thing I get out of it is seeing old friends, meeting new friends, and a place to rest my head while I am out there.

If you plan to be in the Texas area, or maybe you are driving distance to Dallas, I can't say enough awesome things about this event, and it's free to attend. This year I'll be less about assisting with the official tournaments (sowwe tourney players!) but you will see me frequently in the BYOC area assisting with the unofficial tournaments which were announced this morning. As always, please don't be shy if you see me! People tell me later that they saw me but never said hi and that makes me truly sad even if i am busy to sit down and talk. Do say hi and your game alias if you get a moment! ;)

I'd like to give you a little history of CaliGirl's Quakecon journey before I end this blog. I first attended Quakecon in 2003 to cover the female tournament called Ms Quakecon for my website dedicated to female gamers. Ms Quakecon was a BYOC tournament and I was only there to write about the matches, but was asked to monitor a few matches as an admin while writing about the match.

I helped with a few matches and chaos happened with the BYOC tournament handlers running the tournament; some of the ladies had to leave for a couple of hours while leaving me in charge. The female participants started to rely on me around then and that kind of kept happening but it was never intentional.

So, 2004 I ended up volunteering again for Ms Quakecon as a BYOC tournament because I enjoyed hanging out with the ladies so much. By 2005 I was asked to run the official female tournament because it was sponsored. While the official tournament didn't happen as I would have liked (too big of prize purse, etc), I still had a great time running it.

Speed up to 2007 and 2008 I assisted with the official Enemy Territory Quake tournaments, and met tons of awesome teams during this time along with finding out I knew a variety of them for attending GameSpot live events or tournaments or because some of the teams had old school gamers that knew of me for being a newsie in the game industry for years (Quake3world.com, and other sites).

I had to skip last year due to work having a challenging project, which you all recall as All Time Greatest Game Hero feature, and I was quite sad missing out last year. I watched the live streaming of the event knowing that when you are at the event it's so much different and full of life. I shall not miss Quakecon 2010 and I am excited to be able to mingle with the BYOC more so this year, which is where I started my journey!

Here are some pictures from Quakecon 2009 provided by TheTexasGamer.com, the peeps I'll be closely working with handling BYOC competitions this year. The photos in this gallery happen to display events I never have a moment to attend from working with the professional tournaments. So, do take a moment to go through all of them, even the dog food challenges. ;)