8 Reasons You Should Go to LTN Con 2021

LTN Con is on the horizon and registration is open! If you’re not signed up yet, here are eight reasons you should seriously consider doing so.

LTN Con is being offered online AND in person this year! With the advent of vaccines, masks, and social distancing, in-person conventions are becoming a thing again. If you’re ready to see some smiling faces IRL, you can sign up to host a LAN party and get a box of swag for you and nine of your friends. That comes with popcorn, coffee, stickers, dice, a board game, AND a custom LTN ethernet cable, because why not? If you’re not ready for in-person or hosting duties, you can still watch the con and participate online through Twitch and Discord, just like last year. (Not sure about these newfangled technologies? Rachel Knight has written excellent guides on how to use both Twitch and Discord.)

LTN Con is pay-what-you-want! If you don’t have the budget, you can still attend LTN Con for free. And if you want you can buy swag and/or make a donation to LTN to help cover the costs of the con. 

Sometimes FOMO due to finances is a little too real. Sometimes you want to pay forward a generosity that was shown to you. Nerdy Wishes is an exclusive group launching after LTN Con where you can share your personal nerdy wishlist and have the opportunity to anonymously bless someone in the group with something they wish for. The first 100 people to check the Nerdy Wishes box when they register for LTN Con will have an automatic in.

Everyone likes free! There will be giveaways throughout LTN Con of games and nerdy accessories as well as swag from Love Thy Nerd. Be sure to watch the Twitch stream to claim your !dibs and get a chance to win! (It’ll make sense, promise.)

If you donate to Love Thy Nerd on a regular basis, you’re a member of the Fellowship of the Nerd. As such, you’ll get early access to LTN Con on the Friday evening before and get to hang out, play games, and even have a pizza party (really!) as a thank-you from LTN for helping to keep the lights on. If you’d like to support LTN financially and get to start the LTN Con madness that much earlier, you can start giving monthly right now.

The majority of which are games! Board games, card games, video games, tabletop role-playing games, we’ll have them all. Last year I demoed two games not yet on the market, played RPGs, watched some anime, and watched friends be bad at Among Us. This year promises more games, but be on the lookout for non-game sessions as well! LTN Bookclub will be discussing Star Wars: Thrawn Ascendancy (Book I: Chaos Rising), and more events are being added each day! If you’d like to host an event this year, sign up here.

LTN Con is a wonderful time to fill your brain with knowledge and your heart with encouragement from nerds out there showing the love of Jesus to the world. Some of these speakers we heard from last year, and some of them are new to LTN Con, but all of them have something wonderful to share. For our keynote sessions, look forward to Chief Resource Nerd April-Lyn Caouette talking about finding common ground with nerds, Chief Content Nerd Drew Dixon discussing why we’re called to care for people, Alexander James of the Urban Youth Workers Institute sharing the ways we should be influencing the people we come into contact with, and Jamie Harris of Satellite Gaming covers empowering disciples.

Many many more speakers are sharing their knowledge and passion in breakouts, with sessions from Hector Miray, Derrick Whitmore, John Weiand, Jeff Grant, James Meehan, Mike Perna, Jaclyn Parrish, Bret Chapman, and Jate Earhart. Every one of these folks has a heart for people and to hear just one or two would be worth making time for LTN Con. To have the chance to hear from this many is truly a gift.

This is always my number one reason to do anything Love Thy Nerd. Even if you’re attending solely online, you are going to have quality, meaningful interactions with people, even in the Twitch chat. One of our Twitch mods, libraryknight (that’s Rachel Knight who wrote the article on Twitch too!), is super excited for LTN Con to get here. 

“My first time was last year, and that’s how I jumped from kinda involved with LTN on social media stuff to engaging more with the community and joining the Twitch mod team. It’s a great chance to get to know folks, play games with fellow nerds, and watch some very informative sessions about nerd culture.

One reason people should attend is to chill with me in Twitch chat ;). I volunteered to be on chat mod duty for at least most of the sessions (if not all).”

If you haven’t done so yet, sign up for LTN Con today and get ready for the best weekend you’ve ever spent hanging out with a bunch of nerds.