Pigeon Panic! No doubt you’ve all been wondering where The Summer of Sonic 2011 is going to be held this year. Well, wonder no more! Today we are proud to announce the intentional venue for the fourth annual Sonic convention – Camden Centre, in Central London.

The venue is a large-sized community hall that has been used for a whole manner of professional events – from club nights to televised political debates and monstrous banquets. In terms of what it could offer us as a space, and after visiting the very friendly management there, the SoS team feels that Camden Centre is the perfect place to hold Sonic the Hedgehog’s 20th Anniversary.

As well as a large main hall which can hold roughly 900 people (minus the stuff that we’re going to put in there, obviously), the venue also has a second hall which can be used to offer refreshments to attendees and perhaps hold stalls offering other little trinkets for sale… you’ll get no more info from me on that front! You’ll have to wait and see! On top of this are HUGE restrooms, a cloakroom and a rather large foyer.

Oh, and have you seen the built-in stage? It’s massive.

Getting to the Camden Centre could not be easier, as you can see from the map below. It is quite literally a hop, skip and spin across the road from Kings Cross St. Pancras International rail station – making it the most accessible venue we’ve had for a Summer of Sonic convention yet! It’s also a short walk from Euston rail station too, so if you’re coming from farther away in the UK you can just roll off the train and get involved!

And yes, there is air con.

That’s all we have time to share for now regarding the venue – updates will come thick and fast from hereon in, as we get ever closer to the big day! We’ll be covering the Camden Centre in more detail over the coming weeks too. The process for reserving your ticket to the event will be live soon, please look forward to a special update regarding that.

AAUK Addendum: So yes, there we are. You may ask why it is “intended”, well its very simple: SEGA have to dot the i’s and cross the t’s still – there’s other boring stuff as well which I’m sure the team will gladly leave to me to handle! However the process of doing this is underway and the contract is in their hands. Myself and Svend have both toured the location and noted many things about the setup that we think you’ll like and have plenty of ideas on how to get the maximum out of it. We really are going all out on this. From another point UK meetup fans will be aware of a rather familiar public house nearby – The Euston Flyer is literally right around the corner. Now you know where myself and Dreadknux were on St. Patrick’s Day! We’ll have more details about the venue, guests and activities very soon.

Hello to everyone once more as we roll inexorably towards April and we’re now 3 months away from Summer Of Sonic 2011.  Very soon indeed we will be announcing our intended venue for SOS 2011 which may very well include a raft of things you’ve been bugging myself and Svend/Dreadknux for for years and one we think could finally be an ongoing “home” for the convention. But we’ll see…

We thought we’d at least get things underway in terms of announcements now though with the confirmation that yes, there will be a Cosplay competition this year.  Last year the cosplay really went through the roof in terms of numbers and characters and along with “that photo” of everyone en masse in the hall a lot of the main photos attributed with SOS 10 were of the cosplayers. People were even tweeting about it in Japanese within the last 24 hours. POPULARITY!

We’ve already seen and heard of efforts underway for this year and we look forward to seeing how creative you get with a wider range of Sonic’s “family” and who knows we might even get some characters who have been past over.

Hint: SOMEONE COME AS TAILS FOR GOD SAKE. WE’VE BEEN WAITING THREE YEARS FOR ONE.

There will be a prizes again – though we can’t exactly say what at the moment.  We’ll make it worth your while though; wink wink. Nudge nudge.

Stay tuned for more details here, via Sonic Wrecks the twitter hashtags/facebook and of course Sonic Stadium (when it, y’know, lives again).  You can check out the final six from last year’s cosplay competition via the below video courtesy of our friends at SEGA Nerds.

Are you ready? Here we go!

Kevin ‘ArchangelUK/AAUK’ Eva
Summer of Sonic Chief Co-ordinator and convention co-creator.

Welcome to the official website for the world’s biggest Sonic the Hedgehog fan event! If you’re new to this page, here’s a brief introduction to the event – the Summer of Sonic is a convention that takes place every year in London, UK, that allows fans from all corners of the world to meet up and make new friends!

The event is organised by the fans, for the fans, so there’s a real sense of community throughout the whole day. 2011 marks Sonic the Hedgehog’s 20th Anniversary, and SEGA Europe has very kindly agreed to sponsor a huge amount of the event this year – this allows us to really aim high and plan some very, very special surprises.

Trust me, if you’re any kind of Sonic the Hedgehog fan, you will not want to miss this year’s show.

We will have some very exciting announcements to reveal soon! Just be a little bit more patient. We’re getting there. In the meantime, please enjoy the new website – on behalf of the entire Summer of Sonic volunteer crew, let’s enjoy Sonic the Hedgehog’s 20th Anniversary together!

Rock on!
Svend ‘Dreadknux’ Joscelyne – Summer of Sonic Creator