Community Highlights: Meet Holly Solis of Emerald Badger Events

Today we’d like to introduce you to Holly Solis

Hi Holly, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Emerald Badger Events is made up of four long-time friends. Holly and Thomas met in college through a special interest club when they were students at Arizona State University. Holly and Thomas met Joshua through mutual friends while playing a tabletop roleplaying game called Pathfinder. Holly, Thomas, and Joshua met Tricia-Nicole through work at an insurance company, connecting through their mutual interest in Dungeons and Dragons.

Throughout their friendship, they’ve all tried to find ways of connecting with others and have found gaming to be the easiest and most fun avenue. After Joshua published his own bestiary book for Dungeons and Dragons, he and Tricia-Nicole started tabling at conventions to share the new monsters, spells, and environments he had created for the game. At the same time, Holly and Thomas had started running gaming sessions at conventions for the first time. Connecting with others and sharing new stories in those spaces sparked an idea. Although not revolutionary, the friends wanted the opportunity to put together their own gaming event.

Borrowing from one of Joshua’s creations, the Emerald Badger, they developed a very small event planning collective that focused on nerdy events throughout the valley. Emerald Badger Events held its first event, Frostfall Fantasy Faire, with Silver Key Lounge in December 2023 for a great group of community members.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Starting a new business always has its struggles, especially when you have multiple people with different visions about where you want the company to go and how you imagine the company growing. However, we’ve had a relatively smooth road considering that we’re just starting out. At first, we struggled slightly with organization and ensuring that tasks are spread evenly among our team members. Now, we check in often and share tasks as much as we can. We also struggled with advertising since our budget for each event is very small but we don’t struggle with this nearly as much now that we’ve had a few events under our belt. We do a lot of grassroots advertising at local gaming stores and now have a solid advertising plan for each event. We’re all very proud of the way we each handles these hiccups and how we come together as a team to problem solve when needed!

Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Emerald Badger Events?
Emerald Badger Events is an event planning company focused on nerdy events around the valley. We work with small businesses (like game stores) to advertise their gaming facilities and increase foot traffic. Along with this, we want to connect the community to local artists and vendors. Although we are rooted in fostering relationships through gaming, we also want to connect people through various special interests we all hold.

So far we have out together two successful events; Frostfall Fantasy Faire was a winter-themed gaming event and Ghoul’s Day Out which was a Halloween/Fall themed event. Frostfall Fantasy Faire included 10 local vendors from across the valley including dice-markers, game publishers, and more! There were multiple tabletop roleplaying games throughout the day for attendees to play in. Ghoul’s Day Out was a marketplace event that included 9 local artists and a free crafting table. Both events were free to attend and open to all ages. They were both also held at Silver Key Lounge in Mesa, AZ which is a board game lounge. We are currently working on our next event, Frostfall Fantasy Faire 2024 and are excited to mix the two event ideas together! We learned a lot from our previous events and can’t wait to share how we’ve grown!

What sets us apart from other gaming events and conventions is the low barrier to entry for both attendees and collaborators. Through our continued partnership with Silver Key Lounge, we can offer vendor tables at a competitive rate when compared to other conventions or pop-ups. We also offer free admission to our events along with free access to activities, arts, and crafts. Our events offer something for everyone of all ages, even if you’re not gamer.

We pride ourselves on creating unique experiences for venues, clients, and attendees, regardless of budget.

We are most proud of the way we communicate with our collaborators and how focused we are on ensuring a successful event for everyone involved. We also really love our mascot, the Emerald Badger. In Joshua’s lore, the Emerald Badger is a helpful fey creature that has the ability to create tea and treats at will. Their goal is to spread happiness and cheer throughout the cold wasteland in which they live. We loved the idea of a small badger creature that lives to bring people together in the warmth of their cheerfulness and thought it’d make a great mascot and embodiment of our mission with each event.

Can you talk to us a bit about the role of luck?
This is a really interesting question! We’ve definitely had some good luck with advertisers picking up our events from city calendars to help spread the word! We’ve all been really diligent and purposeful with this business, knowing how important it is to establish a good reputation, so we haven’t left a lot of things up to luck. I’d say it was really good luck that we all met each other when we did, though! Otherwise we wouldn’t have made it to this point!

Pricing:

• N/A

Contact Info:

• Website: https://emeraldbadgerevents.carrd.co
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/emeraldbadgerevents/
• Other: https://www.eventbrite.com/o/emerald-badger-events-74763646573