Fandom

From Hpwiki

The Harry Potter fandom started in 1997 in schoolyards across the UK in the months after the release of Harry Potter & the Philosopher's Stone. It moved online no later than the fall of 1998, when discussions of the books began in places like Salon.com's Table Talk section, the Amazon.com reviews for the first - and subsequent - books, and Usenet's [alt.fan.harry-potter], which seems to have gone live in late 1999.

Early websites and groups included the Ultimate Harry Potter Fan Club and the Harry Potter for Grownups Yahoo Club. The first Harry Potter fanfiction was uploaded on to Fanfiction.net in September of 1999. The first Harry Potter-specific conference, Nimbus - 2003, took place in Orlando, Florida in July, 2003. Since then, the group HP Education Fanon, Inc. has produced two more events, The Witching Hour in Salem in October, 2005, Lumos in Las Vegas in July, 2006, and is working on its fourth event, Prophecy, to be held in Toronto, CA, August 2-5, 2007. As of Lumos, the Board of HP Education Fanon, Inc., included Voting Members Lee Hillman, Rob Ihinger, Barb Purdom, Catherine Schaff-Stump, Carlisle Kraft Webber, and Non-Voting Advisory Members Deborah Duncan, Leeanna Izuel, Peg Kerr, Penny Linsenmayer, Deborah McLain, Dan Myers-Power, Bekki Olivieri, Heidi Tandy, Steve Vander Ark, and Barb Walton.

Other events and conferences on Harry Potter to date are: Convention Alley, held in 2004 in Ottawa, CA, Accio 2005, held in Reading, UK, in 2005, and Patronus, held in Copenhagen, Denmark in 2006.

Other upcoming events and conferences include Phoenix Rising, to be held in May, 2007 in New Orleans, LA, Sectus, which will be held in London in July, 2007, and Enlightening 2007, scheduled for July 2007 in Philadelphia, PA.