Whir and buzz of excitement

By RAVI DYKEMA

Everyone here at Nexus is pretty excited about the Nexus Holistic Expo. We are thrilled with our speaker lineup (more about that below), and about our mix of exhibitors. We are excited to be offering Boulder its first large holistic consumer show (to our knowledge). Of all places to never have hosted a holistic wellness expo! Denver has had many, and in fact has a great show at the downtown Convention Center January 27 and 28, called the World Wellness Weekend (see ad on page 3, and visit www.worldwellness.org).

I have considered producing a consumer expo for years. My friend and fellow publisher Lou De Sable of Pathways Magazine in Washington, D.C., who has produced many such shows, has been prodding me since 1983. Then more recently my friend and Nexus columnist Sue Frederick (“Dancing at Your Desk”) said, “You are crazy if you don’t do an expo.” She pointed out that I even have a veteran event producer on staff, Nexus editor Lisa Turner, who used to work for New Hope Natural Media as a creator of Natural Products Expos East and West. (So, although this is our first show, we aren’t exactly novices.)

I considered it: Here we are, delivering essential health information six times a year to the Denver area and all of Colorado since 1980, giving voice to local and international experts who are improving millions of people’s lives (and perhaps collectively constitute a sort of renaissance), and we’re raising the bar on professionalism and credibility for alternative medicine. Why not do it live, face to face, eyeball to eyeball, heart to heart? Would such an event work? Would anyone come?

Well, we still don’t know the final answers, but we say “yes” every day. The Nexus Expo is looking like a smashing success on all fronts. I truly appreciate the teachers, authors, film-makers, artists, musicians, scientists and doctors who have committed to speak/perform at the Expo. I wrote about them in last issue’s editorial and you can find a list (and many photos) on page 62, as well as online at NexusHolisticExpo.com. I think that rarely has such an illustrious group gathered for one event, especially for an event of such intimate scale and with so much community feeling.

When we committed to producing our Expo we needed a lot of new business structures, foremost among them a new website. We envisioned a site where people could rent exhibit booths, learn all about our speakers, volunteer to help, and buy tickets to the event. Up steps Kelly Burton, Nexus designer par excellence, to give the new site its look, and Stacey Dykema (my wife, Nexuspub.com manager, and also proprietor of Cosmos Web Design) to build it and make it work. A large part of the credit for our success so far goes to these amazing women, along with Director Lisa Turner who holds it all together. Check out our cool site at NexusHolisticExpo.com.

Another business structure we needed was the means to process and keep track of booth rentals, ticket sales, and all kinds of expenses. Taa Daa! Introducing the remarkable Kelly Dykema (my sister-in-law, and bookkeeper at Nexus), who said, “No problem.”

One way we measure the enthusiasm we have so far encountered in the community is this: We have nearly sold out our exhibit halls. View our exhibitors at the link so named on our site. Many listings contain links to exhibitors' sites.

Now we’re on the edge of our seats to see what happens next! We expect to hear our website whir and buzz with ticket sales soon, especially since you will encounter in this issue of Nexus so many great articles by or about people who are appearing at the Nexus Expo. Lisa, Kelly, Kelly, Stacey and I can’t wait to hear from YOU and to see you at the Millennium Hotel in Boulder on February 10 and 11!