NerdyNI
Northern Ireland's
fandom community.
Anime. Gaming. Quizzes. Discos. Conventions. Started in 2024. Still going. Built from nothing into Northern Ireland's most consistent nerd culture community. 24+ events, thousands of people, a culture of its own.
How it happened.
Northern Ireland had a fandom community. It just didn't have a home. After years of running operations at conventions across the island, the pattern was clear: the people were here, the enthusiasm was here, the demand was here. What was missing was something consistent, something local, something that treated the audience as a community rather than a ticket sale.
NerdyNI was founded to fill that gap. Not as a business. As a community infrastructure project: something that would exist because it needed to exist, and would keep existing because the people who came kept coming back.
The first event was a bet. Would people show up? Would it be the kind of thing they'd tell their friends about? The answer to both was yes, and more importantly, the same faces came back for the second one. That return rate became the metric that mattered most. Not total attendance. Not social reach. Whether people chose to come back.
The Pokémon Quiz became the event that proved NerdyNI had something real. Callum hosting as Ash Ketchum. The room packed. The energy of a crowd that knows the answers and wants to shout them. 150+ people treating a pub quiz like a cultural event. The photos from that night still get shared.
Anime Disco was the event that couldn't exist anywhere else. A licensed venue, a full DJ set of anime opening themes, and 150+ people who turned up to dance to Gurren Lagann and Dragon Ball Z. The NerdyNI logo on the screen. The dancefloor packed. Something between a rave and a cultural celebration, the kind of event you can't replicate in a sports bar, can't scale to an arena, and can only happen when the community is ready for it.
"These aren't events.
They're community."
Belonging over attendance
The number that matters isn't how many people bought a ticket. It's how many felt like they were in the right place. We design for the second feeling, not the first number.
Participation over spectacle
The best events are the ones where the audience is part of what's happening. Quizzes. Dancing. Cosplay. People who came to do something, not just watch something.
Infrastructure over events
A single event is a moment. A community is infrastructure. NerdyNI is built to be permanent: a place that exists between events, not just at them.
Safety as a feature
Fandom spaces are for everyone. Full stop. Safe, welcoming, and actively inclusive, not as an afterthought, but as a core design requirement.
Before NerdyNI.
QCon
Volunteer and attendee from 2010. Belfast's flagship anime and gaming convention. The beginning of understanding what well-run community events look like from the inside.
MiniCon
Operations Director. Attendance doubled during tenure. Learned that operations discipline is what separates the conventions people remember from the ones they don't come back to.
Eirtakon
Dublin's long-running anime convention. Volunteer and operations roles that expanded understanding of how a community event scales and what breaks when it does.
Nom-Con · Alcon · Anime Tattcon · Fibbercon
Various volunteer, operations, and attendee roles across UK and Irish conventions over more than a decade. The circuit that built the relationships and the knowledge that NerdyNI runs on.
The moments.
The Botanic Inn, Belfast
Come to the next event.
Check nerdyni.com for upcoming events, announcements, and community updates.
NerdyNI website ↗Sponsor or collaborate.
15.7% sponsorship conversion rate. An engaged, niche-passionate audience. Get in touch to talk about partnership.
Talk to Callum →