Inside Cardistry XP
As Dan and Dave continue to hint at losing steam in their interest to host Cardistry Con every year, it opens the door for other large-scale cardistry events to take the reins.
Leading the charge is Cardistry XP, organized by Mattis Witte and Nick Faber. Dubbed “Europe’s Home for Cardistry,” the event has been hosted in Hamburg, Germany for the past few years and recently held its fourth gathering earlier this month.
To get the inside scoop on Cardistry XP, we reached out to Mattis and Nick about some of the details and behind-the-scenes that goes into organizing such an event. A snippet of this interview was previewed in our newsletter, A Cut Above, but you can read the full interview below:
Photo: Cardistry XP
Q: How many cardists attended this year’s event compared to last year, and were most cardists from Europe?
A: This year, over 100 Cardists attended XP, which is more than a 40% increase compared to last year. We had Cardists from 15 different countries join us, primarily European, with one even traveling all the way from Georgia to be there!
Q: From all the instagram stories, it looked like the event was a great time! What do you think was a key to its success?
A: While it’s impossible to attribute this to a single factor, I definitely think a key part are the close personal connections we build with everyone. While this is, of course, a Cardistry event, it turns out many people consider the resulting friendships as their favorite part.
This year, for example, our friend Bruno held a small concert at the end of the first day, and we invited everybody to spend the evening of the second day in the location with us to watch some old videos together and just hang out.
Extra activities like these have little and sometimes no direct relevance to Cardistry, but instead serve as an additional opportunity to connect with each other on a personal level.
Q: On the other hand, planning something like this has so many complexities. What were some tricky parts to organizing the event, and how did you work those out?
A: With this being our fourth event, we have developed a solid organization skillset over time due to learning a lot from mistakes that we made in the past. Nonetheless, there definitely were complications this year. First of all, I (Mattis) started my studies in Applied Mathematics in September this year, so my time to organize the event was way more limited than previous years. Nick also worked full-time for most of the preparation period, so time was definitely more difficult to manage than previously.
For my study, I also moved to the Netherlands, so many people expected the larger physical distance to be an issue, but in fact, we have always lived quite far apart from each other, so that 95% of the event planning was already been happening through video calls ever since the beginning.
Since we had anticipated time being an issue this year, we were actually able to tackle it quite well!
Q: What were some of your personal favorite video premieres or presentations from the event?
A: So many great ones to choose from! Crowd favorites definitely were the video “Hotline” produced by Los de las Cartas starring a bunch of Cardists from the Spanish community, as well as the Q&A session with Jack Paton!
There will be a Playlist with all videos screened on our YouTube shortly, though, so best to look through them and choose your own personal fav.
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAHvtysxG1QoF-7L4mdYTLRDDBScgLUL1&si=oFaNWCjI1DGSVoTi
Q: What were some unique aspects to Cardistry XP that made it stand out from other events such as Cardistry Con or local meetups?
A: It definitely feels a bit more intimate! While we don’t get as many intercontinental attendees as Cardistry Con usually does, the fact that we have been hosting in the same location for four years now results in a certain “core vibe” being established that develops and is build upon every year, which people really seem to like! I don’t think that can be achieved to this extent when jumping countries/continents every year.
Q: How can non-attendees see what took place at the event?
A: During the event, a ton of Instagram stories are being posted by people, we always try to repost all and archive them in story highlights, so that they can be viewed later as well. This always feels great, even to watch some years later, since these stories were made right in the moment. Then of course there’s our official recap video every year! That and many more content pieces, like the Championship Battles and full on-stage presentations, will be uploaded to our YouTube channel throughout the next months.
And lastly, there are always great recap videos made by our attendees, so that is also definitely worth checking out!
Q: What’s one piece of advice you’d give to other cardists interested in hosting their own meetup or formal event?
A: Just do it! Of course there are a lot of things to consider and things that you want to try to make as best as possible, but what helped us the most to create what we now have is keeping the first event in 2021 quite small and cheap. People will join without high expectations and will try to help make it as enjoyable as possible for everyone, and it is the best base to have to then think about improvements for future events/meetups. Set yourself a deadline that is not too far in the future to hold yourself accountable, and then just start working. Find a venue, see what should happen at the event and start advertising it. And it’s always great to work in a small team. It’s good to talk about some decisions and not do everything on your own, but too many people organizing will also complicate certain things.
Q: What can cardists expect for next year? Anything you’d change to continue improving the experience?
A: First of all, we have some plans for the year until the next event starts. We want to do a tour to meet some people in their hometowns, and we plan to organize an online competition. Regarding the next event, we are super excited to keep working on the newly introduced European Cardistry Championship and the Cardistry Awards, those are definitely going to be even cooler next year! Also, we might start looking for a new location in order to make room for even more people in the future.
Q: It takes a lot of effort to organize large events like this, what motivates you to put on this event every year?
A: We are Cardists ourselves, have met each other through Cardistry and have seen the community going up and down. At this time, where there’s a decrease in activity in the community overall, seeing that it is more alive than ever in our community is a great feeling and seems like we can actually move something for all the card shufflers out there. Putting our message out and motivation people to just keep going and follow their passion, as well as making so many friends along the way, is definitely worth the work we put in.
