I was the first one around the convention center today from Tempo Storm to scout out the area. I explored the convention center and snapped some photos as I went. I’m not exactly sure how much of the Long Beach Convention Center is going to be used for TwitchCon, but it was actually pretty big.

I thought I was early, but apparently, the construction crew has been at it already for a while now, because everything was set up inside and ready for us to get started. We’re booth #437 towards the back-center of the exhibitor area. Our Merchandising Director Ryan Wagner stopped by a bit later to help out; we spent today erecting our custom walls (because we didn’t even realize that Twitch would be providing us with these walls that you see in the top-right photo.

They also set up a lot of the Twitch Partner Lounge as well. Apparently, the mobile game Arena of Valor is sponsoring the Partner Lounge, and it’s basically a restaurant that is normally inside the convention center, but is being taken over to be a partners-only area. The rest of the convention center wasn’t air conditioned because most of the garage panels were open to the outside for moving in equipment, but the Partner Lounge was nice and cool, so I snuck in here to relax after I discovered it was open.

And of course, it wouldn’t be a real blog post nowadays without some food photos. I went out with our merchandising director and executive assistant for lunch, and got myself a burger. Our executive assistant got herself a massive salad that probably had more calories than my burger.

I’m lodging in Huntington Beach (which is nearby Long Beach), and I went to a place called Sushi on Fire for dinner. I got a refreshing roll upon recommendation by our executive assistant (which was a good choice, but it had too many lemon peels which I personally thought sort of conflicted with the rich sushi flavor), as well as a magic mountain (which was a lot more food than I thought it would be).