Utah’s one and only gaming expo returns tomorrow after a hiatus in 2009, moving their digs to the Southtowne Expo Center and bringing in double the events and vendors. Before you stock up on Mountain Dew and nacho cheese for the 30 hour LAN parties, check out this interview the organizers had with City Weekly blogger Gavin Sheehan.

GEEX Interview on Gavin’s Underground

Gavin: How did the idea to start up GEEX come about?

Kurt: Most of us involved with GEEX are big gamers. We were probably hanging around talking about the latest WoW raid and thought wouldn’t it be cool if there was some sort of gaming event in Utah? We started brainstorming from there and working with the MediaOne event team we made it a reality.

Gavin: On top of this you’ll have events with Cosplay, making a game in a day, stuff for women geeks. Tell us a bit about the added activities you’ll have going on.

Kurt: At the last GEEX, we were surprised (we shouldn’t have been) to have cosplayers show up in costume just for fun. They were ecstatic to be at a local gaming event showing off their hard work. This year we knew we needed to make this a part of the show. The cosplay contest will be taking place on the main stage Saturday afternoon.

Josh: We also wanted to make sure that we had events for everyone interested. Budding developers or people interested in video game development are welcome to participate in the Game In A Day where they’ll have the opportunity to work with video game professionals and others to create a video game from scratch in 24 hours.

LeGrande: The stereotype for gamers is the nerdy male sitting in his parents basement playing WoW until 4AM. But we know that there are plenty of normal people including women that are into video games just as much. We wanted to showcase some of the topics and women developers in panels and forums focused towards this very important audience.