In 2014 our group attended DreamHack Winter and was heading out to celebrate a show well done in the midweek. DreamHack is a fantastic event, but we lacked somewhere to meetup with others to relax, eat dinner, and be able to drink a few after work/festival beers. We found ourselves at O’Learys in Jönkoping a local sports pub, which houses a lot of screens and booked a dinner. At the first event we were 32 dinner guests and most of them from our cosplay event at DreamHack. As the years passed we added more and more guests, until we finally settled on a name, WelcomeHack, and decided to expand our event to book out the full venue, adding in partnership tie ins and additional services.
As the event has now been held for the past 8 years, bi-annually (except for during Covid times) we are happy to say we have built a great space, where guests from DreamHack can socialize and meetup together. We have thus far sold out every event held, and also managed to expand our activities to do several days worth of events in the city, and at several venues.
We required a space for all our friends and community to meetup at outside of the event space to drink some beers, eat dinner, and socialize together. There was a lack of alcohol at the event, and a lot of people were already in town in the evening after ending their work at DreamHack meaning they would wish to meetup somewhere in town. We found that by highlighting talents and pursing focus on creating a full on pointed DreamHack only guest day, we could help gather people in one place and create one memorable evening for everyone. We needed to ensure that we created a space that was enjoyable for both our guest, partners, streamers, and for the regular city guests of Jönkoping to be fine with it as well, whilst ensuring a safe and enjoyable atmosphere.