TwitchCon’s official schedule for San Diego, November 13 to 15, runs to panels and community meetups. Dylan Nabeth’s free spreadsheet covers what that schedule leaves out: the off-site parties and lounges, some of them unadvertised, where he argues creators and brands size each other up.

Those rooms are where Dylan, a YouTube creator since 2013, when he was nine, says his career turned. At VidCon 2022, a sponsor he approached at a first-night event gave him a pass to the hotel where creators were staying. This hotel had many brand activations, which opened the floor for conversation.

“I learned more from going into those rooms than I did in the previous years at VidCon, going to panels,” he says. He credits that access with growing two channels he says are nearing 300,000 subscribers.

The list is his attempt to pass that access on. Dylan, who is based in Atlanta and founded Dynamic Media this year, began publishing it in 2024 for creators heading to conventions without the contacts to get through the door. “Some people don’t have the connections to get them into the rooms that are exclusive,” he says. By his count, the first edition carried 14 events, the 2025 edition about 40, and his VidCon 2026 list 45.

Brands Use In-Person Meetings to Vet Creators

A brand’s direct message, in Dylan’s experience, doesn’t always tell a creator what the sender intends. Many creators, Dylan included, ignore outreach that lacks the details they look for to confirm it is legitimate, which leaves brands that “can reach out to 100 people and zero respond.”

Meeting face to face changes that. “When you’re in person, it’s way different because now on the brand side, you’re seeing the creator for who they are and their personality,” Dylan says. He likens the exchange to a job interview, with the brand weighing whether the creator would be a good face for the company.

That screening comes before any money is discussed. “They’re not talking money at the event,” he says. “They’re gonna be like, ‘Let’s get each other’s contact, and then we’ll be in touch.’” Terms come later, and he has seen negotiations run for weeks.

Not all of it is generous. Daytime lounges work like “social media speed dating,” Dylan says, with a motive nobody states. “There is a part of that culture of, they don’t say it, but how can I use you to help me?” he says. The sizing-up runs between creators as well, and one such exchange at TwitchCon changed what Dylan made.

A TwitchCon Conversation Changed His Channel’s Economics

He arrived at that TwitchCon at a low point, having taken a few months off YouTube because he no longer enjoyed making Minecraft videos. There he met a Roblox game developer who also made content and described how games on the platform were taking off.

Dylan ran a test. “The video got maybe half of what my regular Minecraft videos did in terms of views, but it had double the income,” he says. He moved the channel over and posted two videos a day for months.

The shift had limits he learned in practice. Roblox games tend to fade within a couple of months, he explains, and when the game his channel had grown on faded, he had no interest in chasing the next trend. “Everyone that does Roblox content, they might not even like the game, but they just do it because that’s where the trend is.” He started a new channel instead.

The tip came from a conversation he could test against his own numbers. The list is built from conversations too.

Unadvertised Invites Give the List Its Value

“It’s all about asking,” Dylan says of how he compiles each edition. Much of it comes through people he met in rooms like the ones he lists, including James Nakaji at Fourthwall, whom he met at the VidCon creator hotel. Well-connected across the creator industry, James has since become a friend and collaborator, leveraging his network across LinkedIn and Instagram to connect Dylan with organizers, share industry knowledge, and help uncover events for the list. After he announced the TwitchCon edition on LinkedIn, organizers reached out in such numbers that he estimates they supplied about half of it.

Dylan points to an ASUS ROG 20th anniversary party, which he says a public search would not turn up, as the kind of listing that sets his list apart. He got the link through contacts at the company. “If you want an ASUS sponsorship, you’re going to have a good chance to connect with someone that can make that happen if you make it to their party,” he says.

Brands keep some control. Dylan tries to talk to every company whose event appears, and when one wants its location or link withheld, the public version shows “private location” or “invite only” while the details stay on a private version. “If you don’t want your link out there because it’s a private event for specific people, who am I to give that out?” he says. 

Even a withheld listing names the sponsor, which he argues gives a determined creator a company to approach. “I like to still have people hustling as I did years ago to get those rooms,” he says.

Paid Events and Sponsors Stay Off the List

That purpose also decides what the list leaves out. Dylan generally excludes ticketed events unless they are on-site events hosted by Twitch. Club Ironmouse stays off because he sees it as geared more to fans than to people looking to connect. “I don’t include those because they don’t support the purpose of what the spreadsheet is for,” he says.

The list also carries no sponsors, and Dylan plans to keep it that way. “I don’t do this for the money,” he says. A brand’s logo, he argues, would make the list look partly theirs and could strain readers’ trust. “I wish I had a list like mine back then,” he adds.

The TwitchCon List Is Reaching Past Badge Holders

The San Diego edition lists about 31 events so far against 43 for TwitchCon 2025, though Dylan typically adds events as he hears about them during a convention. He expects a wider audience. His LinkedIn post announcing the list drew about 8,000 impressions, against the 5,000-plus total reach he calculates for his VidCon list, and he reckons that if each viewer passed the link to one person, it would reach 16,000.

Some of that interest comes from people without passes. Dylan says creators in Los Angeles have asked about driving to San Diego for an event or two, and in 2024 he skipped buying a TwitchCon pass and spent the entire convention at side events.

The list’s growth follows the lesson Dylan took from VidCon 2022: a convention’s more useful conversations happen in rooms people have to find. 

“We spend a lot of our time in isolation at home working,” he says. “Being in the room and being in these places, they make you feel like, whoa, what I’m doing is real.”

Dylan’s TwitchCon Party List can be found here.

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