We
do have a lot to do, and I am going to make a firm declaration of Oct. 20 as the date.
I have a physical location we
can use, but I will expect that most of this will be virtual/online, as I don't expect most people to be able to make it to Rolla, Missouri from hither and yon about the world. (I will be happy to support others having physical locales of their own, if they want to try, but I can obviously only handle one, especially with this short of a notice.) The organizer of
Cog Con would be delighted to host a physical location for this effort, and has apparently been attempting to follow what Titan Networks is up to.
So, I'm glad things like lighting and goodie bags and sponsors and all of that have been brought up. We will need a schedule of events, some channels of TwitchTV or other streaming service running with people who are playing and explaining what they're doing, a good voice chat program with some dedicated channels for our guests to use to talk to us, conduct interviews, etc., and, yes, at any physical gathering site, we'll need computers set up.
For the physical site in Rolla, I am going to attempt to recruit some friends into putting word out and seeing if we can't get some student participation - bring their computers and set up as if at a LAN party in one of the rooms of the con. I am working on the press release, as you've doubtless seen the first draft a bit up thread from here; one suggestion has been that it should not read like a letter. Anybody who knows more about how press releases typically look who wants to take a crack at the format, please do! I will give it another go soon.
Sponsors...there is a computer store in Rolla I might be able to talk into helping out, some, but the big thing we'll need sponsors for is those goodie bags and publicity (if we can't just do it through media-contact channels). Who would be good sponsors, though? For the goodie bags, might formerly-Paragon still have promotional gewgaws earmarked for distribution that are never going to be used now? What else might work?
Travel arrangements are pretty much on the participants - guests or otherwise - to handle. I am going to be spending more than I should just to fly to Missouri for this (not enough to break me, but more than I
should). This is why an online presence is essential, even with a physical "center" of the action from which to host it. Food...well, depending on our sponsors, we might be able to take media guests out to lunch or something on the 20th if they're physically in Rolla.
Additional guests...if anybody wants to come, please do. I will also extend invitations to Brian and, through him, any others formerly-of-Paragon. I will extend a more direct invitiation to VV; CogCon is a tabletop gaming convention, so she could get some gaming of that sort in there, too. (Again, unless we get sponsors with generous pockets, I can't actually offer to pay for anybody's travel or hotel stay, unfortunately.)
So, I will put out a now-official call for experts in TwitchTV and chat programs to outline how they would set this up. We will need to be able to have everybody who wants to participate be able to establish telepresence, and we'll need some good "interview rooms" on the virtual side.
Volunteers to mentor! If you could at least informally think of what, precisely, you want to show your guests, that's an excellent place to start. We'll try to have a 9 am CDT workshop on character creation for any guests who are taking advantage of our borrowed accounts, and this will follow into the first mission or mission arc, but once there are choices available, mentors, you may be responsible for showing your party of guests around and guiding them through an arc or two.
We want to be sure that anybody who's participating in the Game-a-thon charity event who's willing is also available to tell our media guests about what they're doing and why. Remember, a big part of our showcase here is not just the game, but the
community. Have your testimonials ready! If somebody wants to go to the Testimonials thread and extract them into a printer-friendly format, we maybe should make a PDF of some of the best and even print some off for distribution at the event. Bonus points if we can make them look "pretty" with some border graphics.
This is the first event of this sort I've
ever attempted to arrange without having some precedent and tradition on which to draw. Anybody with experience at this stuff, please offer advice and whatever aid does not put you out more than you'd like. It is greatly appreciated.
This is not much time. But we're heroes, aren't we? Let's do this!
