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Putting my personal reactions to the items proposed for this year's Worldcon Business Meeting here, so that I can keep them out of the newsletter.

CW: Inside baseball )
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I don't think I've managed to mention here that back in January, I became the head of gaming for Pemmi-Con, this year's NASFiC. (NASFiC is a science fiction convention held in North America in years when Worldcon isn't in North America.)

Unlike any of my previous staff positions, this is much less about doing things myself and more about coordinating things. And it means a lot more compromise, accepting that this or that process doesn't happen exactly as I'd like, that e-mails sometimes never get answered (not talking about anyone on the Pemmi-Con staff here, everyone on staff that I've interacted with has been great at timely communication), and all the other things that come from working with lots of other human beings in an entirely voluntary setting.

It's just over two weeks until the con begins, and just under two weeks until I make my way to Canada and start to find out whether the things arranged have materialized or whether I've been speaking to figments of my imagination all this time. A piece of my mind is permanently dedicated to being anxious at this point.

A small piece, though. I do believe we'll have a game library (run by the local gaming con), a pinball room (run by the guy who runs it for the local sf con), scheduled games, space to schedule pick-up games, and either a play-and-win section or useful information about trying to organize one to pass along to the next NASFiC.
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I didn't attend Dragon Con Online, but kept an eye on it to see if it came up with anything exciting on the online front. Dragon Con's gaming track eventually showed up on Tabletop.Events. It stood out in a weekend of about a dozen conventions as the only one charging for signups. The fees were explained as a way of defraying the costs of... choosing to use Tabletop.Events.

Dragon Con's dealer room was run through Eventeny, which allowed every dealer to set up their own online storefront, if they chose to take the time to list every single product there. For this it charged a total of 7.9% of each sale in fees, though this was offset by Dragon Con not charging its own table fees. And by the realization that dealers could showcase their products on Eventeny and then encourage people to buy directly from their own sites.

Gen Con's first stab at its planned monthly community gaming weekend was also Labor Day weekend. Very little happened, but it happened with the use of RPG Schedule, a combination of a scheduling site and a Discord bot. The Web site authenticates you through Discord; you set up your proposed event there, and then the event is posted in a Discord channel. People can then use emoji reactions to sign up or drop. Very easy to use, recommended, shame that the name suggests that it's only for RPGs.

Hopping back a bit, [personal profile] kevin_standlee talks about Gather Town as used for NASFiC here. Gather is pitched as the answer to the problem of Zoom et al only allowing a single stream of conversation.

I haven't had a chance to try Gather myself yet. I asked around at work if anyone had used it, thinking about building a case for it to be used for a recently started monthly get-together which is a bit too big for Zoom. No one had, but one guy was so intrigued that he set up an instance one night, invited all his friends, and came back the next day singing its praises. So that sounds like another thing to add to your convention toolbox.

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