Well, the 2009 convention is done except for the final paperwork and I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed the entire experience, even if it was a bit manic at times. I have a couple more things to button up and one of those is to coordinate the search committee for next year's location. Convention attendees over here unanimously expressed an interest in exploring other locations than the San Francisco Bay Area and a search commttee was started.
Membership is voluntary and the more the merrier, but there is an Initiation Script that must be followed:
For every location submitted, a short decription of what would make it a good candidate.
I'm not going to put any strong parameters on this, but the search committee will be reviewing these and reviewing them from the perspective of the feedback from previous convention attendee recommendations. Suggestions from wealthy Jerbitons thinking of chartering a private 80-meter yacht cruising the Carribean will be considered only if you are willing to pay for the entire thing. Suggestions for camping out on your back lawn will be treated with similar amusement unless your back lawn encompasses the entirety of a large National Park or garden of international renown by non-gamers. These suggestions must be in no later than 30 AUGUST so that there is real time to review and still give the organizing committee plenty of time to do a good job.
Membership in the committee carries the (minor) Personality Flaw "Dedicated".
Committee members will need to review everyone's submittal with an honest eye and develop a number of pertinant questions for the submitter. I'm guessing that this will be around 6 or 8 but could be higher. Have a care: if "your" location is selected, then you may be the chair of the organizing committee and will need to put a support team together. There is plenty of help out there, but you will likely be the one trying to bring it all together on time.
The bulk of the review effort will be in September.
This cannot be relaxed as the next organizing committee will need all the time and flexibility that can be handed to them. They really do need it.
Please contact me by PM if you wish to participate. I will send my personal e-mail addy and we can start the conversation.
Again, my thanks to the last committee. Excellent work!
I missed out on the Sunday conversation, so I apologize if this was suggested, but I would like to float the idea of piggybacking on a larger convention. We could free ride on their work regarding selection of an accommodation and coordinate meetings within the larger convention. This would also give us a chance to expand our Ars Magica community beyond those who live in the Bay Area or frequent the Atlas Games board.
If someone from the UK Tribunal could post a summary of their thoughts on their most recent event, it might be helpful in considering this option for the US Tribunal.
Well, personally I really enjoyed the UK Tribunal, but I only made it to fewer than half of the Grand Tribunal part of the programme. To a certain extent that's because I don't like drop-in games* or free forms much, which limited which parts of the programme I was comfortable with, but also because with other things scheduled, there were some very difficult decisions to make, especially with friends on panels, favoured authors speaking and the like. That said, I did meet a couple of people who were drawn towards the Ars Magica games and interested in it, so that side of things did seem to work.
*Though I did play in one run by caribet and it was great fun. It also made me wish I could have gone to Grand Tribunal 1, which would have been worth it just for the tshirt.
The only problem I could see with "piggy backing" is that people really would not have time to do both conventions and then they would be forced to choose. You might think, if they were in the same place, you could go to both but we used up ALL the time we had. Last year, people lamented that we had it the same weekend as gencon.
I will throw out the suggestion of having it here in LA but I will want to know how many people are really willing to travel all the way out to LA. (Also, LA is expensive.)
As I have some cousins in that area I would try to come to the states for a LA tríbunal - at least, if it is within my summer vacation period (15th of July to 27th of August) nad I can afford the flight.