[Deptheads] Meeting this Sunday?

Strategicon Department Heads deptheads at strategicon.net
Mon Jun 1 14:28:45 PDT 2020 

Tomer,

Thanks for the input.

Based on a rough view of Orccon 2020 unique user accounts to badges, somewhere between 1/4 to 1/3 of the accounts contain multiple badges, usually significant others or families. Enough that we have to create a setup that doesn’t alienate either group.

We will endeavor to make the badges more visible, possibly at the top. There is a lot that we want to do to make the pre-reg easier.

Trust me, the bulk of the website work is with adding or adapting with a virtual con in mind. Some things have been on the list well before Orccon even, but have gained priority due to the need to handle a virtual setup.

We have the running a physical con down, not to say there isn’t always room to improve, but we are solid.

Internally, we need to always keep a virtual con in mind, but externally, as in pretty much anyone outside this list, until any decision is made otherwise, Gateway 2020 will be a physical con.

Tanya

> On Jun 1, 2020, at 9:35 AM, Strategicon Department Heads <deptheads at strategicon.net> wrote:
> 
> Message From: Tomer Gurantz  tgurantz at gmail.com
> Once again I'm catching up cause my email-fu is horrible. So, sorry I missed what I assume was yesterday's meeting.
> 
> Love many of Angelica's points above and thanks Tanya and others for the responses. Just one thing I'd add:
> 
> 2. (a?) regarding badges, how many users have multiple badges? Are we architecting too much for that situation? (I've had multiple badges in the past so understand the concept and need, but...) If 95% or more attendees have one badge, have it just push through when you have one badge, is my initial thought (and sure, let them know "HEY, you're logged in with Badge so-and-so", but have that click-through automatic. Make it super easy for the majority of regular users... and those with multiple badges just get an additional screen that lets them choose. 
> 
> BUT, if that's a no-go, then I'd say make that badge appear in a VERY BIG BOX on that screen, instead of as a little clickable box that's lost in all the other verbiage. Like I login and go to pre-reg and I should see "BADGE 2743" as THE THING. I remember being newer and sort of lost about where to go, and that's where you might lose a small % of folks.
> 
> Otherwise, as far as Games on Demand (GoD) is concerned, we had 2-3 "tables" of RPGs running in the 4 slots we ran over the weekend, and a separate RPG game design session with about 8 attendees. We had attendees from across the globe (UK, Germany, Philippines) who otherwise wouldn't have been able to attend. Discord seemed to mostly do the trick, but many folks opted to run their games using Zoom and others, finding Discord's audio-visual a bit lacking (quality-wise mostly) and unstable. Most of our games make use of very light mechanics, so Google docs or similar tools mostly worked for us (no need for complex game running websites, like Roll20).
> 
> One question about Gateway: Yes, I understand the idea of planning for a physical convention (and like all of you, I desperately miss the physical convention), but is a physical convention in a hotel with 2000+ attendees even a remote possibility in September? I'm not saying not to hope, but I am saying that planning for a virtual Gateway (even if we don't externally advertise that yet) seems like the right move.
> 
> Let me know if you have any other questions, and sorry to miss yet again another meeting :-(
> 
> Tomer
> 
> On Sun, May 31, 2020 at 9:57 PM Strategicon Department Heads <deptheads at strategicon.net <mailto:deptheads at strategicon.net>> wrote:
> Message From: Victor Bugg  fhoenix88 at yahoo.com <mailto:fhoenix88 at yahoo.com>
> Sorry Missed meeting. fell asleep between ambulance shifts. Between covid-19 and riots, protesting, and lootings I am beat. 50 hours in 4 days.
> I was driving the ambulance like speed racer last night with rioters out everywhere.
> One patient was a white nationalist. Proud of such and was kicking in glass of a jewish store and the top glass fell and almost guillotined his leg in half.
> Several minor injuries from tear gas, burns, cuts, concussions, injuries from mercy bullets, hit by vehicles, etc.
> Everyone from protesters to rioters to looters to law enforcement to media and celebs and people just caught in wrong place driving. 
> 
> Tonight I am glad for curfews to slow down people in different states. 
> Read the notes.
> Like the changes suggested  and dept as separate.
> 
> On to positive thoughts, productive work, and forward direction with physical and getting vendors and others ready for sept. 4-7 (around 96 days away).
> We are the light at end of the tunnel of this crappy year so far for many people locally and many vendors.
> 
> If we have to go virtual and wait a year between physical cons we cross that when it comes and do it like last time but better....but  for now I want to give people hope and excitement for an awesome Gateway 2020. Something to look forward to and plan on during this time of chaos. 
> 
> Thanks for all you guys are doing now and for gateway 
> Victor
> On Sunday, May 31, 2020, 07:01:35 PM MST, Strategicon Department Heads <deptheads at strategicon.net <mailto:deptheads at strategicon.net>> wrote:
> 
> 
> Hello,
> 
> Following up on a few of these:
> 
> 2a: I'd like to add a per-event page with buttons to register for each active badge; there's re-arranging of code we'd need to do first to do that cleanly, but it would be helpful for both this and notifications.
> 
> 4: I'd like to cover both this and 8 with a discord bot; I have a few ideas around that would need to work. It would require a moderate amount of automation and, critically, ensuring that we have a 1:1 mapping between badges and discord users. Malakai and I talked about how to do that this afternoon, and I have specific followup items there.
> 
> 6: Can someone send me a (possibly expired) tabletopia event link so I can stare at it and mutter curses until I know how to fix this? I've never used it, but fundamentally URLs are URLs and this should work.
> 
> 7: Emails now go to the GM as well.
> 
> 9: I'm not immediately sure how to do this and would want feedback from other department heads before doing this (because it might be a lot of email for some departments).
> 
> 10: I've heard this from several people; we might want to make this an option for each department (or, just, turn it on in general).
> 
> 11: Scripting Facebook posts isn't in my wheelhouse either; for virtual con, I'm hoping we can do enough with discord bots to cover the need.
> 
> Regards,
> Rob
> 
> On Sun, May 31, 2020 at 4:05 PM Strategicon Department Heads <deptheads at strategicon.net <mailto:deptheads at strategicon.net>> wrote:
> Message From: Tanya Aldrich  taldrich at strategicon.net <mailto:taldrich at strategicon.net>
> Hi Angelica,
> 
> Let me know if I missed anything. :)
> 
> #1. Somehow Run an Event is doing this, it shouldn’t and it will be looked into. Not aware of any others. Admin pages don’t count. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
> 
> #2. Lists multiple items. I’ll try to cover them in order.
> a) Here’s the problem with showing events before selecting a badge. Accounts can have multiple badges. I’m open to suggestions, but the system has to know which badge. I hesitate to have two different formats, one for one badge in account and one for multiple. That could cause even more confusion.
> 
> b) Ah, the filtering request. I would love to add that feature. Until a few other things get done it’s way too much work. (For those curious, the pre-reg data is in both badge and event. We need to make it it’s own table, so it will be easier to find conflicts, even when the conflicting event is being filtered out. This is on the list for the pre-reg revamping.)
> 
> c) Clearer Host Labelling. Yep, I’ve noticed that isn’t quite working. Will fix at some point before con.
> 
> #3. No problem. Love the idea.
> 
> #4. Depends on how far we get with automation. I’m willing to send out an email with a detailed list of all events people are signed up for an hour before the con starts. I can also put more complete info in "the you are approved for this event email" for the late registering people. Anything more automated, may or may not happen.
> 
> #5. This is a problem started by the fact that when Run an Event is turned off, the GM is supposed to be under the mercy of the department admin to submit. And, it wasn’t until a couple of years ago that we started giving GMs the ability to see what they were running, other than searching for their name in the schedule. The email players was where it became a real problem. We’re working on it.
> 
> #6. Not sure how to fix. We do a lot of filtering to plain text for those emails. We might be filtering out something Tabletopia relies on. Trying to fix this may fall entirely on Robert, and will not be a priority given the sheer volume of fixes and updates needed in the next 6 to 10 weeks. That said. I’m more than willing to list warnings on the email page for things like this.
> 
> #7. For some reason I set the character limit to 200, which would have been caught earlier if I had cc-ed the GMs. I think it’s now 2000, and I believe Robert added the GM to the email recipients.
> 
> #8. I agree. Will add to #4.
> 
> #9. I think this has already been handled for GMs in #7. We’ll see about adding the department admins, and only the department admins, so Mike doesn’t get any more inundated.
> 
> #10. We will give Virtual events a similar setup to unlimited. The big difference is the wait list people can’t be auto approved. Not sure how challenging that will be to handle.
> 
> #11. Facebook, someone else’s website, and so not my thing. I suggest discussing with Marketing and other people who know something about this. [ I only worked *at* Facebook for 3 months, not *on* Facebook. :) ]
> 
> Not touching Discord right now, I’m barely functioning as a general user. :)
> 
> Tanya
> 
>> On May 31, 2020, at 11:34 AM, Strategicon Department Heads <deptheads at strategicon.net <mailto:deptheads at strategicon.net>> wrote:
>> 
>> Message From: Angelica Magno  angelicamagno.ing at gmail.com <mailto:angelicamagno.ing at gmail.com>
>> Hi all, 
>> 
>> Notes about the website that I hope we can make some changes to in the future. This is a long list, and I don't expect everything to change immediately, but these are my thoughts about how to make it a better experience with everyone. 
>> 
>> 1) Being able to access the rest of the website, whether someone is logged in or not. In other websites, people are free to explore and read the content. When it comes to an area where they would need to be logged in, they would be prompted to log in. This is more new user friendly instead of rerouting to the initial front page without explanation, causing confusion. I had to explain this multiple times to new attendees. It was also something that confused me when I first made an account. 
>> 
>> 2) There are too many steps for someone to sign up for an event, and we lose attendees along the way. With 850 badges there should have been more people playing the games. We came up with some great guides to help with this issue. However, because there was a guide necessary some people lost interest. It would be helpful to have the events populate even before they choose a badge. People would go to the pre-reg page and get confused thinking they are in the wrong place because the events aren't listed there initially (they have to click their name/badge, first).  It would also be helpful to be able to filter events in the pre-reg page, just like you can filter them when you look up the list of events. Players were also confused and lost and did not even know where to find their event. Clear labeling of the host department, written out, in addition to the color system would be helpful. Currently, it abbreviates to the first three letters. Attendees may not be familiar with acronyms and that will also make it hard for them to even ask for help when they are lost because they don't know where their game is. 
>> 
>> 3) There was also confusion with the verbiage pre-reg, and if we do end up being virtual next con I think we should change it to sign-up. 
>> 
>> 4) I had virtual plans listed for every event, and still had people confused about software needed. I think it would be helpful to include the virtual plan in an automated message before the event starts. People forgot/often don't check their emails when it comes to confirmation right after they sign up for it, but they have a higher probability of checking when it's the day of for information of how to access their games. 
>> 
>> 5) I consistently had emails I had to send out for a lot of my events because I was the one who submitted them. I had changed the GM name and email, but I think the system still recognized me as the GM, so I was forced to send the emails out 5-10 minutes before for every event I submitted.
>> 
>> 6) Tabletopia links do not work in the email system, even if they are the correct link. Copying the link from the email and pasting it into a tab (a usual remedy) still did not work and would give a 404 error. If your games are going to run via Tabletopia please only give the room code.
>> 
>> 7) There is also a character limit to the emails, which is fine. However, there was no warning to when the email would cut off and GMs who did send their own information had their emails cut off, resulting in cut off information and confused players. A character limit should be displayed. 
>> 
>> 8) Department information needs to be included in either the automated email mentioned in point 4 or in the GM email (I'm more in favor of #4, we cannot really do quality control of the information the GM is including. Some GMs would include department information somet did not. I had already asked them to include that in their emails.) 
>> 
>> 9) GM and Head should get email receipts for emails sent, just so we have confirmation if it was sent properly. In some cases, players got mangled emails that were just strings of code. I would have liked to know about that before an attendee messaged me via Discord asking what that email was about. 
>> 
>> 10) I know this point as been brought up before, but is there really no way to automate player sign-up approvals?
>> 
>> 11) Automation of the Facebook posts as brought up during the Feedback Forum would also be nice. Heads like Tara and myself who share about their games hourly can focus on other things rather than marketing. 
>> 
>> Of course, there are other things I've noted for discord as well, but since we are going to focus mainly on the website for this meeting, I'll keep my notes to be just about that for now. 
>> 
>> On Wed, May 27, 2020 at 3:50 PM Strategicon Department Heads <deptheads at strategicon.net <mailto:deptheads at strategicon.net>> wrote:
>> Message From: Angelica Magno  angelicamagno.ing at gmail.com <mailto:angelicamagno.ing at gmail.com>
>> He would like to be added to the list :) Malakaiunland at gmail.com <mailto:Malakaiunland at gmail.com> Thanks. 
>> 
>>> On May 27, 2020, at 1:55 PM, Strategicon Department Heads <deptheads at strategicon.net <mailto:deptheads at strategicon.net>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Message From: Victor Bugg  fhoenix88 at yahoo.com <mailto:fhoenix88 at yahoo.com>
>>> Agree with John to not promote or even hint at virtual gateway until it is 100% that we cannot do Gateway physical con.
>>> We want people excited for physical con in-person. And my LARP for tara and rob's wedding (bring gifts). :)
>>> As several other cons are saying now.....we have to get people excited to dodge the doom and gloom and look forwar to physical con.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Victor
>>> On Wednesday, May 27, 2020, 01:02:53 PM MST, Strategicon Department Heads <deptheads at strategicon.net <mailto:deptheads at strategicon.net>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> This con (and MAYBE next) we had/have no choice but to have a virtual con.
>>> 
>>> While you talk about future con plans remember it has been a struggle the past 20 years to get people to spend $300-$500, put on pants, and go to a convention instead of sitting at home playing Everquest. 
>>> 
>>> Dont promote future virtual cons, promote how exciting it will be to be back at a real con.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> The enemy cannot push a button if you disable his hand!
>>> 
>>> 
>>> -------- Original message --------
>>> From: Strategicon Department Heads <deptheads at strategicon.net <mailto:deptheads at strategicon.net>>
>>> Date: 5/27/20 10:49 AM (GMT-08:00)
>>> To: deptheads at strategicon.net <mailto:deptheads at strategicon.net>
>>> Subject: [Deptheads] Meeting this Sunday?
>>> 
>>> I brought this up to Jim, Mike, and Eric A. during Gamex, that maybe we should do a post-con meeting while the convention is still fresh, but of course it would be best to get everyone's buy-in. Are you all down for a post-con meeting this Sunday at noon PST, same Bat Time, same Bat Channel? We should celebrate the successes of the weekend, talk about what we can do better, and discuss what we needed and found we didn't need, etc. Let us know if this works for you and if we can count you in, or if you'd prefer a different day. Whenever we do it, I will take entertaining notes. Someone should take good ones. ;)
>>> 
>>> Excellent job taking a physical con online, everybody. It was good to hear our regular attendees' voices and see how they were doing. <3
>>> 
>>> Best,
>>> 
>>> Tara
>>> Message From: John Paiva  evil5757 at aol.com <mailto:evil5757 at aol.com>
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>> 
>> -- 
>> Angelica Magno
>> 
>> Head of Indie New Games
>> Strategicon
>> 
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