[arg_discuss] ARG SIG Conference

[Brooke Thompson]

I'm sure y'all are expecting this seeing as I'm not all that quiet and  
have somehow found myself on the organizational committees of ARGFest  
and the ARG SIG conference (hows does this happen?! i just wanted to  
help moderate a couple threads, that is all)

I, too, wonder how the conferences would effect each other - would one  
pull from the other? would they enhance each other? is there room for  
two? is there something to be gained or lost by the influence of the  
player enthusiast types? etc etc. So this discussion is really great.  
But...

I've got to get a bit defensive over the bit about ARGFest being  
labelled as closed and exclusive.

Unfiction started one night in a chat channel when two friends said  
"hey! we should meet for beers!" and a couple more said "oh hey! what  
about me!" - and a couple weeks later, 15 people showed up in Vegas. A  
couple months later, we met up again in Orlando and like 10 more  
people showed up - whoa.  Two years later, we thought it'd be cool to  
see if we could meet the guys who did AotH & PerplexCity but "hey,  
they probably won't know about this, so let's invite them and give  
them a reason to come". The conference was born. (ok, it wasn't  
exactly like that, but pretty darn close... it was born out of a  
desire to be anything but exclusive, it was about being inclusive and  
meeting new people!)

It is still run by the community leaders at unfiction (the organizing  
team this year was the admins and a few portland locals) and, yes, our  
first thoughts always go to the community that we are a part of - but  
we do look beyond that and try to be quite welcoming. Not only because  
we're friendly folk, but because we want to get to know others and we  
want them to get to know us. We don't want to be this exclusive little  
club; we want to meet and get to know the Brian Clarks and Mike  
Monellos and Yomi Ayenis and Jeromy Barbers and Non Chalances of the  
world. It doesn't matter if they're on unfiction or, even, if they've  
ever heard of it. We think it's kinda cool that some have gone on to  
become fairly active on the UF forums, but the ARG Community is so  
much more than that and relationships made at ARGFest have continued  
to bloom on twitter and facebook and some have even grown into  
collaborations. Which is really kinda cool when you think that a lot  
of these people didn't know each other before ARGFest and many people  
were fairly unaware of and/or unknown by unfiction just a couple  
months before ARGFest.

There may be a lot of traditions and cultural mores and whatnot, but I  
think that's just as true of any conference of this size no matter if  
it comes out of a online message board or a professional organization.  
And, you might be surprised by just how un-unfiction the conference  
really is. We haven't gotten the survey out there yet (small and  
exhausted volunteer team...  it's coming) but my guess is that it was  
about 60/40 on the attendees who would self-identify as being a part  
of the UF community.

I think it's just at a funny size with a strange mix of players and  
designers, hobbyists and professionals - which makes it quite hard to  
describe and/or provide focus for. But it also makes for a great and  
unique event filled with all sorts of new (and old) perspectives.

Defensive bit over... I'm absolutely loving this feedback (even if I  
disagree with the premise). It is awesome! I would very much like to  
see a lot more of it :)