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Hello friends.
Alex Kammer here, Executive Director of Gamehole Con. I wanted to reach out to you all and share my thoughts with you about Gamehole Con 2015 as well as to talk a bit about next year’s event.
Gamehole Con 2015 Recap
First off and most importantly – Thank you all so much! We have been humbled and amazed at all the kind things that many of you have shared with us in person and via social media. It was great seeing so many people having fun. And to the dozens of you who sought us out at the Con to say things like “thank you for the Con” and the like, I cannot tell you how much that means to hear. We appreciate that so much because we work very hard to make Gamehole Con the most fun and smooth running gaming Con we can. So, thanks again!
The numbers – We again smashed our attendance totals from the previous year. In 2014 we were quite pleased to have 775 attendees. Well, this year, we cleared 1,300. That is amazing for just our third year! We sold over 4,000 individual game tickets. That is a lot of games people!
Fortunately, we had very few problems to sort out. And, the few that happened, we were able to resolve quickly. To those handful of people whose pre-registered game tickets somehow got screwed up, I again apologize for that. We are still working on how that possibly happened and to try and ensure that it never happens again. I cannot thank this handful of people enough for the grace and understanding they exhibited while working with us to fix the problem.
So many gaming events went so very well. Again, it was so great to see so many happy gamers. That said, it was not a perfect Con. For example, we were not happy with the food situation. What had been represented to us and what actually took place were unfortunately two different things. We were not happy with the variety of food options – not at all. Rest assured that we will be aggressively addressing this in the coming months with the Alliant. We will do better next year. That I promise you.
Another fail was the music stage. While Dan the Bard with his mobile two man band was awesome, the rest of the live music just did not work. While not a terrible idea, it will not be repeated next year. We recognize that people come and spend their weekends with us to game, not to listen to live music.
Finally, the Saturday invasion of the cheer/kobolds was challenging, but we were able to drop the portcullis in time and keep most of them outside of our walls. ;-) Seriously, there is nothing that we can do about other events going on at the same time as our show. However, as we continue to grow, the likelihood of other events happening on our weekend will drop.
So, with those minor exceptions, the entire weekend went tremendously well. For example, we raised over $2,600 for our charity partner, Worldbuilders. That is really great. Special thanks to Bill Cavalier a/k/a The Dungeon Bastard for once again running a tremendous charity game for us. We hope that he will be back next year to run another group of lucky attendees through some further madness all for charity.
Gamehole Con 2016 Preview
Now to talk about 2016 a bit. First of all, as was announced in the program, our dates for next year will be November 4-6 at the Alliant Energy Center.
Some important website changes for next year will include giving you all the ability to change around games that you pre-registered for on your own instead of your emailing us to have us do it for you.
Also, after you register and you decide that you do indeed want to add a cup or print or whatever, you will be able to go back into your registration and add further merchandise if you wish.
Those of you who achieved "Level 3" (our way to denote the number of times you have attended Gamehole Con) this year received a Gamehole Con Level 3 patch and we'll have something new in store next year for those hardy gamers that reach Level 4.
By the time you read this, our site should already be updated with important dates for next year, but it does not hurt to repeat them here.
Important Dates
To all our glorious GM’s, event submissions open on Friday, April 1st;
Our VIG’s will be given a two week window to renew their VIG badges starting on Saturday, June 11th. If they do not renew them before pre-registration opens, their badges will get mixed in to the general population making them up for grabs for anyone to take. Further, we will be adding 25 more VIG badges next year.
Pre-Registration will open on Saturday, June 25th at noon CST. This is when all admission badges go on sale including whatever VIG badges that are remaining.
Game/event registration for VIG badgeholders opens on July 30th at noon CST.
Game/event registration for all other badges opens on September 3rd at noon CST.
Gamehole Con 2016 Hotels, Special Guests and Events
We are still working on the terms of our various hotel blocks. As soon as we have a date set for housing to open up, we will let you all know.
Also, in the next few weeks, we will be revealing our Guest list which is already shaping up as a very special variety of awesome. We also hope to have some other big announcements concerning other proposed features of our show which we hope to have ironed out soon. I know that is vague, but it is the best that I can do for now. Sorry about that. Trust me though, if what we have planned comes to fruition, it will be a really big deal.
Finally, I and the rest of my team want to thank all of our GM’s and volunteers. Without you guys, there would be no Gamehole Con. It is really that simply. Thank you so much for all the effort!
Thank you all for a wonderful Gamehole Con 2015! We are already looking forward to next year.
Alex
Gamehole Con
www.gameholecon.com
And a final thank you to our 2015 sponsors!
     
    
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