PAX East 2011
PAX East is an annual convention put on by the team at Penny Arcade. You should go. Last year rocked.
Rooms
Just like last year, we will have an IF Hospitality Suite (in the Westin, we think). This will be open noon-midnight on Friday, noon-midnight Saturday, and noon-3pm Sunday.
In addition, we will have a function room (also in the Westin) on Saturday only. (See Dave's notes below.) We'll schedule our larger events there.
Official PAX events
PAX has confirmed the following two events on their schedule. Neither is IF-specific, but these are the ones including IF people:
- "Interactive Drama: Dialogue as Gameplay" -- Jonathon Myers, Stephen Dinehart, Evan Skolnick, Emily Short, John Gonzalez
- "How to fund your game development project with Kickstarter" (Friday - 12:30 P.M - Cat Theatre) -- Cindy Au, Andrew Plotkin, Joshua Newman, Evan Balster
Events run by us
We all go out to eat before PAX (Thursday night). (Zarf will set this up)
- I'd like to propose we do an open Speed-IF on Saturday. We'll do the madlib topic selections in the early afternoon and people have until 10pm to submit their works to me. - David Cornelson
- An IF play event. (Basically a real-life ClubFloyd -- we throw a game up on a projector screen and give somebody the keyboard. Someone else reads the output out loud.)
- Grue Street IF writer's workshop. (Somewhat modified to be a public event. People bring in-progress IF work, we play them together and critique.)
- Suggestion: IF-room discussion on puzzles as a way to tell story, not just a pacing device or way to control access
- "Setting as character in narrative games" -- I proposed this as a PAX panel (Andrew Plotkin, Rob Wheeler, Stephen Granade, John Gonzalez (Obsidian), Dean Tate (Harmonix)). It wasn't accepted, but we should do it for our own program. I've emailed everybody on the original list.
- "Meet the IF community" -- One of the Boston game people suggested that we should pick a time and say "If you're busy at PAX, but you want to stop by the IF suite and meet people at least once, *this* is a good time to do it." Just to avoid diffusion.
Alcott Conference Room for Saturday
I have a meeting room reserved at the Westin for Saturday from 12 noon until 12 midnight, connected to the convention. It's 1,035sqft (41ft x 29ft) and seats up to 100 people. We'll have a theatre (rowed seats) layout. I (David Cornelson) am currently covering the cost of the room, but would appreciate a few people chipping in, if you're inclined and able to.
Internet Connectivity
Individual Wi-Fi codes can be purchased for the day at $50 on Saturday, but they need to be requested early. As the day gets later, they won't provide new codes. There is a slight delay as codes are created. If anyone wants to pre-order Wi-Fi access, let me know.
Food
We cannot bring any of our own food or beverages into the meeting room. There's a union rule that bars outside food. I'm getting a quote for soda, water, ice, and veggie and chip trays.