Coming to you live from Portland, Oregon July 17th-19th at the Courtyard by Marriott City Center, ARGFest-o-Con 2009 is guaranteed to be the extraordinary experience you’ve been waiting for! With live events, a day of exciting speakers, ARG moments to take your breath away, and amazing/thrilling/spectacular special guests, you won’t want to miss it!
Registration is OPEN NOW! Already registered but can’t remember for what? Look up your order with your confirmation number and email address!
From now until June 26 July 17, you can book your hotel room to stay at our conference location at a discounted rate!
Congratulations! to Rowan and everyone else that submitted designs. There were some truly great designs and we had a really tough time choosing the three finalists. And the votes were close between those three. Really, good job everyone!
We will be ordering the t-shirts later this afternoon in a variety of sizes but if you see this before then and want to help us figure out what sizes to order and to make sure there is one in your size, select the size below.
(don’t worry if you see this after we’ve ordered! This is not an order form it is just to help us get an idea of what to order)
Posted 18 hours, 32 minutes ago at 10:49 pm. Add a comment
With less than a month to go, have we mentioned how excited we’re getting about ARGFest-o-Con 2009? It’s all we can do not to use superfluous exclamation points! Pointlessly!
If you haven’t yet been sold on the idea of coming to ARGFest, maybe a couple of updates can convince you! Did you see that we’ve announced our Keynote Speaker, Jordan Weisman? Then why are you still reading and not registering immediately?! Sometimes you baffle us.
Afraid it might cost too much to stay in Portland for the weekend? Fear no further, for our venue hotel has graciously lowered our group rate to the insane starting price of just $119 per night! Don’t worry if you have already booked a room at our previously announced rates starting at $135 per night, we’ve got you covered too! Check out the updates to our hotel Booking page for details.
How can you beat that? If you were already planning on staying for the weekend, you just saved yourself almost $50 for a three-night visit! Heck, you might as well turn that profit around and support ARGFest by joining the Order of the Trout and for just ten of those measly smackers you’ve saved, you too could have your name up in lights as our honored benefactor!
In fact, with that kind of unexpected scratch in your pocket, you might as well sign up a second time, like SpaceBass did, and see what it’s like to be a part of A Tail of Two Trouts. Child’s play, you say? What if you joined a whopping THREE times and felt the power of Three Trouts Anchovy?
Rest assured, there is no level of Troutly donations for which we cannot produce an appropriate pun. We can go all day, with our Four on the Flounder! We just can’t promise those puns will be funny!
The submissions are in and after a long heated battle the ARGFest 2009 committee members have narrowed it down to just three nominees. And, the nominees are…
in no particular* order….
And the winner is….
To be decided by you! That’s right. You! (and all of the other people who come to the site and vote between now and July 1st**). So be careful, be thoughtful, and vote on the t-shirt that you deem worthy to carry the title of The Official ARGFest-o-Con 2009 T-Shirt.
(Voting is now closed & results will be posted shortly. Thanks for voting!)
* ok, so you caught us… they’re in alphabetical order. But they always say no particular order in the awards shows and we wanted to be all fancy sounding and it’s not like ARGers would ever note these things. Right?
** July 1st being 11:59pm on June 30th or as soon as one of us remembers to turn off the voting after that which will probably actually be the morning of the 1st and, hopefully, sometime before the meeting that night.
Posted 2 weeks, 3 days ago at 3:01 pm. Add a comment
For the first time in the history of ARGFest-o-Con, we are hosting a video contest. Here are the details, for all of those aspiring filmmakers out there:
Concept: Create a video based on an alternate reality game. Really.
Guidelines:
(1) The video should be no more than six minutes in length. Any more and it’d be a stretch to get in.
(2) The content should be related to alternate reality gaming. This includes (but is not limited to) a depiction of an in-game development, a re-imagining of an existing video from an ARG, or a summary of a live event. Please, no documentaries. Mockumentaries are cool, though.
(3) Keep it clean — we will be featuring the videos on our web site and through our YouTube channel, and we have a few kids who may or may not want to watch.
(4) Nothing illegal in the video, please.
(5) Keep it creative! The more awesome your video, the better your chances of being shown at ARGFest!
Some of you out there may be thinking to yourselves, “You know, I would like to be a sponsor of ARGFest-o-Con, thereby getting my business’ name out to a large audience of people who are generally very brand-loyal when it comes to companies that support alternate reality gaming, but I don’t know how!” And for those of you who are saying this, we offer you the 2009 ARGFest-o-Con Media Kit. The kit was developed by the Directing Committee in an attempt to showcase the many positive aspects of ARGFest while also detailing the many ways people can sponsor and support the conference. Because, let’s face it, money doesn’t grow on trees, and even with an army of volunteers, stuff needs to get paid for.
So, just how easy is it to get involved as a sponsor? Super easy! We have many tiers of sponsorship available from as low as $100, which gets your name in the program and your information in the registration handouts. If you’re more of the “I want it all!” kind of person (or company), we offer a $5000 sponsorship package which includes (among other things) your logo on all printed materials and a display table at the conference. And, with three other tiers in between to suit your needs, now is an ideal time to get active by sponsoring the conference.
We have recently announced confirmed speakers (we are thisclose to adding two more dynamic, must-see speakers to our list) and are currently nailing down a robust and action-packed schedule. People are really starting to get jazzed about the conference, which is only 38 days away, and if you are at all interested in having eyeballs on your logo and having people taking about your company and its support of the genre, now is the time to contact us about sponsorship opportunities. If you are curious about how sponsorship has taken shape in years past, head over to our media section for a look back at the 2007 and 2008 conferences, as well as a downloadable copy of our aforementioned Press Kit.
Posted 3 weeks, 3 days ago at 9:36 pm. Add a comment
Update: Soon after this post was published, we received unexpected news that impacts our speaker lineup. We have revised the post with relevant information.
We’ve got a lot of news for you this week, and there’s no better place to start than our illustrious group of speakers! This year, we will have another strong group of panelists and presentations, including a tribute to Dave Szulborski by Dee Cook and Michelle Senderhauf. We have a growing list of confirmed speakers on our Speakers page, and we are adding to the line-up regularly. We have quite a few exciting, “unconfirmed” speakers lined up and are going to be making many more announcements about more super awesome guests in the next few weeks, as those details become more clear.
Speaking of events, we’re starting to release details (vague, yes, but we’re still fitting the pieces together) on our busy weekend on the Events page and will have many more to announce in the coming days. We’ve seen many interesting events and surprise appearances take place during ARGFests of the past, including the now-infamous Banana Hammock Man incident of 2008. Incidentally, if you are part of a game design team or company that wishes to make a splash at ARGFest-o-Con with a live event, there’s an easy way to guarantee that your event goes off without a hitch (and without involving security) — contact us! Our directing committee is busy making elaborate, to-the-minute schedules, so now is the time to ensure that your event is a part of this year’s conference!
As always, your best source for information about this year’s conference is right here at argfestocon.com. We have archives from previous events and the most up-to-date information on this year’s festivities, including a brand new media section. If you’re still thinking about attending but aren’t 100% sure, our web site has all of the details you need to get you registered, your hotel booked and your schedule filled for the weekend. You just gotta be there!
Posted 3 weeks, 3 days ago at 8:09 pm. Add a comment
With only four days remaining for early bird registration, it’s time to get yourself set up for ARGFest-o-Con 2009 at a significant discount! Remember, after May 24, the registration rates for the event go up, so now is the time to save yourself some dough, you frugal, responsible person you!
Oh, speaking of frugality in Portland, check out this New York Times article for information on how you can do Portland on the cheap. Do the words “pretty good free beer” mean anything to you? How about no sales tax?
Posted 1 month, 1 week ago at 6:26 pm. Add a comment
Are you an avid user of Twitter? Do you use Facebook? If your answer for both is an empathic “No!” then… seriously? Neither? Was your ox cart ride over here bumpy and lengthy? Do your arms ache from churning your own butter?
Ahem.
For those that found themselves answering “Yes!” for either (or both) of those questions, then you’re one step closer to ARGFest-o-Con, because we have set up our own Twitter profile, and have had a Facebook event group set up for us!
At http://twitter.com/argfestoconhttp://twitter.com/argfest, we’ve been sending out the occasional tweet, particularly when updates happen on the site. Those of you who follow us on Twitter will have yet another way of keeping tabs on our progress as we move ever closer to July, and anyone who was at ARGFest-o-Con 2008 in Boston can tell you how helpful Twitter was in organizing meet-ups and social engagements.
Meanwhile, the ever-so-helpful Martin Aggett has created an event page for ARGFest-o-Con at Facebook. The page allows you to RSVP and provides a space for Facebook users to share photos, send messages to one another, and other fun social networking stuff.
There are only 64 days until the event launches, and we can tell you that major announcements are coming sooner than later, so get on board with our social connections and make us a part of your lives! Let us complete you!
(Oh, by the way, here’s a gentle reminder that our early bird registration rate is good from now through May 23rd. Register early, save money! It’s a win-win!)
Posted 1 month, 2 weeks ago at 8:10 pm. Add a comment
1. Create your T-Shirt design – see the bits on Design Guidelines for more details.
2. Send us your designs for review.
3. Hope that your design makes it through the next round
3.a (optional) Send bribes to the ARGFest committee so they fight extra hard for your design. We hear SpaceBass likes pie, but he also fights like a girl. Choose wisely.
4. Vote on your favorite of the top three designs when they are posted to the ARGFest website.
5. Go to ARGFest where you will see your design printed on official ARGFest materials including the always popular Official ARGFest-o-Con T-Shirt which will be available for purchase and pickup at ARGFest.
We’ve got a lot of news for you this week, and there’s no better place to start than our illustrious group of speakers! This year, we will have another strong group of panelists and presentations, including a tribute to Dave Szulborski by Dee Cook and Michelle Senderhauf. We have a growing list of confirmed speakers on our