Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening/Whatever it is in your timezone, world or game setting

As we move into the autumn, I wanted to offer an update on where the IGA is and what is happening.

Plans for Gaelcon (https://gaelcon.com/) are obviously well advanced, and being shared on the Gaelcon website and on social media. Schedules are nearly final, games are mostly written, traders are signing up, art for merch is done and charity auction lots are coming in.

Thursday Night Gaming is back up and running in Ryan’s, it’s great to have so many new people and old friends playing games together again. (read on for more..)

Work is ongoing on becoming a registered charity but this requires us to have a business plan, a strategic plan and a strong justification that we should be a registered charity.

After Gaelcon, the website backend will be cleaned out – you may not notice, but a lot of old custom code has been added over the years, and it makes some things hard to run smoothly. We are also looking for pictures of old events to add to the website (with permission of course) so if you have them we welcome them.

We will be holding the first AGM of the IGA as a Company Limited by Guarantee at Gaelcon this year.  Everyone who has been a paid up member for at least 6 months can vote. We have to approve accounts, reports for the Chair, Secretary and Treasurer, elect the directors and pass properly notified motions. We will propose one motion – to increase the number of directors from four to five, and we must elect the directors for the coming year. There will also be proposals to formalise how we allocate funds from the Charity Auction, and having a Gselcon subcommittee on a stable basis to manage long term Gaelcon work like venue and venue costs. Documentation will be circulated to members by 9th October to meet the requirements for adequate notice. This year should be fairly short and simple, but in future years no doubt it may become more interesting. Once the formal business is done, I hope we can discuss some plans for next year.

Next Year will bring both opportunities and challenges. For Gaelcon 2023 the balance between venue size, cost of venue, ticket prices and projected attendance is going to be a challenge – venue costs have increased a lot. We are also open to offers of volunteers to be ConDirector for 2023.

We have an emerging plan to have annual Irish gaming awards, starting at Gaelcon 2023. It seems right to recognise the excellent and growing volume of creative work, professional and amateur being done. Conversations about this will be ongoing, especially at Gaelcon this year.

There is a lot of activity in gaming around the country, with RPG and boardgames groups in many places. As well as the renewal of Thursday Night Gaming, we are looking at other events we can run across the year.  These will probably be one day events, perhaps with a particular focus (D&D for newbies, second chance runs of old con games etc). Ideas and volunteers welcome to chair@iga.ie