This is a great deal – with a sponsorship, you’ll get a bit of promotion, a couple tickets to the event next week, and, of course, you’ll be helping to support ARGFest and all of the great knowledge that comes out of it. But, it’s only available for a short time, so get in touch today!

Brooke has nearly ten years experience with alternate reality gaming & transmedia storytelling and has worked on award-winning projects for major studios & television shows, corporate & military training/teambuilding, and a number of independent projects. In addition to chairing ARGFest, she serves as the chair for the International Game Developers Association’s Special Interest Group on Alternate Reality Games. You can learn more about her at her website, www.giantmice.com.

So, here’s the deal – you’ve got about a week to put something together and send it to us. The committee will fight over which they like the best and a winner will be chosen. If, for some reason, we cannot decide, we’ll throw it out to the community for a vote. We’ll let you know and tweet all about it (in 140 characters or less).

Here’s what we’ll be looking for…

• A fun design that will be printed on the front of the t-shirt
• A design that can be printed in 5 colors or less – remember fewer may be better (and cheaper!)
• Something that mentions ARGFest 2010 (July 15-18 is optional… as is Atlanta, but feel free to work it in)

Here are a few themes if that helps you get started….

• We’ve got the whole Think! Play! Do! thing going on this year and, obviously, triangles.
• We’ve also been using “2 old 2 play with these?” along side various childhood toys like big wheels, tricycles, jump ropes, kick balls, pogo sticks, etc in some promotional items. It’s fun and definitely plays with the festival theme. A t-shirt might twist that around with you’re never 2 old 2 play.
• The Atlanta skyline isn’t all that bad looking and there are some nice landmarks like the Coca-Cola museum, the Varsity, the Georgia Aquarium, and the Fox Theater that show up all the time. Also, the Georgia peach.
• We’ve got the festival this year which is all about playing outside, playing with place, and/or location-based entertainment… so there might be some possibilities there.

Really, though, we’re open to most anything as long as it doesn’t violate any sorts of copyright restrictions or wouldn’t make our mothers cringe. So have at it!

Send us your designs before June 20th. And be sure to let us know what color t-shirt it should be printed on, unless you don’t mind us making that choice.  Below are the color options that we’ve decided are best and/or most likely to be worn by folks.

Flynn Lives Poster

The team behind ARGFest managed to sneak into Unfiction HQ and walk away with a big pile ‘o swag from Flynn Lives (the alternate reality game revolving around TRON Legacy). Now, we could keep this stuff for ourselves and, believe you me, we’re tempted! But after all the bickering over who gets the blue posters and who gets the black, we realized there was only one thing we could do… give all this stuff to you!

So, here’s the deal. We’ve got 9 Flynn Lives swag packages that include a t-shirt & a poster. We will be giving out three a week for each of the next three weeks, drawing randomly from anyone who has registered for a Complete Pass, a Conference Pass, or an Events Pass. For our purposes, weeks start on Monday and go until Sunday and winners will be announced on Monday (with the first winners being announced on May 10). That means that if you register before this Sunday, you will have three chances to win! So what are you waiting for?  Register today!

As our Sponsorship Chair, you will be responsible for reaching out to potential sponsors as well as managing sponsor relations up to and including ARGFest in July. It’s a big and important job, but you will be able to count on support from the team – a couple of us are eager to help as much as possible but are just unable to take the lead.

And this year, with the Games Festival, we are in need of more volunteers than we’ve ever had before. As Volunteer Coordinator, it will be your responsibility to determine the actual need and make sure that we have the volunteers to cover it. Again, you will have support and as a great bonus you will be working closely with Daniel who is heading up the scheduling and logistics.

Keep in mind, ARGFest is put together by a team of volunteers. These are not paid positions. If that doesn’t scare you away and you are interested & committed, get in touch with Brooke (aka @imbri) as soon as soon as possible.Using the contact form will work.

If neither of these are up your alley, we’re going to need more volunteers as we pull this thing together and we’ll need loads of volunteers on the ground in July. If you’d like to help out, fill out the volunteer form and if you have any specific skills that you think we’d find useful, let us know.

(this chicken or egg conundrum is, perhaps, the most annoying part of ARGFest planning)

Becoming a booster is easy! On the right (and in the sidebar of most pages), you’ll notice a Boost Us! section. We’re using PayPal for this, so just let us know how much and how you want to be acknowledged. Clicking the “Buy Now” button will send you off to PayPal to make it happen.

As a booster you will get:

• that warm fuzzy feeling you get when making dozens of people very happy
• the appreciation of all ARGFest Attendees… especially those that are eager for registration info!
• the sincere gratitude of the ARGFest Committee who are terrified these costs are going to fall on them.
• and, of course, recognition on the site & in the program as a Booster

note: The PayPal account you are going to is Brooke’s. It’s the best way for us to get the funds in & out as quickly as possible. We trust her with this – she is the ARGFest 2010 Chair and on the ground in Atlanta dealing with our various venues & vendors. If you would prefer to give through Unfiction, feel free, but be sure contact us so that we can make sure that the funds are properly accounted for and you get the acknowledgment & appreciation you deserve.

This year is the first year that we are, officially, spreading beyond the weekend. Its been harder and harder to fit everything we want to do into two days and, well, we gave up trying. Based on feedback & suggestions from last year, we’re doing more to make it friendly for both the thinkers & the players… a full-fledged conference combined with a full-fledged games festival into one big blast.

The schedule & logistics are still be worked out (expect details shortly!), but it’s going to look something like this:

Thursday & Friday will be dedicated to the thinking. Saturday & Sunday will be dedicated to the playing. There will, of course, be a bit of cross-over, with fun things happening on Thursday & Friday and space available for unconference style sessions on Saturday. But, one way to think about it is that we’re going to start off all serious (or, well, as serious as we can be) and have more and more fun as the days go on until Sunday when we’re all play (and food! and friends!). There’s going to be so much going on and we’re sure that you’re not going to want to miss a second of it!

We can hardly wait!

So, what does this mean? It means that there’s time for more of everything and we’re going to need your help to make that happen! We need speakers and sessions and games and sponsors. Over the next few weeks, you’ll see a flurry of activity as we announce key bits of information and get up our panel & game submission forms. In the mean time, think about what you’d like to see or what you’d like to play. If you’re a game designer, definitely think about games you can showcase (the festival will be similar to Come Out and Play or igfest – location based games, big scavenger hunts, fun field games and the like). If your company would like to help us out by being a sponsor – please get in touch! We’re in immediate need of funds to secure venues & vendors. And, if you want to host one of the networking events or parties, better to get on that sooner rather than later.

More soon!