Potential Euro-IF Meetup In UK

It was mentioned here a while back. If it were to happen, how many IF folk would be interested and would turn up?

I would be interested, and would be more interested depending on the type of event. South of England would be preferable (London would be fine) but I’d be willing to travel if it was for something more compelling.

What kind of things do face to face groups get up to in the States?

That depends on the size and nature of the group.

Most of the meetups I’ve attended, in the UK and US, have been fairly small and informal things. Restaurants are good, pubs are good. If someone has an appropriately-sized home in a conveniently-located place, hanging out there is good. Social lubricant is important: the most reliable kinds are booze and board games. (Ideally, a place quiet enough for both. The Bookstore Bar in downtown Seattle has been a consistent venue for this.)

Low-stress touristy things, suitable for chatting but not absolutely requiring it, are good value also. I recommend boats. (Mostly I recommend punts.) Museums, maybe. (In London I’d say the Wellcome Collection would be ideal, but that may just be vicarious thinking, as I still haven’t made it there.)

On the other hand, if you want a one-off Formal IF Event, with panels, readings, game-jams or whatnot… that’s a lot more work, and I’m not the person to talk to.

For me, England is too far away to go just for an IF-meetup, but I have been wanting to go to AdventureX the past two years. (I didn’t get there, but maybe this year?) If someone were to arrange an IF event in connection with that, that would be interesting.

Sound advice and there’s a few places I can think of that’d be quite good for an informal meet up. I know of such places locally in Reading, Winchester, and Southampton. Board games would definitely be a good idea.

A formal event might be more easily achieved in the context of a bigger thing, like Adventure X. What’s the general experience been with IF at conventions (like PAX East)?

That sounds doable!

Excellent, but it requires a great deal of work to set up, and probably some relatively high-profile names.

The main thing at the two big PAX East years was reserving a room or two in the convention hotel to serve as the IF Suite; this was set up with snacks, IF-related reading material and so on, and served as a central place to meet, hold smaller-scale events (a speed-IF/game jam thing, smaller-scale panels), talk about stuff, and decompress (see also: board games and beer). Obviously, to pull that off you need to sort out who’s paying for the room, and make sure there are people to set it up, unlock it in the mornings, watch over it throughout the day and clean up afterwards.

It also helps a lot if you have some visible, IF-related things in the main con, to let interested parties know you’re there: authors with enough recognition to get onto general game-developer panels, side-room events with crossover appeal like Emily’s IF Demo Fair, shiny things that can fill a theatre like Get Lamp or Action Castle.

Boston was a good venue because it’s in the populous eastern US - lots of IF people living nearby, a non-insane flight for Europeans -, and has a strong, established local IF group that did a lot of work dealing with the suite and events.

I can only say that I would try to show up, even though that would mean flying over from Munich, Germany, but I did that for a Sonic Youth concert a couple of years back.

( I guess noone’s interestend in coming to Munich, Germany, where I have a pretty good infrastructure, we had a pretty nice show in May 2011 where we showed GET LAMP, had a live skype with Jason Scott and general awesomeness? Also possibly a venue that can hold 50 people and a smaller one that can hold around twenty thirty for sure for no expenses whatsoever as we’re a non-profit-organization?)

but carry on, I’m most interested!

If there’s a full event on, I’d consider visiting Munich. I enjoy purposeful travel and I’d like to see more of Germany.

I’d be interested in attending a meet-up in London.

Always up for a meetup in London. In fact if anybody is in town and wants to just meet up for a pint or a coffee at some point, let me know.

There’s a regular monthly-ish meetup in London which may be relevant to your interests… meetup.com/interactivenarratives/ (Unfortunately I’m missing the one on 4th June as I’m away all next week.)

That does look interesting. It does however look like it’s more about story writing in general rather than Interactive Fiction. Also,since I haven’t been to it, I’m not sure how much of it is dedicated to Interactive Fiction.

I’ve been to a few of them. It has a wider remit than pure text-based IF, but if you’re interested in digital story projects, transmedia etc, or just chatting and drinking beer with nice people, then I highly recommend it.

Ugh!