Greetings everyone!
I wanted to take a moment and let you know about something going on behind the scenes. We’ve been attempting to figure out a way for attendees to digitally participate in PDXLAN Fall 2021 (as a last resort / medical exemptions) for a few weeks now. We still have some “process” things to iron out but wanted to let you know about what we are trying to do. We recognize that some of you may want to participate, but don’t want to be masked the entire time. We recognize that some of you may have anxiety about that many people in a room and we want to try our best to accommodate you as best we can.
First and foremost, if you were planning to come to PDXLAN in November, please don’t let this change your mind. A lot of what makes PDXLAN unique & fun is the live aspect of seeing fellow community members. After two years of not having a PDXLAN, we fully expect people to be super excited about seeing one another, and we’d miss seeing you.
Contests and Tournaments will soon be highlighted on the event page with their ability to be played via remote or not. We are not designing PDXLAN to be remote but instead planning activities on site and then opening those that can be played remote, to remote attendees. Prize winnings from contests and tournaments will be able to be picked up just before the PDXLAN raffle on Sunday from 12pm-2pm, even via a proxy attendee. How to register for the event remotely will be covered later as we iron out the process. Part of that process will be adding “R_” to the Front of your handle in LanReg and making sure your email address is correct on your ticket. (Do that by Nov 5th)
The PDXLAN raffle will be an in-person thing still – and we plan to make it much faster like we did in Fall 2019 – by doing most of it through Discord on site. More details will emerge as we near the event. Those wanting to participate in the raffle will need to bring a computer that can be plugged into our network (not Wi-Fi) and register for the raffle by 2pm Sunday. The process for participating in the Charity Raffle will be possible with a physical proxy at the event as per normal. We’re keeping the main raffle in-person only for those that have made the trek to be with us that weekend. Note: If you are coming for the LIVE in person raffle on Sunday, don’t expect to just get in, there may be a line of registrants and only one staff member to deal with this line. (Plan your time accordingly)
There is one thing, something special… we are attempting to do at the LAN… and remote people may miss out on that… just a fair warning. I’m working with the company involved trying to figure out a way to do it online. I can’t say more.
Generally, our style is to figure it all out before we announce a change, but with around 45 tickets for sale, we wanted people to know about this sooner rather than later in the case that it influenced decisions being made. Everyone’s seat is still being set up, powered, table rented, networked, etc. – so there is no cost adjustment by attending remote, this is just an olive branch to try and help those with seats for sale.
The remote event options should be considered with the understanding some things will not be available to remote attendees.
As always, if you have questions, please hit the staff up in Discord in the “Event Questions” channel. We’ll be happy to try and help best we can. Please keep conversation to the “General Chat” channel.
Matt “Vector” Conwell
PDXLAN Event Organizer