WarGamesCon Tix and Airline Acquired

Hello All,

A variety of posts are incoming soon (I say this often, to no avail, but for serious), including some interesting news relevant to us regarding a little international flair.  That'll pop later today.

I purchased my GT ticket for WarGamesCon this year, along with airline tix (AA flight 1113 out of BWI on June 21), and reserved my hotel rooms.

It's important for the community know the solidarity with which the various TO's work and interact. Some of my favorite moments in wargaming are long and productive conversations (chat and over phone) with JWolf of WarGamesCon, Matt and Hank of AdeptiCon, Reece of Bay Area, Chandler of Feast of Blades, Jay of DaBoyz, Chris of Colonial, Neil and Pat of 11th Co, Tim of Bugeater, Garrett/Aaron/Keith of Indy, Mike of SVDM (with whom I had a good long chat at AdeptiCon this year) and a host of others (as if that's not enough).

What always gets us is the competition many outsiders from the TO crew tend to see ... to quote WarGamesCon's JWolf earlier in chat ...

Jon: You know, if people read our chats they might get the wrong impression and think we got along and had the same perverse sense of humor.

Truth of the matter is, TO's are often the only folks who fully understand the effort and minimal gain involved with running these things. We each have slightly different motivations, but most of them boil down to wanting to show a great time to everyone, and wanting to share our hobby the way our personalities enable. Given the nature of Battle Points vs. W/L, I think I see more often a competition attempted to be drawn between WGC and NOVA ... well, I've got my registration paid to WGC, and JWolf has his paid to NOVA. Shocked?

Now, it's worth sharing that my day job is as a Proposal Manager for a large government contractor. It's a lot like being an attorney from time to time, with an RFP representing crash time on a major case. Long-foreseen time off requests are often required for even weekends (even if it doesn't actually burn vacation), and travel is tricky for me ... an especially major RFP release can cause me to have to cancel 'fun' travel ... which means paying several hundred dollars for event tickets and airfare carries a significant risk of me losing money for nothing. Heck, I caught crap from parts of my team on a relatively small proposal for attending AdeptiCon, with over 6 months lead time on time off request. In my opinion, that doesn't matter when it comes to showing solidarity on the circuit, and planning to make a great event. So barring the unavoidable, folks will see me and my NOVA Open polo shirts rolling dice and hamming it up at WGC this year. Like many of the other events mentioned above, and many I'm assuredly forgetting about, WGC is a pillar for our community, and I'm looking forward to it.

IF you're in Texas and looking for something to do in a few weeks, give a gander at the site (click pic), they may have some spots left.

 - Mike