Mike

Hey All. Just doing another check in hoping you are all well. I honestly can't believe its mid-May. I've lost all concept of time lately.

Reality kinda hit me in the face today when I released my second child will be born no later than a month from today. These last two months have felt oddly fast and now Spring is almost over.

With Memorial Day around the corner it really got the blood pumping for some Gen Con Events. Yeah, I know they are delayed. 

One nice perk was we haven't had to pay $300+ a week for daycare over the last two months, so Yay Gen Con budget surplus! 

Anyway, hope you all have been doing as well as you can be. 

Yeah, unless you walk up to a booth, put new gloves on, then toss those gloves when you leave, gloves do nothing.

Gloves serve a purpose as a barrier, both for outgoing germs and for incoming.  They keep what's on something you touch off of your skin, and what's on your skin off of what you touch.  Gloves do not, however, have any effect on transferring contamination from one surface to another.  Since COVID-19 is not transmitted through the skin, gloves have zero effect.

If one person washes their hands and another washes their hands and puts on gloves, then both handle a contaminated door handle then pick up a game box, the results are identical.  Put gloves on people and let them all walk through a hall for an hour and the result will be the same as if they'd never worn them.

Add to that that people who have not been trained in how to wear these barriers don't know when to change them, how to remove them (which is a big deal), and tend to not understand that after you take gloves off, you still have to wash as though you never had them on.  This leads to untrained people wearing gloves taking fewer precautions and actually increasing their risk rather than reducing it.

tl;dr - wearing gloves for COVID-19 is likely worse than not wearing them.

This comes from years of practice and training in bio-hazard exposure and containment.

To follow up on mhayward’s excellent previous post, even a reply saying “We have no plans to make updates regarding any of your suggestions at this time” would be a step up communication-wise.

They have a whole page with the most current info available.  I don't get what is so hard about that for some people. 

Do they really have to say 'nope' to every idea posted in an 1100 comment forum?

I just recieve this from portal games, does this means that they are not going to gencon no matter what?:

The impact of the COVID-19 virus has been felt in every corner of the globe and has impacted the board game industry with the closing of many favorite summer conventions. Fans of Portal Games have asked for an English edition of PortalCon for many years. “Since we cannot meet our fans in person this year, we thought it would be a great time to host this online convention,” said Ignacy Trzewiczek, Portal Games CEO.

I cannot believe that GenCon is still planning to proceed at this time! It is irresponsible of GenCon to continue to host a convention that involves masses of people sitting closely next to each other for long periods of time.

It is time for the organizers to wake up and look at what's happening in the rest of the world and to review the reports of the world's leading doctors and scientific community.  Until there is a vaccine, no one should be congregating with strangers in mass public events like GenCon. This will likely be the state of things until early 2021.  If you are not practicing proper social distancing and taking appropriate precautions until a vaccine is developed -- then you are a part of the problem!

While I have chosen not to attend GenCon this year, I am really looking forward to attending it next year.  I hope GenCon has a good liability insurance policy though, because if they proceed with GenCon 2020 and WHEN people contract the virus from others attending, there will likely be law suits against GenCon from the families of anyone who dies from the disease.

Or perhaps GenCon's plan is just to hand out bleach-infused energy drinks to people attending?

(I'm guessing that with GenCon's reluctance to cancel the event that they did not buy event cancellation insurance?  Perhaps something to consider in the future?)

Mike, the post above (tzimmerman) is not only adding nothing new , but he is actively being hostile to the company that puts this event together.  Can you take that post down.

Most of us get that there are a plethora of reasons why Gen Con is at the point it is with announcements on anything.  All he is doing is being a troll and a hater in a situation that neither is called for or appreciated.
Believe me, if there was any opportunity to troll, I'd jump on that in a heartbeat.

https://www.lucasoilstadium.com/icclos-response-to-covid-19/?fbclid=IwAR2XzqJLcfIbtY_L_47qOQ-aR-8dCCfKPN_DJT3h3clUsaTrRL1bkjAXkQc

does anyone know how GenCon can proceed with this measure in place? do we soon get an update on new gencon plans?

• Temperature and health screenings required upon entry to the building
  
• Masks and gloves required in common areas and event spaces
  
• Built-in six-foot physical distancing measures added to floor plans, seating areas, and crowd management
  
• Limited and designated entry and exit doors
  
• One-way travel markers in hallways and corridors
  
• Additional hand-sanitizing stations
  
• Hospital-grade air filters and 24/7 air circulation
  
• Plexiglass shields at all service areas
  
• No food service (initially) with modified food service policies, including cashless and touchless point of sale, in subsequent stages
  
• Our staff also are receiving enhanced training on COVID-19 related practices and protocols.
  

Those are their initial procedures that may, or may not, be in effect when/if Gen Con happens. 

*Subject to change based on ongoing guidance from the Indiana and Indianapolis public health departments.

That means these requirements might be different come the time GenCon rolls around.

Now tzimmerman has had theirs.

Keeping this thread open has been a chore for sure. Gen Con can take our lumps for whatever people believe or do not believe about us. All that matters is the end result and we are not there yet.

As a forum manager one has to have a thick skin.

My philosophy for forums has always been (Paraphrasing):

There are three truths:
Your truth
My truth
The truth
And they are rarely all the same.

No one is saying they have to respond, But a “no” at least shows that the question has been heard and given attention. 

So I just scored a room at the downtown Embassy in the housing portal. Which is awesome, but worrisome at the same time.

Let's be real.  This is a company that employs almost 20 people year round and has significant contracts with the ICC, Lucas Oil and so on.  This is not like the local Con in your hometown that rents out a hotel ballroom.  You are flippantly talking about turning out the lights on their entire revenue for a whole year.  Like it is you and your buddies cancelling your Friday night game session -- let's meet again next week, right?  If it needs to happen, it needs to happen.  But, if so, they will need to cross their T's and dot their I's on the financial details.

There are a lot of possibilities here:
Maybe Gen Con will go forward within official guidelines
Maybe Gen Con is actively negotiating with ICC, Lucas Oil, the city and hotels about cancelling 2020
Maybe Gen Con is negotiating moving the event to later in the year
Maybe Gen Con has a lawyer working on literally filing for bankruptcy
Maybe Gen Con already intends to cancel but needs, for liability reasons, the city/state to cancel the event - and that has ramifications for whether they owe the ICC, collect insurance etc.

That last possibility has been raised in this thread by numerous people about 2.4x10^3 times -- yet posts like yours just walk right past it like the concept doesn't exist.  

None of the above things are going to be negotiated in public.  They just aren't.  That's not how it works.

And, for all we know, doing it wrong might mean Gen Con is done.  Forever.

At this point, personally, I think the most likely end result is that the convention will yet be cancelled for this year.  But, we'll see.  In the meantime, I think a lot of people need to dial back the sanctimony about how they are the only ones who care about public health.  We all want it done right and the official recommendations are a moving target.

Imagine the stress of working on an event for a year and then having this happen -- add in the possibility of losing your job.  Now tack on people yelling at you to share info that, possibly, for legal reasons you can't yet share.  Let's give these folks a break.  They put on a great convention every year.

That page hasn't been updated in two weeks, and really doesn't say anything of substance beyond "wait and see".

As an attendee, I can afford to wait and see.  But what about the exhibitors?  Their goods have to be ordered way in advance in order to be sure that they'll be there in time to sell them at the con.  And I'd wager a lot of them couldn't afford to sit on a large stock of inventory until Gen Con 2021 rolls around.  They'll need to make some decisions soon, based on the information they have at the time.

So, has Gen Con been in touch with their exhibitors, beyond what they've communicated to the world at large?

Edit: As an aside, anyone looking for decent rooming, looks like there are some decent options atm lol

I want to thank you for understanding that the front page link doesn't cover folks seeing updates and is hard to see on mobile. I want to thank you for your calmness and patience. I want to thank you for your update in the thread about the change to the refund email. Those little bits of communication have helped me.