Starts 12:30 PM Friday August 25, 2017 and runs continuously until 6 PM Sunday.
Location: Bellevue Hilton (300 112th Ave SE, Bellevue WA)
Photo copyright Edmund Metheny 2015, used with permission.
In Tabletop.Events a seat in a game is referred to as a ticket. Some tournaments require an extra fee to participate but for the majority of the games happening at Dragonflight tickets are free. In order to give everyone a fair shot at getting in to the games they most want to play we ask that you limit your pre-registrations to four games as has been the tradition for Dragonflight.
We have two seats on the Board of Directors up for election this year.
One is a regular three-year term. Whoever is elected will serve from 1 January 2018 through 31 December 2020. The seat is currently held by Sarah Samurai.
The other is a short-term seat to fill the remainder of Larry White’s term. This individual will serve from the validation of the election at the October 2017 Board of Directors meeting until 31 December 2018.
Nominations may be made by e-mailing dfelection@dragonflight.org. You must be a current member to nominate and the nominee must also be a current member. You may nominate yourself. Nominations are due by 5 pm on 15 August 2017. The election will be held at the Dragonflight convention, 25-27 August, 2017. Ballots will also be available at Metro Seattle Gamers for the week leading up to the convention. The nominee must specify whether they wish to run for the 3 year term or the one-year term. A candidate cannot run for both.
Each seat will be filled by the candidate receiving the most votes for that position. All results will be certified by the Board of Directors at the October 2017 Board Meeting.
Candidates may submit personal information and their proposals for Dragonflight (length 400 words) for publication with the ballot for distribution to the membership.
Calling all game hosts! Player sign-ups for games at Dragonflight will begin on June 25.
As a special incentive, all game hosts who submit a game before June 25th will be entered into a raffle to win a $50 game store gift certificate. Each game you submit will earn one entry to the raffle. You must run the game to be eligible to collect your prize.
If you are interested in participating in the raffle we encourage you to register for the convention, and sign up to host games within the Tabletop.Events system now. You can sign up to run games after June 25, but these will not be eligible for the raffle.
For information about other incentives for game hosts, please see our event host info page.
Calling all GMs! Event submissions are open for Dragonflight 38!
Now is a good time to register for the convention, and get your events set up in the system.
Both registration for the convention and event submissions are up and running via Tabletop.Events. This year you’ll both buy tickets to the convention through this site, as well as sign up to host games or play games.
You’ll need to create a login on TableTop.Events, then pick Dragonflight 38 from the list of available conventions. Then click the “submit events” button, and you’ll be directed to a simple form for submitting your event.
If you have any questions or technical difficulties, please contact us.
Registration for Dragonflight is live via Tabletop.Events. This year you’ll both buy tickets to the convention through this site, as well as sign up to host games or play games.
You’ll need to create a login on TableTop.Events, then pick Dragonflight 38 from the list of available conventions. We hope this consolidated system is easy to use and effective at getting you to your games as easily as possible.
Download the program for Dragonflight 2016 onto your computer, phone, tablet, or Kindle here!
We have it in three formats:
mobi (Kindle): https://goo.gl/6SFpo5
and
ePub (Android, iOS): https://goo.gl/hnwKy1
and
PDF Addendum: https://goo.gl/81p02v
The Board of Directors oversees all Dragonflight activities. Individual directors participate in this process through quarterly meetings and via email. Additional meetings may be called at the discretion of the Chairman. Attend scheduled meetings and participate in the process. Directors are required to be members of Dragonflight for the duration of their term; failure to remain a member in good standing automatically terminates your directorship. See the Dragonflight Bylaws for more information.
All paid members are invited to participate (e.g., child attendees with a free badge are not eligible to vote) . If you have purchased a ticket to the Dragonflight convention, you are a member! Voters will pick two candidates for the 3-year term and one candidate for the 2-year term on the ballot. There will be spots for write-in votes. Write-in candidates must be a current member, and be willing to accept the position.
If you are Dragonflight member and can’t attend the convention, you can cast an absentee ballot by sending an email with your choices to dfelection@dragonlight.org by Aug 18. Make sure to include your name in the message.
The assistance and what I can bring to the table to help further MSG can be broken down to one word: technology. Amy’s leadership and the efforts of the MSG board has resulted in an absolutely *incredible* job tightening up Dragonflight and making it an event all of us look forward to each year; I have event management experience, but that aspect is already in great hands. One area most of us can agree there is room for improvement on, however, is technology. Network accessibility at the convention. How we schedule games and events, its ease of use, its reliability and functionality. How we register to attend and, especially, how our information is protected and secured. How we connect, not just to the site or the outside world, but to each other.
We live in an increasingly digitized world, surrounded by the “Internet of Things”, as corporations like to call it. And, even though a big part of why we are in this group is that we like to temporarily disconnect from that digital world and to force people to be physically present and personally connected, technology undeniably has a necessary place even in a group where analog interaction is the ultimate goal. The MSG and Dragonflight has a technology gap, this cannot be argued against; a digital experience that is not seamless and does not lack frustrating aspects which can absolutely be fixed. There are ways to maintain concurrent user access during Dragonflight so that people aren’t fighting for bandwidth seeking erratas. There are more seamless ways to schedule games and reliably maintain game registration. There are ways to prevent gaps in accessibility. And there are certainly better methods of password recovery than having an individual look it up for you and manually provide you with a plaintext password which should have been protected from all eyes but your own.
That’s what I can help with – it’s the unique expertise I have. I understand technology and solutions on a level few others anywhere can match, particularly with regards to networking, reliable accessibility and security. I’ve been asked to assist with this numerous times in the past and, though time is in short supply for me, I enjoy MSG’s mission, wish to assist in driving it forward and am thus willing to allocate some of that towards advancing the overall user experience and addressing the technology gap the group faces.
Having been a Dragonflight member for eight years, and a volunteer working with the Board for four, I seek to bring strong leadership and technical capability to the Dragonflight Board of Directors. Dragonflight is a great convention, and I look forward to working as part of the Board to make it even better in the three years to come. Thank you.
Thank you to those who voted for me to represent you on the board for the last two years. I ask for you all to please vote for me to represent you for the next three years. Many of you have joined me in playing board games, role playing, the story lounge, and other fun activities. Some of you have also been volunteers along with me helping to run our yearly convention, or remember me as the auctioneer for our last auction several years ago.
Not as many of you know that Dragonflight, the organization behind our yearly convention is chartered for the purpose of PROMOTING GAMING IN THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST. But I have had the pleasure of working with some of you at events such as Game On, Rustycon, NorWesCon, Metro Seattle Gamers, Orcacon, or charity events at the Columbia Tower where I have volunteered with other members of our Dragonflight Community to bring our Game Library, and to encourage others to join us in many fun types of games, from table top to LARPS.
I will cooperate with my fellow Board Members, our Convention Director, Staff, and Volunteers to continue to improve our gaming experience, and to promote the various forms of our hobby to young people, or other interested in joining us for some fun.
I will continue to do my best to Communicate to You what Our Organization is doing, and why. I am also Your Voice to the Board, and have Listened to many of You about Your Concerns and Questions. Please take a moment or two to speak to me about Your Ideas, or Concerns, or to Ask Me a Question. I will Listen, and I will get you an answer, or inform you where, or from whom you may get better information. Thank You.
I first joined Dragonflight Convention in 2009 as the Operations Manager. Since then, I’ve been the Volunteer Coordinator, RPG Coordinator, Board & Card Games Coordinator, and Convention Concierge. I was elected the Board in 2013, served one term and chose not to run again. I was President in 2014 & 2015. At the moment, I am the Acting Secretary, while our current Secretary is recovering from an illness.
Why am I running for the Board again? Dragonflight, and the Board with it, is going through a transitionary phase. New blood, new ideas, new talent have slowly been replacing the old, and while, on balance, that’s been a very good thing … our convention attendance is up, revenue is looking good … it has also caused a fair amount of stress in the halls of management. Some of the stress is brought about by the natural growth caused by our hobby’s entrance into the mainstream.
The Board has been doing its best to guide Dragonflight through this period of growth and change, but has been having some difficulty with it. The Board’s approach has been to step in, directly and actively mandate certain management decisions that haven’t always been the right choice. And, since the members of the Board haven’t always been on the same page, some of those mandated decisions haven’t been consistent with previous ones.
My job on the board will be to provide needed guidance from the knowledge I’ve gained from my years in service to Dragonflight, and to help guide the Board into having as light a touch as is reasonable. Rather than micromanage every decision, the Board needs to appoint competent executives and support them, providing guidance and oversight, and stepping in only when necessary.
I will also do what I can to help the organization continue to expand its reach by being welcoming to children, women, people of color, and members of the LGBTQ community by helping to draft inclusionary policy and guidelines for the organization.
And finally, I’ll do my best to serve as a reminder that the reason we’re all doing this is that it’s FUN! And the most important thing we do here at Dragonflight is not putting on a convention or running a clubhouse, but to spread our hobby and the joy that it brings as far and wide as we can.
My name is Amy Gembala and I have been the Convention Director (2014-Present), and the Dealer Coordinator (2013). During my tenure as Convention Director, I’ve been privileged to work with a talented and dedicated volunteer staff, and together we have:
I feel that my contributions to Dragonflight have been positive. There have been some hiccups, most notably with respect to technology. We are keenly aware of the issues, and continue to work toward a more stable/user-friendly system. Many of the technology issues have been a direct result of, frankly, mismanagement by the Board. I hope to help prevent future missteps as a Board member.
I have certain goals for the Board: Specifically, I would like to:
I hope that you will support my candidacy for the 2-year seat being vacated by Rolfe Bergstrom.
This is from Nancy White, our volunteer coordinator.
To all our Dragonflight members:
I’m sure you’ve all heard we are a completely volunteer run organization. We have a small staff that works hard to provide our membership with a weekend of exceptional game playing opportunities, but we can’t do it all alone. Right now we have several tasks/jobs that need to be filled. If you are so inclined to help, please contact us at volunteers@dragonflight.org. Some of the jobs would take just a few hours, and we’d really appreciate your help. But, if you’re interested in more than a few hours, we can put you to work. See our site for our reward program. You could even have your admission (not membership dues) reimbursed. We promise you, we’re never going to ask people to clean toilets or anything like that.
Again, if you’re interested in helping at the convention, please contact us at volunteers@dragonflight.org
Here is a list with some of the jobs that we need to fill:
Dragonflight Board of Directors election
Candidate electioneering is prohibited at the registration desk or within ten (10) feet of the ballot box
Last year there was electioneering in and around the registration desk, this could be perceived as official support for a particular candidate. Dragonflight as an organization does not support any candidate except by a specific Board action at an open meeting. The registration area and the ballot box are to be considered neutral territory and the wearing of tee shirts, pins, hats or other candidate support items is to be avoided by registration staff while on duty at the registration desk. The placement of signs or other candidate advocacy materials other than the official submitted candidate statement is not allowed at the registration desk or within ten (10) feet of the ballot box.
Since 1990 Dragonflight has operated a year-round gaming club in Seattle, called Metro Seattle Gamers, currently located at 1600 Armory Way South #C-106. The club house has multiple tables and ample room for large wargames There is an extensive game library along with space for games to be stored mid game and resumed later. Besides wargames, miniatures, and board games it has often been used by weekly roleplaying groups. It serves a community of gamers, perhaps gamers like you.
Like the convention, members pay to attend MSG. Fees vary by the evening, by the day, or by the month. A first time visit is free, so check it out.
For location, hours, and schedule of events go to:
Photos copyright Mark Walters 2015, used with permission.
