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.
Voting Rules
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.
Candidates
3-Year Term Candidates
2-Year Term Candidates
Candidate Statements
Chance Daniels
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.
Ted Neward
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.
Cory Rueb
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.
Mark Walters
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.
Amy Gembala
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:
- Increased attendance by 40% between 2013 and 2015
- Raised overall revenue/cut costs to make the convention revenue positive
- Brought the movie room and auction into legal compliance
- Maxed out on scheduled games in 2015 (with hopes to repeat in 2016)
- Maxed out on our hotel room block in 2016, reducing rental costs to the organization
- Increased the number of dealers at the convention twofold
- Repaired a seriously strained relationship between Dragonflight and the Hilton staff, making it possible to return to the hotel year after year
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:
- Work toward implementing a purchased third party technology platform, to be implemented in the 2018 convention–note: I am advocating taking a full year to investigate and prepare before switching platforms. Currently we work exclusively with donated and volunteer platforms, and we need to be able to press vendors when something breaks–something we cannot do with donated and volunteer technology. But it needs to be transitioned carefully and deliberately. Something that we have not done in the past.
- Increase the number of scheduled board meetings per year to every other month. Meetings a mere 4 times per year are not adequate or reflective of the serious commitment we should be asking of our Board members.
- Create an annual project for the Board to work on outside of the Convention. This may include raising funds for a permanent MSG home, a charity project, or toward a new service at the convention.
- Strongly encourage Board members to annually contribute financially to the organization at a level that is meaningful to them.
I hope that you will support my candidacy for the 2-year seat being vacated by Rolfe Bergstrom.
