Southern Hemisphere Open 2018 – an overview
I have procrastinated on writing blog posts about Southern Hemisphere Open 2018 (SHO18) for way too long. The problem I have is that looking back on SHO18 it just feels overwhelmingly big! How do I cover it? I can’t bang out a couple of hundred words and hope that it will adequately cover everything that happened over the three days. It just wont. I think that’s why I started with the ATC posts. That felt like a distinct event that I could easily tackle. Now with that covered how do I tackle the rest of the event?
At the time of writing this I have literally just finished recording the second Patrons only podcast for those people who are generously supporting us on Patreon. That episode (which wont air until 1st December) is all about goal setting and I am pretty persistent with my focus on the need to set goals and break them down into manageable pieces. So putting my money where my mouth is. We have two weeks until our next big event, Master 2018. My goal is to have published all blog posts related to SHO18 by Masters 2018. That goal still feels pretty big. Now to break that down into smaller pieces. The most logical way to do that is to focus on the different elements of the event. When I planned the event there were a few main components:
- Formal table top tournaments
- RPG
- Board games
- Workshops
- Painting competition
- Intro and demo games
- Clubs and groups
- Retailers
- Sponsors
From a logical perspective it makes sense to turn each of these into a post. So from a goal setting perspective, that is what I will do. 10 posts to fit in over the next 10 days (including this post). In the podcast I talk about the importance of setting realistic goals. I am now not sure that writing 10 blog posts over 10 days, while working a full time job and a part time job, getting ready for an event, raising 3 kids, trying to organize our house, getting ready for a holiday and fighting this darn flu that just wont let go feels particularly achievable. I may need to look at how I outsource 🙂 (*Note, given it has taken me 3 days to get from writing this post to publishing it, it is looking even more unlikely this will happen!)
In the mean time let me tell you about the event overall.
Southern Hemisphere Open 22-24 September 2018
Southern Hemisphere Open was run 22-24 September 2018 at Ascot Races as the second annual gaming convention to be run in Western Australia by Objective Secured.
Aim
Our main aim for Southern Hemisphere Open 2018 was to raise the profile of gaming in Western Australia. We wanted to bring gamers together and increasing awareness of gaming options in WA and worldwide. We wanted to break down silos that exist within our gaming community and challenge and break stereotypes!
We wanted to connect gamers with an increased network of local, national and international gamers, gaming systems, clubs/organisations/groups and retailers. We wanted gamers to have an increased awareness of what is available locally, nationally and internationally.
Ultimately we want to strengthen the gaming community as well as lead to changes in local, national and international perceptions of gaming in WA.
We want to put WA on the worldwide gaming map!
What we did
Those are pretty lofty ambitions and given it was only our second year running Southern Hemisphere Open you can be forgiven for thinking we set our sights pretty high. We did! There is so much we want to achieve with Southern Hemisphere Open and it is going to take us a while to get the event to the size and scope of where we want it to be.
Having said that, Southern Hemisphere Open 2018 saw 3935 attendees. While the majority of attendees were from Western Australia we had a significant number (approx. 20%) of attendees from the Eastern States and overseas.
We had 16 formal tournaments across 11 different systems, 170 hours of RPG including Adventurers League Con Created Content written by Micah from Pyromanic Press, 5 clubs, 25 different game systems to intro or demo, over 100 board games to try, 26 workshops, 10 panels, an interactive RPG the list really does go on!
Key learnings
There are many things that we learned from Southern Hemisphere Open 2018. The first is that we can not underestimate how much it made a difference to have so many volunteers helping with bump in and bump out! It made the whole thing so much easier and we really could not have done it without the help. In fact the volunteers all event were amazing. As I have mentioned before, at this point every single person involved in the event (including Mike and I) did this in a voluntary capacity. One of our lofty goals is that we will one day be able to afford to pay TOs/DMs/front of house staff/everyone involved for their time and energy but at this point we are not there yet and so the WA gaming community is reliant on those generous people who gave of themselves and we are exceptionally grateful!
The other biggest learning is that Mike and I are only two people. We literally can not manage an event of this size and scope alone. About 25% of events had an external TO which meant Mike ran 75% of the events while I managed the rest of the event. It was a lot! I am exceptionally grateful for Natarra and Bodie who ran the door and were runners for me over the event and to Mike Sloan who was a runner for Mike over the event. I can’t say how much I appreciated Micah and his wife Erin who ran the RPG section and took that entire weight off my shoulders! We had other offers of help to TO events and next year we need to make sure that we accept the additional help that is offered.
There were of course other learnings, 8am is too early to start for RPGs, spacing out award ceremonies will make for smoother days (our hope was that we could combine ceremonies, this didn’t happen and so it made for delays), having a smoother system for the painting comp. The list goes on.
The excitement continues.
Probably the most exciting learning is that WA wants to play! By that I mean that we have the population of gamers in WA who are prepared to come out to Southern Hemisphere Open to warrant and sustain an event of this nature. That is what it is all about. Without the players there really isn’t any point. So Yay!
Here’s to Southern Hemisphere Open 2019 June 1-3.