As soon as I can get a picture up, I will. Hope to see you all there!

In other news, all of the events I currently have submitted have been approved and have gone active. I still have three or so more to submit once I get descriptions from the planners: one on lame e-mail forwards and chain letters, one on acupuncture, and one titled “Monsters, Myths, and Legends.” Gen Con 2010 is going to be awesome!

Skepchick Jen Myers is gracing us with her presence at Gen Con! She will be running a workshop called “Building Local Skeptical Communities.” It’ll be happening Saturday and Sunday, 11AM – Noon both days.

More info as and when I receive it!

Bruce Critelli, Conjurer of Sights and Sounds for Skepchicamp Chicago 2010, has agreed to be our A/V God for Gen Con! He’s going to help with video and audio recording and setup.

More information to come as he gets it to me!

Tell everyone you know!

Our booth will be located in the exhibit hall inside Gen Con’s Family Fun Pavilion, a perfect place to spread awareness of childhood vaccination. It’s on the corner of two main drags, and apparently situation very close by two of the biggest vendors in the hall, which should add to our traffic significantly. We’ll be there all through the con handing out pamphlets and educational materials for the IIC and immunization in general as well as collecting donations.

Our basic plan is to have a “Magic Menu” which suggests different amounts to be donated in exchange for simple feats of magic and mentalism performed by myself and Sean (we need to learn a lot more tricks before August 5). Of course, we’ll accept donations without magic, and we’ll perform for any amount of money, but it’s nice to have a general baseline.

Part of the deal with Gen Con is that we have people manning the booth at all times, from open to close in the exhibit hall. To that end, we’re looking for some more volunteers who want to help raise money for childhood immunization. We few can’t possibly run the booth the whole time; apart from having our own presentations to give and meals to eat, we would like to have some time to explore and enjoy the convention as well. If we get some more booth volunteers, we can work out a rotating schedule that affords everyone plenty of time to have fun and help raise money for the IIC.

So if you’re going to be at Gen Con and wouldn’t mind helping out (or if you want to come to Gen Con in order to help us out and have an awesome time), please either leave a comment here, use the Contact Form, or just e-mail me at causticbox[at]gmail[dot]com. If you have other talents to contribute, please check out What We Still Need to see if you can fit yourself in somewhere.

I’m looking forward to hearing from you!

I’m going to add a page at the header that will be an up-to-date schedule of events, which I’ll keep current as new plans arise. For now, here’s what we have:

Keep an eye right here for further updates to the program of events!

Hello Don! Thank you for reaching out to us. I love your idea and I agree that having you at Gen Con would be great! We actually have an area in our exhibit hall dedicated to families. I think having your tables in that area would be perfect. I would like to talk details with you this week. Do you have some time to visit tomorrow or Thursday? Please advise. Thank you!

Megan Culver
Director of Marketing

The was the lynchpin, really. I wasn’t at all sure how Gen Con would react, but they love the idea! They’re even going to give us a spot where we can do maximal educational damage! I do worry about our ability to collect maximal fundage from the family area, but I’m going to float that concern on Thursday when I give Ms. Culver a call to hash out the details.

What’s basically happening here is that everything is working out far better than I ever could have hoped. Both sides are extremely willing to work with us toward the goal of promotions vaccination in Indiana, and right now all that’s left is details. From here on out, it’s all gravy.

I love it when a plan comes together!

While most of the other topics in Gen Con’s skeptic track focus on skepticism, “Evolution and Creationism in Gaming” focuses on what brings us all to Gen Con – tabletop roleplaying games. Evolution education website EvoEdu.com’s webmaster will be explaining how you can use evolution and creationism to bring life to your games! We’ll be mostly focusing on how they can inspire complex and interesting NPCs, story elements, and background to bring verisimilitude to your games. From island dwarfism to believable priests to mass extinctions, everyone will walk away with exciting ideas for their next campaign, and with a little more knowledge on what evolution is and how it works.

I’m really looking forward to this: evolution education set in a really solid gaming context. Tristan’s talk will be 30 minutes long, and he’s going to be giving it twice.

Speaking of, I’ll have a preliminary schedule of events posted here in the next couple of days.

See, Indiana is 44th in the nation in childhood vaccination rates, but that’s not, apparently due to lack of money, as was the case in Nevada at The Amaz!ng Meeting 7. No, the state Department of Health is rolling in dough to pay for kids’ vaccines as a public health measure, but our abysmal rates are due rather to misinformation and miseducation. In other words, Indiana has fallen victim to the antivaccination movement.

Thus my original plan of trying to get the money to directly fund vaccination really isn’t going to fly. Instead, what money we manage to raise is going to be donated 100% to the Indiana Immunization Coalition, who will use it to help fund new educational initiatives to try and counter the antivaccine nonsense that people are picking up just as a consequence of living in the world these days.

The IIC’s director seemed quite excited to have such an opportunity, as their funding is meager and nobody has ever offered to raise money for them before (which, I told her, is appropriate, because I’ve never raised money for anyone before). In order to best support the work of the IIC, we’re going to supply congoers with information about their mission and the amazing benefits of vaccination. We plan to trade our amateur magician and mentalism skills for donations. Our continual fundraising activity will be augmented by at least two presentations detailing the immunization demographics in Indiana, why the low rates are such a bad thing, and just what is so great about vaccination.

At this point, it’s in the hands of the Gen Con event organizers. I’ve sent them a proposal for the fundraiser, and I hope they see the extreme positive benefit we could have here and give us the thumbs-up.

I’m really excited about this! We really have a chance here to do lots of good for the children of Indiana!