zenmazster wrote:
This is purely speculative and for conversation and discussion only, just my thoughts and more of a 'prediction' of what gencon might look like.
(1)
Proof of vaccines will be required. A lot of folks might disagree, and I know this will be more work, but technically we're in the middle of a pandemic still. I don't personally see how you can hold an in person convention without requiring vaccinations. Will you leave some folks out? Sure. Any Decision that you make when planning something is going to always leave someone out, there will be winners and losers. I don't think 2022 will require vaccinnations, but 2021 I think it would be the responsible thing to do.
Vacc passports are becoming more popular and development, and I believe may be completed by then. In fact, I'd propose vaccine areas (high traffic like exhibit hall) and non places.
It's up to the hotels to require their own, I don't expect gencon to monitor hotels.
(2)
25% capacity. Main goal: to hold gencon and keep people safe. I don't think you're going to do that with 100% capacity. think going up to 50% capacity is reasonable. I'd say publicly announce 25% and leave the rest as a case by case basis.
(3)
Have the convention take out every other table / social distance tables. This one is kind of a no brainer.
(4)
Require and enforce mask use. Have fun with it. Get sponsors involved. Can you imagine how perfect a marketing opportunity this is to have someones brand on your face. Give one away to each participant in their good bag. Make a game of it. "if you're wearing youre' (Example) miniature market mask, you may be randomly selected to win gift cards throughout the con. incentivize people to wear them while making fat stacks of sponsor cash.
(5)
Avoid events that require gigantic large groups of people, especially when drinking. I absolutely love and adore the gencon dance. it's one of my favorite things to go to. I think we can skip a year. I know we'll be dissappointed but not heart broken. Any time you have hundreds of people sweating and drinking and bumping into each other, that's no good for anyone, that's a super spreader. Even assuming everyone is vaxxed up cause you KNOW someone other folks will be crashing that party. That goes for the costume parade, etc, other large person events. We get it, people will be dissappointed, but it's just simply not the year for it.
That's all I have for now. I AM excited to come to gencon again, and want to help any way I can.
1. No chance. There's to many ways around this, and I think if this convention HAPPENS, we will be near herd immunity.
2. Again no chance. 25%? You think there's only going to be 18,000 people? Here's the thing, as a person who's been some what involved in MANY of the converstaions I think last year, if there magically happened to be a con, you would have had a tiny con. I could tell this just by the conversations online. People were VERY VERY clear they didn't want to go anywhere. Now, many of those people are changing their minds. There's absolutely a decent amount of people now saying they're not coming, and that's perfectly fine, if you don't feel safe please stay home this year. BUT I'm shocked by the number of people who were vocally against it last year, stating they're coming this year. If Gen Con allows it, I wouldn't be surprised to see 40k people.
3. I think this is pretty obviously going to happen.
4. Also agree completely here.
5. MAYBE. I think it just depends where we are by May. Right now we're fully vaccinating ABOUT 1% of the country every other day. So every 2 weeks, we're hitting about 7% of the country. Now if we stayed on that track(which I think it could accelerate, but it could also hit a set back) over the court of a month we will see ABOUT 15% of the country fully vaccinated. Two months 30, three months 45, four months 60. We're at 13% right now. So in 4 months we can easily be right around that 75% number which is really good for herd immunity. We're currently 5 months, 3 weeks away from Gen Con. That gives us an extra month and a half of leeway. SO we'll see where we're at. There's no zero sum. There's no point where covid is just zero, that's not happening in our future IMO.
Another thing I could see happening. Expansion of the exhibit hall. The exhibit hall is the biggest attraction at Gen Con. I could EASILY see it being expanded into the card gaming hall behind the exhibit hall so that you have more space for isles, you have bigger spaces between booths.
Ultimately i think this is going to be much like a lot of covid related things over the last few months, 'SUGGESTIONS' rather than enforced rules.
