A Year in Review
Before I begin, I'd like to personally thank everyone involved with Future Is Games. From the attendees to the speakers and everyone else involved, it really has been quite an experience. Because of all of you, our long months of hard work resulted in our first event as an organization. Without your support that never would have been possible.
This post-mortem will cover the year in general, not just the conference itself. There were some things we did right, a lot of things we did wrong, but the biggest takeaway from the conference is that we started something. Despite our struggles with the event and our own organizational development, we only want to go up from here. Whether or not that will happen remains to be seen, but we certainly have a good foundation to build from.
This post-mortem will cover the year in general, not just the conference itself. There were some things we did right, a lot of things we did wrong, but the biggest takeaway from the conference is that we started something. Despite our struggles with the event and our own organizational development, we only want to go up from here. Whether or not that will happen remains to be seen, but we certainly have a good foundation to build from.
(The following items are listed in no particular order within their categories. Please consider them equally. General takeaways from each topic are highlighted in bold.)
THE THINGS THAT WENT "YEH!" (GOOD STUFF)
1. THERE'S A FIRST FOR EVERYTHING.
FIGCON was the first game development conference to take place in Arizona. I am incredibly proud of this fact and hope that it opens more doors not just for us, but the Arizona development scene as well. We are a growing community, and steps like this can only further that growth.
2. WE HAD SOME PRETTY GREAT SPEAKERS.
Our presenters were (and still are) awesome. We had incredible talks from our on-site and digital speakers, all documented (well, mostly documented -- we'll get to that) on ourYouTube channel. You can view the full roster of FIGCON participants here.
3. DOCUMENTATION.
Oftentimes during a project, we tend to forget about documenting it. But not us, says I! We kept a running docket of everything we did, from internal communications to docs pertaining to the event and its organization. This has come into play countless times as the need to refer back to our own work is an ongoing process.
4. OUR FRIENDS LIST GOT BIGGER.
One of the best things to come out of running FIGCON and setting up Future Is Games is that we have met some amazing people both in and outside of the industry. From GDC and E3 to IGDA PHX and local Meetups, we've networked with some truly incredible folks that have given us consultation, further networking opportunities, and both social and structural support. Most importantly, however, is that we've made some great friends throughout this experience.
5. FAILURE IS (NOT) AN OPTION.
It's fair to say that we failed -- a lot. Looking back on it, it's easy to see where things went wrong and how we can improve them. But as awful as failure can feel, it opens up a lot of opportunities for improvement. For that reason, it's a good thing that we made a lot of mistakes; we want to build from them and not make the same ones twice.
6. SUPPORT FROM THE GRAND CANYON STATE!
We received a surprising amount of support from local media, developers, entrepreneurs, and perhaps most importantly, business developers and the State of Arizona. Talks with GPEC, AZ TechCelerator, Desarollo, and the City of Phoenix went incredibly well, and we even received a letter of support from the mayor of Phoenix, Greg Stanton. Arizona is becoming more accepting of the tech community, including game development, and is working with local organizations to develop programs that would help foster the kind of growth we have been looking to achieve.
7. WE GAVE OURSELVES SOMETHING TO BUILD FROM AND BE PROUD OF.
Arguably, the most important thing to happen this year for Future Is Games is the fact that we had an event at all. Despite the roller coaster of a year that we had, hosting FIGCON gives us a base to build from. All of the above and below points are things that detail our summary experience. They allowed each of us to learn a lot about what our company is and how it can develop.
FIGCON was the first game development conference to take place in Arizona. I am incredibly proud of this fact and hope that it opens more doors not just for us, but the Arizona development scene as well. We are a growing community, and steps like this can only further that growth.
2. WE HAD SOME PRETTY GREAT SPEAKERS.
Our presenters were (and still are) awesome. We had incredible talks from our on-site and digital speakers, all documented (well, mostly documented -- we'll get to that) on ourYouTube channel. You can view the full roster of FIGCON participants here.
3. DOCUMENTATION.
Oftentimes during a project, we tend to forget about documenting it. But not us, says I! We kept a running docket of everything we did, from internal communications to docs pertaining to the event and its organization. This has come into play countless times as the need to refer back to our own work is an ongoing process.
4. OUR FRIENDS LIST GOT BIGGER.
One of the best things to come out of running FIGCON and setting up Future Is Games is that we have met some amazing people both in and outside of the industry. From GDC and E3 to IGDA PHX and local Meetups, we've networked with some truly incredible folks that have given us consultation, further networking opportunities, and both social and structural support. Most importantly, however, is that we've made some great friends throughout this experience.
5. FAILURE IS (NOT) AN OPTION.
It's fair to say that we failed -- a lot. Looking back on it, it's easy to see where things went wrong and how we can improve them. But as awful as failure can feel, it opens up a lot of opportunities for improvement. For that reason, it's a good thing that we made a lot of mistakes; we want to build from them and not make the same ones twice.
6. SUPPORT FROM THE GRAND CANYON STATE!
We received a surprising amount of support from local media, developers, entrepreneurs, and perhaps most importantly, business developers and the State of Arizona. Talks with GPEC, AZ TechCelerator, Desarollo, and the City of Phoenix went incredibly well, and we even received a letter of support from the mayor of Phoenix, Greg Stanton. Arizona is becoming more accepting of the tech community, including game development, and is working with local organizations to develop programs that would help foster the kind of growth we have been looking to achieve.
7. WE GAVE OURSELVES SOMETHING TO BUILD FROM AND BE PROUD OF.
Arguably, the most important thing to happen this year for Future Is Games is the fact that we had an event at all. Despite the roller coaster of a year that we had, hosting FIGCON gives us a base to build from. All of the above and below points are things that detail our summary experience. They allowed each of us to learn a lot about what our company is and how it can develop.
THE THINGS THAT WENT "MEH :/" (NOT AS GOOD STUFF)
1. KICKSTARTER.
So, here's the thing about Kickstarter -- it takes a lot of work to make one successful. Like, a lot of work. We definitely rushed the production of our Kickstarter, even though we started to plan it about 45 days in advance of our launch date. Anyone who has any sort of experience with Kickstarter (or any other kind of crowdfunding site) knows that it takes months, dedicated marketing and promotion, copy, video production, press, and the like just to get a good starting point. Then, you have to follow-up and continuously promote throughout the duration of your campaign, building your community before the project is released.
It's not easy.
We had a plan laid out for a video, copy, media, and the like, but it wasn't enough, especially given the fact that we started so close to the launch date. I could write an entirely separate post about Kickstarter alone, but the bottom line is that you cannot put enough attention towards getting support and traction in anticipation of your eventual product campaign.
2. THE QUEST FOR SPONSORSHIP!
We began seeking out sponsors within one month of conceiving Future Is Games -- more partners than anything else at the time that we could work with as we continued to develop the conference. Our first issue here was that we didn't have a final idea of what the event would look like, making it difficult for anyone to put investment into something that, a. had no proven track record and, b. wasn't even in its final form. Secondly, we continued to waver on what the sponsorship package would look like, even a month before the event.
We had some good partners in hand that we hope to work with in the future, but we didn't present enough stability in our offerings to have sound funding options this time around.
Moving forward, we would have a concrete vision for anything we host well in advance, allowing both ourselves and anyone working with us a look into what we can offer. Even if certain things change as the products develop, it's nice to have a general idea of what each one will look like for all stakeholders involved.
3. LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION.
The Phoenix Convention Center was very, very flexible in our accommodations for the event -- good on them for being cool about our setup. We did scope the place out and plan for logistics, but we didn't realize until the event itself that it wasn't the right location for FIGCON.
Downtown Phoenix, like most other congested metropolitan areas, is not well-inclined for convenient access unless people are willing to pay a premium. Spread over three days, $45 to park wasn't that appealing for a lot of our audience, even if the event itself was free (cost of living in Phoenix is relatively low compared to that of most of the US). We did partner with a garage for less expensive parking but it was about a half mile away from the venue. Additionally, it was tough for people to get there; rush hour isn't great and many of our potential attendees had no desire to drive in traffic.
Most of this would have been solved if we arranged shuttles of some kind, but it wasn't something we had thought of during the planning process and, frankly, we did not have the money for transportation.
We've been offered other venues to use for free if we do an on-site conference again and we have already found hosts for any other Future Is Games activities should we need them.
Biggest lesson learned: It's better to have more people in a smaller, more convenient space than to have less people in a larger one.
4. STRUCTURING THE TEAM.
At the beginning of the company's development, and by association FIGCON's, we met anywhere from one to three times a week to discuss our overall strategy. Somewhere down the line, commitments fell through, meetings became less regular, and responsibilities began to get heavier for myself and Tyler. Given the other numerous tasks we were dealing with, neither of us were as efficient as we could have been for organizing and assigning what needed to be done.
What we ended up with was a set of tasks that were overseen by myself and Tyler, if not completed by us, as internal communications were staggered because of conflicting schedules.
We tried all sorts of systems but didn't maintain consistency or structure until a few months after getting the train rolling. We moved from Facebook to Todoist to Drive to Trello to Todoist (again), and then Drive (again, and finally). We got there, but it was a bumpy road -- after having more experience with Assembla, I'd likely use that in the future.
In the end, we were lucky to have help from our team who did an amazing job given what was provided for them. That being said, we will formalize our structure from here on out (again, if we continue) and divide responsibilities into corresponding positions.
5. OUR SOCIAL MEDIA PRESENCE IS/WAS...WELL, SOMETHING.
I took on most of our marketing responsibilities, but it proved to be too much given how much else I was doing for the organization and what little time I had to spare otherwise. My reasoning was primarily that I wanted to do it myself, as I wanted to have final say on specific parts of our collaborative creative vision. Not only was this selfish, but it was also detrimental to the company given how little time I could truly devote to it.
It's also pretty easy to notice our "dark" periods on Twitter, notably from August 3rd to August 19th, August 23rd to September 23rd, and October 23rd up until the last few weeks. You can find similar trends on our Facebook page. We also ran a reddit for a while that had some traction, but the whole "dark period" thing also lined up with our interaction on that platform. The only difference with reddit was that we didn't revisit it, primarily due to the above explanation.
All that said, the support we did receive was incredible to see and we had a lot of good feedback from our outreach to the community. Bottom line is that we needed to finalize a media strategy, participate in more engagement, offer more unique content and special promotions, and have someone dedicated to monitoring all of our activity and reacting accordingly.
Twitter and reddit also ended up being the most popular communication forums for us specifically, so we'd likely push more in that direction and figure out the best uses for each media platform.
6. THE CONTINGENCY PLAN.
Alright, so here's another thing I kinda screwed up on. Our organization actually set a no-go date for the conference after realizing what kind of beast we were wrestling with. After passing that date, I still insisted on keeping the light green due to how close our sponsorship funding was -- I still believe I made the right call, but we definitely cut it close and by this time our speaker roster had more or less been halved.
If we did postpone, we would have pushed back either until spring or the following year, and I didn't want to risk losing our entire audience and lineup because we were unable to secure funding. That perseverance was costly in the end, but it did allow us to run the event as planned.
Although we did eventually run FIGCON, this lesson can be applied to pretty much any job and will be something we use in the future: Always stick to your dates. Always. No matter what. You were right the first time.
7. BRANDING, MARKETING, AND PRESS.
It took us a few brainstorming sessions before coming up with a name. Some of our more "out there" concepts: Hotline Phoenix Con, Game ChronoCon, Developer Overload, Games are People Too, SpeakerCon (hah!), Gamicism (I actually use this for a blog and site that I've never worked on all that much...), and That Game Conference (obvious plagiarism is obvious). After much deliberation, we settled on Future Is Games.
As for marks that could be conflicting, we became aware of BostonFIG right around the time we started pushing ourselves and doing initial branding, but they were very nice about what we were doing and realized the distinctions were enough that we wouldn't be in each other's way. Go support them and the festival, if at all possible -- they're a really cool group of people. There's some restaurants and non-entertainment organizations called FIG, but we didn't worry as much about those.
Our primary concerns with branding were differentiating our organization by name and image and creating solid content around what we did. Ergo, we created our "New Leaf" logo, designed by Winston Powell of Retora, to illustrate both who we were and what our conference was set to achieve. We wanted to see ourselves as opening a whole new segment of the industry that had not yet been envisioned before.
To coincide with that, we initially described ourselves as a "future-focused game conference." And the issues lie herein:
- By lending our organization name to our conference name and slapping a year at the end of it, we devalued both entities instead of propelling our organization's staying power. It created more ambiguity than it did solidarity when it came too the question, "Ok, so what is Future Is Games?"
- Our mission, we realized after some time and feedback, was far too vague. The reason for that was because our team was still creating our content and molding our conference into its final image throughout the time that we were presenting our organization to others.
- Because of the aforementioned issues, we lost some legitimacy with our speakers and a few potential sponsors, who wanted to know what they would get in return for partnering up with us for the conference. It wasn't until too late that we renamed the conference FIGCON in an effort to remove some of this confusion and convince our stakeholders that we were 100% sure of the direction we were taking.
We did reach out to the right people, however, so that was definitely a big plus. The meetings and conversations we had with C-level executives, potential speakers, and developers alike were very, very informative. The community involvement should have been just as high, if not a higher, priority though, so any future development would be focused around them.
Always, always, always keep the end user in mind.
8. "WE FORGOT HIS NAME!"
Despite keeping our organizational elements together, that could have been managed far more efficiently than it was. Structure is key when you have an organizational hierarchy consisting of hundreds and hundreds of files, especially those that need to be referenced on a frequent basis.
The point here: Keep it clean, keep it simple. You have no reason to over-complicate your organizational materials.
So, here's the thing about Kickstarter -- it takes a lot of work to make one successful. Like, a lot of work. We definitely rushed the production of our Kickstarter, even though we started to plan it about 45 days in advance of our launch date. Anyone who has any sort of experience with Kickstarter (or any other kind of crowdfunding site) knows that it takes months, dedicated marketing and promotion, copy, video production, press, and the like just to get a good starting point. Then, you have to follow-up and continuously promote throughout the duration of your campaign, building your community before the project is released.
It's not easy.
We had a plan laid out for a video, copy, media, and the like, but it wasn't enough, especially given the fact that we started so close to the launch date. I could write an entirely separate post about Kickstarter alone, but the bottom line is that you cannot put enough attention towards getting support and traction in anticipation of your eventual product campaign.
2. THE QUEST FOR SPONSORSHIP!
We began seeking out sponsors within one month of conceiving Future Is Games -- more partners than anything else at the time that we could work with as we continued to develop the conference. Our first issue here was that we didn't have a final idea of what the event would look like, making it difficult for anyone to put investment into something that, a. had no proven track record and, b. wasn't even in its final form. Secondly, we continued to waver on what the sponsorship package would look like, even a month before the event.
We had some good partners in hand that we hope to work with in the future, but we didn't present enough stability in our offerings to have sound funding options this time around.
Moving forward, we would have a concrete vision for anything we host well in advance, allowing both ourselves and anyone working with us a look into what we can offer. Even if certain things change as the products develop, it's nice to have a general idea of what each one will look like for all stakeholders involved.
3. LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION.
The Phoenix Convention Center was very, very flexible in our accommodations for the event -- good on them for being cool about our setup. We did scope the place out and plan for logistics, but we didn't realize until the event itself that it wasn't the right location for FIGCON.
Downtown Phoenix, like most other congested metropolitan areas, is not well-inclined for convenient access unless people are willing to pay a premium. Spread over three days, $45 to park wasn't that appealing for a lot of our audience, even if the event itself was free (cost of living in Phoenix is relatively low compared to that of most of the US). We did partner with a garage for less expensive parking but it was about a half mile away from the venue. Additionally, it was tough for people to get there; rush hour isn't great and many of our potential attendees had no desire to drive in traffic.
Most of this would have been solved if we arranged shuttles of some kind, but it wasn't something we had thought of during the planning process and, frankly, we did not have the money for transportation.
We've been offered other venues to use for free if we do an on-site conference again and we have already found hosts for any other Future Is Games activities should we need them.
Biggest lesson learned: It's better to have more people in a smaller, more convenient space than to have less people in a larger one.
4. STRUCTURING THE TEAM.
At the beginning of the company's development, and by association FIGCON's, we met anywhere from one to three times a week to discuss our overall strategy. Somewhere down the line, commitments fell through, meetings became less regular, and responsibilities began to get heavier for myself and Tyler. Given the other numerous tasks we were dealing with, neither of us were as efficient as we could have been for organizing and assigning what needed to be done.
What we ended up with was a set of tasks that were overseen by myself and Tyler, if not completed by us, as internal communications were staggered because of conflicting schedules.
We tried all sorts of systems but didn't maintain consistency or structure until a few months after getting the train rolling. We moved from Facebook to Todoist to Drive to Trello to Todoist (again), and then Drive (again, and finally). We got there, but it was a bumpy road -- after having more experience with Assembla, I'd likely use that in the future.
In the end, we were lucky to have help from our team who did an amazing job given what was provided for them. That being said, we will formalize our structure from here on out (again, if we continue) and divide responsibilities into corresponding positions.
5. OUR SOCIAL MEDIA PRESENCE IS/WAS...WELL, SOMETHING.
I took on most of our marketing responsibilities, but it proved to be too much given how much else I was doing for the organization and what little time I had to spare otherwise. My reasoning was primarily that I wanted to do it myself, as I wanted to have final say on specific parts of our collaborative creative vision. Not only was this selfish, but it was also detrimental to the company given how little time I could truly devote to it.
It's also pretty easy to notice our "dark" periods on Twitter, notably from August 3rd to August 19th, August 23rd to September 23rd, and October 23rd up until the last few weeks. You can find similar trends on our Facebook page. We also ran a reddit for a while that had some traction, but the whole "dark period" thing also lined up with our interaction on that platform. The only difference with reddit was that we didn't revisit it, primarily due to the above explanation.
All that said, the support we did receive was incredible to see and we had a lot of good feedback from our outreach to the community. Bottom line is that we needed to finalize a media strategy, participate in more engagement, offer more unique content and special promotions, and have someone dedicated to monitoring all of our activity and reacting accordingly.
Twitter and reddit also ended up being the most popular communication forums for us specifically, so we'd likely push more in that direction and figure out the best uses for each media platform.
6. THE CONTINGENCY PLAN.
Alright, so here's another thing I kinda screwed up on. Our organization actually set a no-go date for the conference after realizing what kind of beast we were wrestling with. After passing that date, I still insisted on keeping the light green due to how close our sponsorship funding was -- I still believe I made the right call, but we definitely cut it close and by this time our speaker roster had more or less been halved.
If we did postpone, we would have pushed back either until spring or the following year, and I didn't want to risk losing our entire audience and lineup because we were unable to secure funding. That perseverance was costly in the end, but it did allow us to run the event as planned.
Although we did eventually run FIGCON, this lesson can be applied to pretty much any job and will be something we use in the future: Always stick to your dates. Always. No matter what. You were right the first time.
7. BRANDING, MARKETING, AND PRESS.
It took us a few brainstorming sessions before coming up with a name. Some of our more "out there" concepts: Hotline Phoenix Con, Game ChronoCon, Developer Overload, Games are People Too, SpeakerCon (hah!), Gamicism (I actually use this for a blog and site that I've never worked on all that much...), and That Game Conference (obvious plagiarism is obvious). After much deliberation, we settled on Future Is Games.
As for marks that could be conflicting, we became aware of BostonFIG right around the time we started pushing ourselves and doing initial branding, but they were very nice about what we were doing and realized the distinctions were enough that we wouldn't be in each other's way. Go support them and the festival, if at all possible -- they're a really cool group of people. There's some restaurants and non-entertainment organizations called FIG, but we didn't worry as much about those.
Our primary concerns with branding were differentiating our organization by name and image and creating solid content around what we did. Ergo, we created our "New Leaf" logo, designed by Winston Powell of Retora, to illustrate both who we were and what our conference was set to achieve. We wanted to see ourselves as opening a whole new segment of the industry that had not yet been envisioned before.
To coincide with that, we initially described ourselves as a "future-focused game conference." And the issues lie herein:
- By lending our organization name to our conference name and slapping a year at the end of it, we devalued both entities instead of propelling our organization's staying power. It created more ambiguity than it did solidarity when it came too the question, "Ok, so what is Future Is Games?"
- Our mission, we realized after some time and feedback, was far too vague. The reason for that was because our team was still creating our content and molding our conference into its final image throughout the time that we were presenting our organization to others.
- Because of the aforementioned issues, we lost some legitimacy with our speakers and a few potential sponsors, who wanted to know what they would get in return for partnering up with us for the conference. It wasn't until too late that we renamed the conference FIGCON in an effort to remove some of this confusion and convince our stakeholders that we were 100% sure of the direction we were taking.
We did reach out to the right people, however, so that was definitely a big plus. The meetings and conversations we had with C-level executives, potential speakers, and developers alike were very, very informative. The community involvement should have been just as high, if not a higher, priority though, so any future development would be focused around them.
Always, always, always keep the end user in mind.
8. "WE FORGOT HIS NAME!"
Despite keeping our organizational elements together, that could have been managed far more efficiently than it was. Structure is key when you have an organizational hierarchy consisting of hundreds and hundreds of files, especially those that need to be referenced on a frequent basis.
The point here: Keep it clean, keep it simple. You have no reason to over-complicate your organizational materials.
THE THINGS THAT WENT "BLEH :(" (BAD STUFF)
1. I MADE SOME PEOPLE UPSET.
Welp, it's pretty safe to say I f**ked up a couple of times. Not like, "oh, haha that was funny let's not do that again," but more along the lines of, "YOU BIG STUPID IDIOT WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!?!" The biggest one was confirming two speakers in particular before they had actually confirmed, and it was entirely a miscommunication on my end. We ended up making amends, but I was completely at fault for the situation and owned up to it accordingly. I'm very fortunate that these individuals were forgiving of my mistake, because it would have been understandable if they weren't.
Further, I wasn't able to fulfill some of the agreements that were made with certain organizations, even after they planned around said agreements. This was incredibly difficult to deal with at the time, as failing others under that type of commitment was a major drawback for our development and credibility.
Lessons learned: 1. Double-check, triple-check, and quadruple-check that you are 100% sure of something before you announce or confirm it. 2. Do not make an agreement with someone or a group of people unless you are able to ensure it comes to fruition.
2. WE AIMED FOR THE MOON. WE MISSED.
Scope creep tends to be a pretty big problem in the industry, and in our case that was no different. Our honest belief was that the initial strategy behind Future Is Games -- land big name speakers, build community, use speakers for support in community and sponsorship, acquire a few sponsors and build from that -- cornered us into requiring that positive snowball effect if we were to be successful at any level. Because we hadn't consulted enough before striving for that goal, we had our blinders on for a good while thinking that our way was the only way.
A lot of the research for our development model came from IndieCade, who sure as hell know how to put on a show. But there was a lot more that went into even the first IndieCade than we even imagined, and considering that we were looking to run a different type of show, less of it applied to us than we thought.
I still believe IndieCade is a great example for anyone looking to run a successful event regardless of industry, but it's also important to understand that your direction needs to be focused around what you can do at the time you start organizing the event. Work within your means and avoid getting ahead of yourself -- good things will come in time if you work hard enough.
3. LESS MONEY, MORE PROBLEMS.
Money is a double-edged sword. Too much of it and you can lose sight of things, too little and it becomes difficult to have those things in the first place. Advantages exist on both sides of the coin, but there's no arguing that having funds in place makes it easier to make dreams come true. That is just the nature of business, pure and simple.
Going into the development of Future Is Games, we never really established how much personal contribution we were going to put into this. We honestly believed that sponsorships and admission costs (FIGCON was not free at the outset -- see below) would allow us to cover our costs for the conference and retain funds for future development.
The first proposed budget estimate for FIGCON 2013 was set at around $120K. As mentioned in an earlier post, this really isn't a huge number for the type of conference we were initially proposing. Again, we just relied on way too many things going right to account for a different budget. When we did realize that we needed to severely lessen our budget -- to about $30K, as proposed in our Kickstarter -- we thought we had a pretty good number. And honestly, we did! That number was the minimum for the content we were providing, mostly due to speaker travel and event booking, but we didn't put that money where it mattered most...into our community efforts.
Once we saw that the Kickstarter campaign was not going to succeed, we cancelled it and decreased our budget again to it's bare minimum: a little over $7,000, after all expenses leading up to and during the event. Unfortunately, our sponsorship only covered $2,500. You can do the math, but we ended up pretty deep in the red, especially myself.
Despite getting to that figure within months of the conference's launch date, we knew that we had to make this work. After realizing that charging for FIGCON did not fit with our company image (and far too late, for that matter) or our end goals, we made the conference free to attend and exhibit. This move was more conducive for our community and our company than charging would have been, for a plethora of reasons -- appeal, cost vs. reputation, attendance count, demographic, etc.
It was great to be able to provide this experience in Phoenix, a community that had never seen this type of event before and a group of people that were primarily young, entry-level, or independent developers. But that methodology comes at a cost, and it affects far more than the business.
I'm proud to be self-motivated enough to create opportunities that have supported since the conclusion of FIGCON, but I'm still in debt to a great many people that helped me through it. If you're willing to see something through, be smart about what it will cost before those costs are incurred -- both emotional and financial. And, more importantly, be ready to roll with the punches, because money is one hell of a beast.
4. THE WEBSITE.
Our initial website was done on Wix while I was working at my day job over a period of 4-ish hours. It wasn't pretty. Our friend Andy Maul then created a far better mockup in less time, but it still didn't quite service everything we wanted the site to have. After that, we decided to explore turnkey solutions because of time/money/webdev ability.
The site you are looking at now was created on, iterated upon, and is hosted by Squarespace. Although the platform is flexible, it's got quite a few kinks and made for some serious pain-in-the-ass moments that were pointed out to us on reddit that support never solved 100%. The staff is great, but the product is...well, as the saying goes, "you get what you pay for."
Our lack of web skills in conjunction with some of the janky aspects of Squarespace's platform made rapid edits on the site difficult to do. Additionally, I over-thought the design by a great amount and was continually modifying things to try to get them to fit. In fact, I did a complete overhaul of the site and theme not even a month ago.
The biggest factor in the site's faulty features was that I couldn't keep up with everything happening on the developmental side of things; there was just too much going on at once and I didn't balance it properly. The site's hands would have surely been better left to someone who could have managed it for a few hours, or even just one hour, on a daily basis.
My recommendation is that you take the time to learn web development to create a simple, barebones site with a clean presentation and all the primary functionality you need. From there, you can always find someone to help you flesh it out or continue to develop it as time goes on.
Codecademy is a pretty solid place to start.
P.S. Blog well, blog frequently!
5. THE WHOLE "ACTIVITIES DURING THE CONFERENCE" THING. OH, AND SETUP. ...AND SCHEDULING.
Man. This. Because of the millions of other things going on during the lead-up to the conference, we put our actual event day organizational stuff in the background. It's not that we completely forgot about it, but we just prioritized a lot of other things beforehand. Thankfully, our incredible team worked to put together a nice setup at the Convention Center and made sure that we could film as much as possible. But that wasn't without issue.
It took quite a bit of logistics to organize video, internet, power, lighting, and more, and even during the event we had to change things around every hour or two to adapt to our talks and activities. Nearly all of the conference was planned up until the final weeks, but the major changes that happened in the final weeks forced us to reconsider almost every aspect of that planning. We were modifying parts of the conference the day before it happened.
The biggest takeaway here is to set a schedule, layout, equipment strategy, and the like weeks, if not months, in advance of the event, and always have a plan B, C, D, E...basically everything through Z. Create FAQs that are displayed loud and proud and always have a line open to respond to questions, comments, or concerns, whether it's from your speakers, your exhibitors, your audience, or anyone else.
6. HEY! LISTEN!
Despite our social media "dark" period, I really thought our semi-last-minute heroics would be enough to get at least 125 people to the event every day. We had more than that many confirmations on Eventbrite for all three days, even if we did have a few technical issues with our first campaign, and had more verbal confirmations from friends and people in the industry. But when we opened the doors, we found that our confusing messaging and last-minute planning really hurt our ability to get people in the door.
In all honesty, a lot of it was transportation and the way that the area around the Phoenix Convention Center is set up. For smaller events, it's not the most travel-friendly place in the world, and as I stated above the buses really would have helped. But it was not having more outreach in the first place that hurt our ability to get as many people to attend as was stated in our systems.
Always make sure you interact with your community and keep them in the know. You are there for them, and the minute you disappear it is very difficult to recapture that interest, let alone sustain it.
For the record: Our final count for attendees over the three days hovers right above 100.
7. THE POST-EVENT PLANNING.
The initial plan after our event was to run small workshops and participate in local game development events and organize jams. What events specifically, we weren't sure, but we knew we wanted to be involved. Unfortunately, that never came to pass due to the team's return to their normal schedules upon completion of the conference.
Our goal was to have all sorts of media attention, promote our exhibitors, do recaps with our speakers, and provide tons more content, but the wear and tear of the team was just too much for any of us to continue on immediately after going through eight months of production.
What you do after you finish something -- be it a product, an event, etc. -- is just as important as the event itself. It requires planning and careful consideration much in the same way the rest of your development does, and executing on that content is equally necessary.
8. PRE-PRODUCTION.
Speaking of production...eight months is not nearly enough time to plan a conference of the scale we were intending with the hours that our team was able to dedicate. Without the company infrastructure in place before planning our conference, we ended up trying to create both at the same time. While some good came out of this, it mostly just created more work for us and affected how we crafted the image of both entities.
Know your limits before approaching taking on something that you know is going to be a challenge. List where your weaknesses might be and what you can do to avoid or change them. There is a difference between pushing yourself and overworking yourself, a line that we frequently crossed throughout the entire time we were developing Future Is Games and FIGCON.
9. DARK DAYS, DARKER NIGHTS: THE SHANE FALCO QUICKSAND EFFECT™.
Going into this, we all fully understood that there was no personal profit to be had from what we were doing, and we were all fine with that. This endeavor was meant to be for the community at large, not to stuff our pockets. It would have been great to put money back into the company, sure, but we wanted to create a service by bringing people together.
As noble as this was, it created multiple individual hells for some members of the team that were pulling hours upon hours working to get everything done. We were overworked because of our other responsibilities, and it really did make life difficult sometimes.
I know that some of this post-mortem is about my experience in a vacuum (the metaphorical kind, not a literal vacuum), but I feel like this next bit is important to share (skip past the block quote to continue on):
From the start, we were all really excited for this. I mean, I can't tell you how excited we were. Super excited, at a minimum. We all thought it was a great idea and that we were filling a niche, mostly because of our theme but also due to the fact that we were hosting FIGCON in Phoenix. We wanted to be the resurrection of the games industry in Phoenix. It's not that we didn't help that cause, but we just went in way over our heads.
In my case specifically, I went to a really dark place. I'm not one to use coping mechanisms, but while we were developing the conference I looked for excuses to ease the pain after our work days ended. I was pulling 70, 80, sometimes 90 hour weeks throughout the duration of FIGCON's development; on days that I didn't see my girlfriend, I either drank or played video games. Although I tried to turn these into positive experiences (when I drank it was usually social), they just gave me time to think about what we were doing. This turned into fear of failure, which compounded with my stress to create depression. And I really just spiralled into it.
I carried my negative attitude with me, even if I wasn't trying to, and this feeling of continually beating myself down just wouldn't go away. Even as we were grinding away and pushing through successes and failures one after the other, it was hard for me to remain optimistic because of how much of me went into making this happen.
I tried a few solutions:
Did This #1: My girlfriend at the time really helped me get through a lot of the downside of things and kept me thinking positive whenever possible. Seeing friends also helped, but being with my significant other was the best remedy for a grueling day.
Did This #2: I did yoga for at least 5 minutes on most days. This is nowhere near enough time (I recommend 15 minutes a day), but it still gave me some peace of mind every now and then.
Did This #3: I just looked at the sky. I swear to all things holy, this might have been the best thing I did, short of spending time with people close to me. I layed down outside, and just stared into the abyss above...let me tell you, it was incredibly meditative and relieved a lot of stress from me on a near daily basis.
Did This #4: I went to counseling once a week for about three months. My counselor helped me develop a variety of techniques to block my stress. This did help, but it was hard to control the stress when I was outside of the counseling environment.
Things that hindered my progression from avoiding the downward spiral:
Don't Do This #1 - Don't stop exercising: I was in good-ish shape in February before we started planning, and from then on worked out a maximum of seven days a month. This is a terrible thing to do to your body. Luckily, I eat well, but my body and mind paid dearly for not working out.
Don't Do This #2 - Don't take zero breaks: I might have taken time to eat and a few extra minutes to read, but short of that I didn't stop working until my day was done (almost always after 10pm, usually later).
Don't Do This #3 - Don't drive yourself into financial ruin: Money really did start to become an issue the more time we put into making FIGCON a reality. This was probably the number one stress factor.
Don't Do This #4 - Don't. Ever. Procrastinate: Time and time again, this demon will haunt you. It made some of our sprints a nightmare to power through.
So...solutions!
Solution #1: End your work day at a reasonable hour and, if you have additional work, do it from another location.
Solution #2: If you need to borrow money, don't be afraid to ask, and don't be afraid to work a little on the side in order to sustain yourself.
Solution #3: Manage your time and your tasks effectively and get help on personal tasks if needed and if at all possible.
Solution #4: Exercise and meditate for no less than 30 minutes a day combined. I recommend 20 minutes of exercise and 10 minutes of meditation at a minimum.
Solution #5: Keep your friends close, because they are your best support in a time of need. Even when you want to feel isolated, do not allow yourself to succumb to being alone for an extended period of time. If you are the introverted type, you still need to find a way to receive support from other people that you are close to.
That's the short and long of it, because in-between all of that was work and little else. My stress didn't end until the event was over, but only because I did not hold myself to the kind of lifestyle I am recommending if you find yourself in a similar situation.
Don't get caught in the quicksand.
10. DECISION-MAKING CAN BE HARD.We wavered, and even faltered, on some decisions that were crucial to progressing forward as we developed our image, our brand, and our product. That hesitation and constant questioning really pushed against the time we had to create everything.
When you come to a decision, have a deliberation with your team (or yourself, if you're on your own) and then stick with a choice, otherwise you'll avoid moving forward. On that note, don't look back -- keep pushing onward and learn from your mistakes as you go, because you will make them. There is always room for improvement.
Welp, it's pretty safe to say I f**ked up a couple of times. Not like, "oh, haha that was funny let's not do that again," but more along the lines of, "YOU BIG STUPID IDIOT WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!?!" The biggest one was confirming two speakers in particular before they had actually confirmed, and it was entirely a miscommunication on my end. We ended up making amends, but I was completely at fault for the situation and owned up to it accordingly. I'm very fortunate that these individuals were forgiving of my mistake, because it would have been understandable if they weren't.
Further, I wasn't able to fulfill some of the agreements that were made with certain organizations, even after they planned around said agreements. This was incredibly difficult to deal with at the time, as failing others under that type of commitment was a major drawback for our development and credibility.
Lessons learned: 1. Double-check, triple-check, and quadruple-check that you are 100% sure of something before you announce or confirm it. 2. Do not make an agreement with someone or a group of people unless you are able to ensure it comes to fruition.
2. WE AIMED FOR THE MOON. WE MISSED.
Scope creep tends to be a pretty big problem in the industry, and in our case that was no different. Our honest belief was that the initial strategy behind Future Is Games -- land big name speakers, build community, use speakers for support in community and sponsorship, acquire a few sponsors and build from that -- cornered us into requiring that positive snowball effect if we were to be successful at any level. Because we hadn't consulted enough before striving for that goal, we had our blinders on for a good while thinking that our way was the only way.
A lot of the research for our development model came from IndieCade, who sure as hell know how to put on a show. But there was a lot more that went into even the first IndieCade than we even imagined, and considering that we were looking to run a different type of show, less of it applied to us than we thought.
I still believe IndieCade is a great example for anyone looking to run a successful event regardless of industry, but it's also important to understand that your direction needs to be focused around what you can do at the time you start organizing the event. Work within your means and avoid getting ahead of yourself -- good things will come in time if you work hard enough.
3. LESS MONEY, MORE PROBLEMS.
Money is a double-edged sword. Too much of it and you can lose sight of things, too little and it becomes difficult to have those things in the first place. Advantages exist on both sides of the coin, but there's no arguing that having funds in place makes it easier to make dreams come true. That is just the nature of business, pure and simple.
Going into the development of Future Is Games, we never really established how much personal contribution we were going to put into this. We honestly believed that sponsorships and admission costs (FIGCON was not free at the outset -- see below) would allow us to cover our costs for the conference and retain funds for future development.
The first proposed budget estimate for FIGCON 2013 was set at around $120K. As mentioned in an earlier post, this really isn't a huge number for the type of conference we were initially proposing. Again, we just relied on way too many things going right to account for a different budget. When we did realize that we needed to severely lessen our budget -- to about $30K, as proposed in our Kickstarter -- we thought we had a pretty good number. And honestly, we did! That number was the minimum for the content we were providing, mostly due to speaker travel and event booking, but we didn't put that money where it mattered most...into our community efforts.
Once we saw that the Kickstarter campaign was not going to succeed, we cancelled it and decreased our budget again to it's bare minimum: a little over $7,000, after all expenses leading up to and during the event. Unfortunately, our sponsorship only covered $2,500. You can do the math, but we ended up pretty deep in the red, especially myself.
Despite getting to that figure within months of the conference's launch date, we knew that we had to make this work. After realizing that charging for FIGCON did not fit with our company image (and far too late, for that matter) or our end goals, we made the conference free to attend and exhibit. This move was more conducive for our community and our company than charging would have been, for a plethora of reasons -- appeal, cost vs. reputation, attendance count, demographic, etc.
It was great to be able to provide this experience in Phoenix, a community that had never seen this type of event before and a group of people that were primarily young, entry-level, or independent developers. But that methodology comes at a cost, and it affects far more than the business.
I'm proud to be self-motivated enough to create opportunities that have supported since the conclusion of FIGCON, but I'm still in debt to a great many people that helped me through it. If you're willing to see something through, be smart about what it will cost before those costs are incurred -- both emotional and financial. And, more importantly, be ready to roll with the punches, because money is one hell of a beast.
4. THE WEBSITE.
Our initial website was done on Wix while I was working at my day job over a period of 4-ish hours. It wasn't pretty. Our friend Andy Maul then created a far better mockup in less time, but it still didn't quite service everything we wanted the site to have. After that, we decided to explore turnkey solutions because of time/money/webdev ability.
The site you are looking at now was created on, iterated upon, and is hosted by Squarespace. Although the platform is flexible, it's got quite a few kinks and made for some serious pain-in-the-ass moments that were pointed out to us on reddit that support never solved 100%. The staff is great, but the product is...well, as the saying goes, "you get what you pay for."
Our lack of web skills in conjunction with some of the janky aspects of Squarespace's platform made rapid edits on the site difficult to do. Additionally, I over-thought the design by a great amount and was continually modifying things to try to get them to fit. In fact, I did a complete overhaul of the site and theme not even a month ago.
The biggest factor in the site's faulty features was that I couldn't keep up with everything happening on the developmental side of things; there was just too much going on at once and I didn't balance it properly. The site's hands would have surely been better left to someone who could have managed it for a few hours, or even just one hour, on a daily basis.
My recommendation is that you take the time to learn web development to create a simple, barebones site with a clean presentation and all the primary functionality you need. From there, you can always find someone to help you flesh it out or continue to develop it as time goes on.
Codecademy is a pretty solid place to start.
P.S. Blog well, blog frequently!
5. THE WHOLE "ACTIVITIES DURING THE CONFERENCE" THING. OH, AND SETUP. ...AND SCHEDULING.
Man. This. Because of the millions of other things going on during the lead-up to the conference, we put our actual event day organizational stuff in the background. It's not that we completely forgot about it, but we just prioritized a lot of other things beforehand. Thankfully, our incredible team worked to put together a nice setup at the Convention Center and made sure that we could film as much as possible. But that wasn't without issue.
It took quite a bit of logistics to organize video, internet, power, lighting, and more, and even during the event we had to change things around every hour or two to adapt to our talks and activities. Nearly all of the conference was planned up until the final weeks, but the major changes that happened in the final weeks forced us to reconsider almost every aspect of that planning. We were modifying parts of the conference the day before it happened.
The biggest takeaway here is to set a schedule, layout, equipment strategy, and the like weeks, if not months, in advance of the event, and always have a plan B, C, D, E...basically everything through Z. Create FAQs that are displayed loud and proud and always have a line open to respond to questions, comments, or concerns, whether it's from your speakers, your exhibitors, your audience, or anyone else.
6. HEY! LISTEN!
Despite our social media "dark" period, I really thought our semi-last-minute heroics would be enough to get at least 125 people to the event every day. We had more than that many confirmations on Eventbrite for all three days, even if we did have a few technical issues with our first campaign, and had more verbal confirmations from friends and people in the industry. But when we opened the doors, we found that our confusing messaging and last-minute planning really hurt our ability to get people in the door.
In all honesty, a lot of it was transportation and the way that the area around the Phoenix Convention Center is set up. For smaller events, it's not the most travel-friendly place in the world, and as I stated above the buses really would have helped. But it was not having more outreach in the first place that hurt our ability to get as many people to attend as was stated in our systems.
Always make sure you interact with your community and keep them in the know. You are there for them, and the minute you disappear it is very difficult to recapture that interest, let alone sustain it.
For the record: Our final count for attendees over the three days hovers right above 100.
7. THE POST-EVENT PLANNING.
The initial plan after our event was to run small workshops and participate in local game development events and organize jams. What events specifically, we weren't sure, but we knew we wanted to be involved. Unfortunately, that never came to pass due to the team's return to their normal schedules upon completion of the conference.
Our goal was to have all sorts of media attention, promote our exhibitors, do recaps with our speakers, and provide tons more content, but the wear and tear of the team was just too much for any of us to continue on immediately after going through eight months of production.
What you do after you finish something -- be it a product, an event, etc. -- is just as important as the event itself. It requires planning and careful consideration much in the same way the rest of your development does, and executing on that content is equally necessary.
8. PRE-PRODUCTION.
Speaking of production...eight months is not nearly enough time to plan a conference of the scale we were intending with the hours that our team was able to dedicate. Without the company infrastructure in place before planning our conference, we ended up trying to create both at the same time. While some good came out of this, it mostly just created more work for us and affected how we crafted the image of both entities.
Know your limits before approaching taking on something that you know is going to be a challenge. List where your weaknesses might be and what you can do to avoid or change them. There is a difference between pushing yourself and overworking yourself, a line that we frequently crossed throughout the entire time we were developing Future Is Games and FIGCON.
9. DARK DAYS, DARKER NIGHTS: THE SHANE FALCO QUICKSAND EFFECT™.
Going into this, we all fully understood that there was no personal profit to be had from what we were doing, and we were all fine with that. This endeavor was meant to be for the community at large, not to stuff our pockets. It would have been great to put money back into the company, sure, but we wanted to create a service by bringing people together.
As noble as this was, it created multiple individual hells for some members of the team that were pulling hours upon hours working to get everything done. We were overworked because of our other responsibilities, and it really did make life difficult sometimes.
I know that some of this post-mortem is about my experience in a vacuum (the metaphorical kind, not a literal vacuum), but I feel like this next bit is important to share (skip past the block quote to continue on):
From the start, we were all really excited for this. I mean, I can't tell you how excited we were. Super excited, at a minimum. We all thought it was a great idea and that we were filling a niche, mostly because of our theme but also due to the fact that we were hosting FIGCON in Phoenix. We wanted to be the resurrection of the games industry in Phoenix. It's not that we didn't help that cause, but we just went in way over our heads.
In my case specifically, I went to a really dark place. I'm not one to use coping mechanisms, but while we were developing the conference I looked for excuses to ease the pain after our work days ended. I was pulling 70, 80, sometimes 90 hour weeks throughout the duration of FIGCON's development; on days that I didn't see my girlfriend, I either drank or played video games. Although I tried to turn these into positive experiences (when I drank it was usually social), they just gave me time to think about what we were doing. This turned into fear of failure, which compounded with my stress to create depression. And I really just spiralled into it.
I carried my negative attitude with me, even if I wasn't trying to, and this feeling of continually beating myself down just wouldn't go away. Even as we were grinding away and pushing through successes and failures one after the other, it was hard for me to remain optimistic because of how much of me went into making this happen.
I tried a few solutions:
Did This #1: My girlfriend at the time really helped me get through a lot of the downside of things and kept me thinking positive whenever possible. Seeing friends also helped, but being with my significant other was the best remedy for a grueling day.
Did This #2: I did yoga for at least 5 minutes on most days. This is nowhere near enough time (I recommend 15 minutes a day), but it still gave me some peace of mind every now and then.
Did This #3: I just looked at the sky. I swear to all things holy, this might have been the best thing I did, short of spending time with people close to me. I layed down outside, and just stared into the abyss above...let me tell you, it was incredibly meditative and relieved a lot of stress from me on a near daily basis.
Did This #4: I went to counseling once a week for about three months. My counselor helped me develop a variety of techniques to block my stress. This did help, but it was hard to control the stress when I was outside of the counseling environment.
Things that hindered my progression from avoiding the downward spiral:
Don't Do This #1 - Don't stop exercising: I was in good-ish shape in February before we started planning, and from then on worked out a maximum of seven days a month. This is a terrible thing to do to your body. Luckily, I eat well, but my body and mind paid dearly for not working out.
Don't Do This #2 - Don't take zero breaks: I might have taken time to eat and a few extra minutes to read, but short of that I didn't stop working until my day was done (almost always after 10pm, usually later).
Don't Do This #3 - Don't drive yourself into financial ruin: Money really did start to become an issue the more time we put into making FIGCON a reality. This was probably the number one stress factor.
Don't Do This #4 - Don't. Ever. Procrastinate: Time and time again, this demon will haunt you. It made some of our sprints a nightmare to power through.
So...solutions!
Solution #1: End your work day at a reasonable hour and, if you have additional work, do it from another location.
Solution #2: If you need to borrow money, don't be afraid to ask, and don't be afraid to work a little on the side in order to sustain yourself.
Solution #3: Manage your time and your tasks effectively and get help on personal tasks if needed and if at all possible.
Solution #4: Exercise and meditate for no less than 30 minutes a day combined. I recommend 20 minutes of exercise and 10 minutes of meditation at a minimum.
Solution #5: Keep your friends close, because they are your best support in a time of need. Even when you want to feel isolated, do not allow yourself to succumb to being alone for an extended period of time. If you are the introverted type, you still need to find a way to receive support from other people that you are close to.
That's the short and long of it, because in-between all of that was work and little else. My stress didn't end until the event was over, but only because I did not hold myself to the kind of lifestyle I am recommending if you find yourself in a similar situation.
Don't get caught in the quicksand.
10. DECISION-MAKING CAN BE HARD.We wavered, and even faltered, on some decisions that were crucial to progressing forward as we developed our image, our brand, and our product. That hesitation and constant questioning really pushed against the time we had to create everything.
When you come to a decision, have a deliberation with your team (or yourself, if you're on your own) and then stick with a choice, otherwise you'll avoid moving forward. On that note, don't look back -- keep pushing onward and learn from your mistakes as you go, because you will make them. There is always room for improvement.
Our Future
To be honest, our future is up in the air. It would be great to continue -- and we may do so in a limited capacity -- but for now I think we're all going to step back, live our lives, and see where things take us. I'd really like to host an all-digital conference, more of a glorified Hangout of sorts, that included talks from people around the industry presented entirely on YouTube/Twitch. It would be called FIGDIG (Future Is Games Digital). So clever, right?!
/high-fives nearest neighbor
Really though, that's the next step I'd like to see us do, in addition to working with local communities to host more educational workshops. As our generations continue to grow, we need games to grow with them -- that's part of why we call ourselves Future Is Games, because the future really is in games. All aspects of life are seeing games attached to them and they are becoming more and more crucial as the years pass. Hosting more content geared towards that group can only help the industry evolve and mature.
/high-fives nearest neighbor
Really though, that's the next step I'd like to see us do, in addition to working with local communities to host more educational workshops. As our generations continue to grow, we need games to grow with them -- that's part of why we call ourselves Future Is Games, because the future really is in games. All aspects of life are seeing games attached to them and they are becoming more and more crucial as the years pass. Hosting more content geared towards that group can only help the industry evolve and mature.
Closing Words
We can't thank you enough for taking the time to read through our post-mortem, whether you read it in whole or not. It is our hope that we could educate you on our successes and failures and that you can apply these lessons towards your own work.
Please do not hesitate to contact any of us if you have any questions, comments, or concerns.
From your friends at FIG, we wish you all the best.
Zachary A. Snader | Director, Co-Founder
@ZacharySnader, zachary [dot] snader [at] gmail.com
Please do not hesitate to contact any of us if you have any questions, comments, or concerns.
From your friends at FIG, we wish you all the best.
Zachary A. Snader | Director, Co-Founder
@ZacharySnader, zachary [dot] snader [at] gmail.com