BIG NEWS about Big Bad Online coming soon!
On August 17, we are going to launch a new site, launch a fundraiser, start accepting suggestions for new panels, AND have volunteer sign ups! You won’t want to miss it.
Big Bad Online will be a one day (24 hour) event focusing on giving our community a place to gather and share. We’ll be hosting panels and seminars featuring a diverse mix of game designers and other creatives in the extended community.
Big Bad Online will be free! Panels and seminars will be streamed on Twitch and we will have an open “lobby con” on a special one day only Big Bad Online Discord. We will not be scheduling games at Big Bad Online though folks will of course be free to start their own impromptu games in Discord rooms.
To cover the costs of paying our speakers and cover our upkeep costs we’ll be running a fundraising campaign, starting in mid August. More about the fundraiser and our panels will be forthcoming in mid August so stay tuned by following our twitter @bigbadcon or signing up on our site so you can be added to our mailing list!
Details:
- Date: October 23 12PM PT to October 24 12PM PT
- Cost to attend: Free!
- Format: Panels and seminars hosted on Twitch. Hangouts in Discord.
- More coming in August!
Hi all,
Last year in April we decided to cancel Big Bad Con 2020 and that turned out to be the correct (and necessary) decision. Though vaccination in the US is proceeding ahead of schedule, we’re once again trying to predict what an in-person convention would look like in October (our hotel contract is for October 21-24).
The Big Bad Con board members and staff have been talking about the possibility since January and have agreed to make our final decision about hosting an in-person and/or online event in early May based on the following criteria:
- Our own research, experience, and sense of safety and feasibility.
- Guidelines from the CDC and WHO.
- State, city, and Hyatt hotel specific requirements.
- Input from you, our friends, loved ones, and would-be fellow gamers!
To address that last point, we’ve created a Google Feedback Form that is open from now until 4/30. We’re evaluating in-person, online, and hybrid options. If you’re thinking about coming to Big Bad Con this year, please let us know what you think. We very much want to see all of you, but we want to make the accommodations needed to do so safely and to counteract the increased economic disparity caused by the pandemic.
In 2019, in collaboration with the Babble On Equity Project, individual, and industry sponsors, Big Bad Con hosted three groundbreaking events, that are now cemented in our vision going forward:
POC Scholarship
Working with the Babble On Equity Project we raised over $26,000 to aid people of color in attending the con by paying for travel, boarding, admission, and related expenses. This program complimented the Big Bad Con 2019 Kickstarter and Big Bad Con Scholarship program, we gave financial assistance to over 50 POCs to attend the con.
Our recipients were not only invited to attend, but also to host panels, stream events, run games, and showcase their products.
POC Dinner
Ajit George, Whitney Beltrán, and Banana Chan spearheaded a POC Dinner at the start of the convention, providing an opportunity to meet and mingle with other amazing people of color. All POC scholarship recipients, staff, and volunteers were given free admission to the dinner, and thanks to the funds raised, we reduced the ticket prices for all other attendees from $45 to $20 per person.
We bought out a restaurant near the convention and broke bread with over 90 attendees!
POC Meet & Greet
On the Saturday night of the contention we hosted the POC Meet & Greet, a mixer specifically designed to connect POC writers, artists, editors, and creators to their fellow piers and industry contacts. Non-POC industry attendees were invited as well, with the directive to offer mentorship, publishing, or employment opportunities to the POC attendees.
Thanks to the incredible dedication of Ajit George, Whitney Beltrán, Victoria Caña, John Stavropoulos, and Stephanie Nudelman each attendee was given a custom program that included five other attendees that they might benefit from talking to based on the interests they expressed when signing up for the event. Over 100 attendees showed up. New contacts were made and after the convention we got multiple reports of freelance and career connections!
Would you like to contribute?
Going forward, Big Bad Con will continue to host POC events including the Scholarship, Dinner, and Meet & Greet. If you would like to support out efforts, please consider donating below. All funds sent to this link will go directly to our POC programing. For more information about our charity status, click here.
Ranger Emmett, ready for BBC 2021
This is not the post we wanted to make about Big Bad Con 2020. We wanted to talk about our Kickstarter stretch goal guests, the Babble on Equity Project, and all the amazing events we have planned. COVID-19 however, changed all of that.
So, probably not surprising anyone, we’ve decided to cancel Big Bad Con 2020.
How did we come to make this decision? In some ways it was a hard decision to make and in others it was an easy one, as we knew it was the right decision. To host Big Bad Con in October, we’d have to launch a Kickstarter campaign in May. It would not be in the service of our mission or our values to ask for commitments of time and money when so many in our community are hurting.
The health of our community was also a large factor. Since our last statement, we have been keeping abreast of the coronavirus pandemic, following updates from the CA gov, SF Public Health Dept., UCSF, and others. Most likely this pandemic will still be with us in some capacity in October. Hosting a large convention would be a health risk and we care too much about everyone in our community to make that risk.
What about doing an online con? We discussed this but decided it wasn’t right. Although we could host a schedule and help set up online games, that’s not Big Bad Con. Big Bad Con is of course about amazing games but it is also about the community and camaraderie, the “Lobby Con,” the PoC Dinner, the Thursday social events, mixing people of all stripes and sharing experiences—all of which would be near impossible to replicate online.
We do have some ideas for 2020 that are more in line with our mission—possibly converting our annual Kickstarter into a fundraiser for charity. All of this is all rough right now, so we don’t have any additional info at this time.
We hope that all of you stay safe and healthy out there. Keep playing games, keep expressing your creativity, and if all goes right we should see you in 2021!
