Hey All,
I’m Daniel, a first-time poster in the Friday Fun series, but a long-time reader.
Last week I was one of the lucky 147.000 people who attended Essen Spiel, the largest board game convention in the world. I was working as a volunteer game presenter at a French publisher’s booth. Apart from a few pictures below, I’ll try to limit the “geeking out” part and also muse on a few things I experienced that might resonate with more people. So if you are not into board games, maybe scroll below the pictures.
Are you a gamer? What do you usually play? Maybe we can talk some more on BGG, or even play something together on BoardGameArena. Perhaps we can have an Atlassian-related guild there too! 😄 Let’s trade nicknames in the comments.
Okay, so on to my other musings. Essen was special to me not just because of the board games, but also because
it was the biggest and craziest convention I attended in my life (so far, hopefully)
it was only my second convention after the easing of the covid-lockdown rules
working provided me with insights I can actually use in my work and the Atlassian Ecosystem.
Crazy Fun Conventions
So, apart from this, I usually attended only work-related, B2B events. Even though they can be fun, and the people you meet there are nice, it always feels like exhibiting companies are putting on a serious face there. Not at Essen. If there ever was a feeling of entering the wizarding world of Harry Potter the same way he did in the books, being amazed by the randomness of it all, I think it happens at Spiel. And I’m confident enough to say this without even visiting Comic Con or a studio theme park because there, you're expecting to be amazed. Here, you can walk around the aisles of the games, and still be surprised by being honked down by a group of leprechauns riding a bicycle carriage, asking you to perform something if you want to enter a prize competition. (Check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2GBpCQGmBs&t=904s ). So my big takeaway here is, we should all aspire to bring more fun to work events too. (And shout-out to Apptoberfest, which does just this!)
2. Post-Covid Conventions
Germany, where Essen is, had one of the toughest rules for the first two years of the pandemic. Maybe that is why, even now, when previous rules of (2G/2G+ - Vaccinated or recently recovered/Vaccinated with booster shot) no longer apply, there were some precautions in place - just as you can expect from an event drawing that amount of crowd. So now everyone had to wear medical facemasks all the time (with exceptions for eating/drinking), and the ratio of people actually wearing them was extremely high, much higher than the people wearing them even during those much stricter covid rules. Is it because board gamers understand better the need for playing by the rules? But, even despite this, I see more and more posts on social media saying that corona also got into people’s Essen Loot, so maybe wearing just masks isn’t enough? What was your experience if you’ve been at a big event since this spring?
3. Working at someone else’s booth
As I mentioned before, I went to Essen as part of the demo team for a French publisher. Since I work in marketing and have done my share of organizing booths at conventions and expos, I thought this way I can get the best of both worlds: perks of easier movement on-premises and seeing behind the scenes, while skipping the stressful preparation phase myself. 😄 I managed to succeed in the second part of the plan. As for the first, because of the crowd and being busy at the booth, I only realized on the train back to Berlin that out of the 6 exhibition halls, I forgot to explore one. And working at a booth organized by someone else gave me an opportunity to look at my own work through a mirror, especially the little tasks I used to do on autopilot. Have you had an experience when you could really look at your work from an outsider's perspective?
