May 17, 2024

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*** are Commitments

~~~ are deeper notes about commitment ("wont do" items, etc)

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May 3rd, 2024 @ 11am

Events and Trade Mission Committee

Chair: David Hoppe

Notetaking: Beau Johnson

Attendees: David Hoppe, Beau Johnson, Ross Cowman, Nicole Jekich, Mike Selinker, Chris Pramas

Missing:  Sec. Steve Hobbs, Stephanie Prentice

+ Welcome, Introductions, and Announcements (5 minutes)

Mike Slept for 20 hours

+ Old Business (45 minutes)

TGA Tokyo Recap:

 Ross: as a publisher, it was worth it (sales make, strengthen relationships new and old, new introductions with others in the japan industry, cafe industry and how people use them)

 Still a learning experience, and taking that forward to future travels and expos

 Chris: Overall it was good, sales a bust - japanese gamers don't speak english. No interest in our english books. Made sales in PDFs, actually (they can be translated digitally).

   Talked with different publishers and got leads, not just japanese publishers

 Chris: Not a lot of RPG big books, was smaller book focus

   Translator spent a lot of time at the booth, but didn't get to walk around with translators

 Nicole: understanding Japanese market and trends, community aspect of advertising games and such, visiting game cafes were interesting and how some game cafes are also publishers

 Mike: We ran the booth way would would normally do a booth, sold most everything - direct at con or to retailers direct

   Booth was well built, relationship with arclight was great, tons of meeting through gold key service and those led to lots of conversations at con and prior to con

   Cherry did well selling their game, Flatout made connections, overall went well -

   Went to state dept and talking with JCP building a plant to create cards, didn't know it was gonna happen but we might have sold it

     lot of unexpected moments but people handled them well

   All publishers interactions were positive and setup for future success

   Better definitions on what is being represented (lot of the successes were board game related, not necessarily RPG)

 Chris: it was interesting to do a US embassy briefing

 Mike: talked about Visas with US embassy people, was interesting

 Chris: logistically speaking, single guy was handling purchases

 Miss - wanted to talk with hobby japan (mike: but no one was there) (Ross: will hand work with their Hobby Japan contact, I got lucky on a demo of my game)

 Nicole: Committed to move forward on a feedback form instead of a meeting, also took notes of the critiques of the trip

 Mike: we did not have an empty table

Report to SOS office:

 Ross: Want info about business deals, financial reports from con, etc

   Put together a spreadsheet, add notes / contacts

 Chris: will this be public record?

   Ross: There is no specific policy of what they (SOS) wants and commerce has their own needs

     What i think we should do: get a report together on each publisher, and will work on the privacy of those interactions

     Mike: some could cancel if those reports go public

     David: Get some internal reports and the SOS office could get some information from those reports and keep some sensitive or delicate interactions that could be affected by public announcements

     ~~~ Ross is on point for this

STEP commerce surveys:

 Ross: they have been sent out, and ross will forward it to people as well if they did not get things

Internal debrief:

 Ross: from all parties that went on trip and inform future trade missions

 ***  Nicole: Committed to move forward on a feedback form instead of a meeting

   Steph has requested a meeting about essen candidates

 Ross: make a formal appointment on this, have this body make recommendations going forward

 Chris: They though mostly different companies going to Essen (Mike agreed and removed themselves from even thinking about Essen)

Japan Games Market Meetup:

 Ross: make a general meetup and talk about and showcase the games we did

   Mox as a location?

Essen Update:

 Nicole: last debrief, some reservations from commerce - want new companies, no repeats from Tokyo - getting confirmation on that

 Get "What's Eric Playing" clarity on going as they are considered an influencer

 Mike: Removing any company in any form - will there be enough companies that could apply? If not enough an empty booth would be not even worth it.

 Nicole: wait list candidates being reviewed, Thing 12 might be considered an exception - 5-6 candidates for essen on wait list

 Mike: I might post about this in my blog?

 David: This is our trade mission, and should keep that in mind this could diverge from SOS

   80% new companies would be a good focus    

   Stronger companies should also go, and benefit from a wider audience.

 David: the challenge, start to develop fund parts of this ourselves

 Mike: They cannot be besieged with special requests (of the groups that we work with and reach out to on events)

~~~  Mike: I have considered to step away from the Event and Trade group

 Nicole: meeting monday with steph on recommendations and what the asks are, and the membership side on hopefully an 80/20 split on attendees

 David: will need to consider long term autonomy and independence on future trade events

   Mike: As the booth manager at Tokyo, ask what are you looking for

 Nicole: Booth management, talking anne and molly on how essen is - I want to suss out what their plan and what expectations is to occur

GenCon:

 David: good to have TGA do something there, any takers to head something (timeline is tight!)

   Ross: help out arclight with partner attendance at our booth, learned from working in Japan and showcase what Tokyo was for all parties

   David: half and half: What TGA is and what Arclight showcase from our Tokyo event

   David: awaiting the volunteer for this, get agenda and make sure it well placed and promoted

Ran out of time - so other topics were not discussed:

* Trade Missions - What Trade Missions should the TGA consider for 2025?

* Support for Visiting Industry Professionals (Ross)

* New Commitments Review

+ New Business (15 minutes)

+ Commitments Review (5 minutes)

 New Commitments Review

+ Set Next Date (5 minutes)

May 17th set!