First BG Panel

On February 19th, the 3rd day of OrcCon, I completed my first panel since starting Branum Games! I was only able to make the one day convention that weekend, but I intend to do more Strategicons. It’s a good setup, and the people are great.

When Justin and I found the room 15 minutes early, the lights were off and it was being used for streaming an anime. Further, it was a bit far from the other event areas. The first thing I worried about was it staying empty. It didn’t feel like a panel room so I wasn’t sure if I was in the right place, or if people would come find us. So I turned on the lights and waited anxiously. Part of me was thinking that if no one showed up, well, it would be a great practice panel run just for fun, but without me being nervous about public speaking.

My jitters were gone pretty soon, even as people began to enter the room. It wasn’t a huge audience, but I realized I was excited to see people show up. Ian Stedman from Magic Meeple Games joined me. The topic was to discuss KickStarters. He’s been involved with 3, and of course I completed Battle Gnomes last October.  There was also a camera crew there, but, that’s a different thing altogether. They were working on their own project. I personally asked Justin to film it because of my intent to record more of the experience. As anyone can tell from my inability to blog very often, recording the experiences so far has been rather touch and go.

As for the panel itself, I created some talking points, which helped. We started out talking about our own experiences with Kickstarter, and that creators should be involved in the community before asking others to support one of their own. Further, I recommended that people work on some one else’s project before doing one of their own. That way they get a behind the scenes look at the project creation experiences beforehand. We also talked about why a person would use a Kickstarter, including the obvious reason for funding and another reason which is marketing. Further, there was discussion over the process of Kickstarter which is far too long to do a blog post about, but we briefly reviewed what it looked like in our unique situations. It was nice that people were engaged in what we had to say, and for Ian and I to have different stories to tell. The panel is on the Branum Games youtube channel for more specifics.

After we had gone over what was planned, we invited questions from the audience. I remembered being in that audience and asking questions when I was preparing for my own first KickStarter and that hit me. It’s a cool thing to transition from learner to…. well, someone with a bit of experience passing it on. I still have a lot of audiences to sit in but being able to pass what I learn and experience along the way to others is actually a great feeling. I want to do more panels now and talk to more people in those seats. So yeah, I left there feeling more confident than going in, and wanting to talk to more people who want to do things I’ve done. It was scary at first, but totally rewarding and a neat experience.   🙂