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| Website News |
3 MAY 09 -
Whew! Time to dust off the website and get it ready for 2009's FOH convention. I have updated the photo section and posted some pictures of last years fun. Next up will be the pre-registatration and event registration sections. Pre-reg will run the same as last year and the convention will take place September 25th, 26th and 27th of 2009.
6 SEPT 08 -
Things are going strong for this year's convention. The last 't's have been crossed the final 'i's have been dotted and the game selection is looking good this year, thanks in no small part to the many people whose first names begin with the letter 'J', we couldn't have a convention without games and ANYONE who runs a game or two is much appreciated. The money that History in Miniature collects goes 100% to cover fees and costs of putting the convention on. In the rosy-hazy future if we have a bit extra we will consider having guests of honor again and expanding the convention to use up more space (hopefully at the current venue, I really like the new location). Right now I am looking forward to a great FOH weekend. It is not too late to run a game, sign up to share your favorite with some new friends!
7 JUNE 08 -
Pre-registration is almost ready. I have dusted off the website a bit here and there, so if you find something that is not quite working right (especially you MAC users!) please drop me a line and let me know. The new forms for submitting a game are up, the online form is also working better, I had to add a field where you type 'yes' to help cut down on the span, please don't forget that three letter word with your game submission! We are still looking for an RPG advocate and I know there are plenty of candidates in the Des Moines area, really it is not that much work and it is an area we need to expand upon to grow the convention. I stepped over to Stoney Creek the other day and checked out the new digs and I am very happy at the way the place looks, it is NICE inside, very nice. It seems a bit tighter than what we had at the old venue, but square foot wise we are actually coming out a little ahead and location wise it simply cannot be beat, right off the highway, surrounded by restaurants with a large grocery store within 3 blocks walking distance and a 24 hour gas station within a block. I have decided to forego running an official Kids Con this year, I have ran it the last couple of years and feel that a kids area will suit the needs of the younger kids who come to the convention, yeah, yeah, this is more of an excuse to allow me to play more games, but please note that the sub 12 year olds will be more on their own this year than in the past couple of years. I will look in on them and probably you will catch me playing a game or two over there as well, however I plan on getting to at least one of the Saturday day time slots this year.
16 JANUARY 08 -
Fields of Honor is moving to Stoney Creek Inn in Johnston Iowa. The directors feel this location can better handle the needs of our gaminng community and we are all very excited at the new digs! Check out their website: Stoney Creek Inn for more information. Also we have elected a new member to the Board of Directers: Welcome Jerry Barron-Miller. Jerry has been a long time gamer and proponent of Board Games at Fields for many, many years and we are very happy to have him represent the board gamers in the area.
This brings us to the next need: We need someone to step forward and become an advocate for the Role Players in the community as a Director. This person will need to work with the local role players and be a voice for them in Board decisions. The reality of the job is that it is a little more work during the year and at the convention in return for a say in the direction Fields of Honor will take in the future. Use the contact us page to drop us a line if you are interested.
Future meetings of the Board of Directors will be taking place in a public location with any paying event attendee welcome to come and participate. Your opinions count and we want to hear them. News on the next meeting location will be posted here (yes, before the meeting takes place!) and on the History in Miniature website.
13 NOVEMBER 07 -
The website still may have some issues, if you find anything quirky please let me know. The changes have all been focused around the Event pages so far. I have moved the website from handling one event at a time to handling multiple events, which required restructuring the database tables, and instead of doing a hack job and bandaiding them I rebuilt them, making them better, stronger, faster...hopefully!
31 OCTOBER 07 -
Ouch, things may be a little funky onn the website the next few days, I am overhauling the databases to be more easily updated and flexible with new events. Primarily it will be the events section suffering if there are any problems. Any submitted games will still get submitted and approved, that data will not be lost, however errors may happen. Obviously I am doing this in the down season for a reason, eh? Oh and game day registration is coming soon too. I am not sure on the December game date, we have had some thoughts it might not be a good idea and we are all (HIM members) very busy this time of year, right now we are still going to try and pull it off, but unitl the fat webmaster sings...
15 OCTOBER 07 -
Lots of news, where to start? First off we had a follow up meeting to determine how Fields of Honor 2007 went. From a people and games stand point we heard very good things from a variety of different people, money-wise we hit a few snags with unexpected costs. Thanks to some generous support from other local gaming groups we have our heads above water, however we can do better. Everyone on the board is in agreement that the Fields of Honor gaming convention needs to be self supporting and we will get it there, which leads to other, related news; to help support Fields of Honor 2008 we are going to host game days between now and then. There will be one every two months and the first two are *tentatively* slated for December 1st of this year and February 19th of 2008. These will be one day events at local national guard locations, there will be a fee ($8-$10), however we will be hosting some of the larger and longer games that everyone loves, this includes board games and miniature wargames. Role-players are not excluded, however the facilities will be limited to one large room, we will not have smaller, more intimate rooms for use on the game days.
I am working on the sign up portion of the website right now so if things get wonky on this website that may be why. (work has already started) The work on the sight is to re-program how events are added and to add the ability for pre-registered players to sign up for some events. Oh yeah I am going to keep this page trimmed down to the 'news' for the last six months from now on too, this isn't a blog, well, not really...
01 OCTOBER 07 -
We survived 2007 Fields of Honor! It was awesome! The game room was packed the vendors had great selection, plenty of deals and a lot of inventory, to top everything off the Guest of Honor, Dave Glewwe, set the bar for future guests of honor very, very high. We were honored and humbled by the amount of time and effort he put in on our behalf and he showed us exactly why we had chosen him as our guest of honor in the first place. Personally I had a great time running the kids through some games at the kidscon and was very pleased to meet some new future gamers this year. I also had fun doing a bit of role playing (it was a great game Chad, Ray and Dave, I am so glad you made the drive down!), got my butt whooped at the Bra Room Brawl (Julie delivered the coup de grace, killing my last figure and we were only on round #2!) and generally had a good time just chatting with people (Rodney and Todd in particular!) Thanks to everyone who attended, we could not have done it without you!
17th SEPTEMBER 07 -
The vendor logos and links (if available) are now posted on the vendor page. Please support our vendors and if you are looking for something in particular do not hesitate to ask a vendor to bring it to the con. You could contact them directly through their website if they have one or use the forums here to contact them/us and we will do everyting in our collective power to make you a happy customer.
5th SEPTEMBER 07 -
Alright, alright I have not been updating the news section very often! The events pages has been gone over and reformatted and split into separate sections as needed and the initial schedule is up and ready to be viewed...and added to! Add your event using the forms from the event page and we will approve it and get it up on the website ASAP. The silent auction information is also up and ready to use now too, information is linked to off of the Events page, including a form you can print out and use before you arrive at the con.
There are some problems with the forms on the website, I am sorry to report. It seems MAC OSX users are experiencing problems more than anyone and I do apologize for my lack of ability to fix the problem with the online registration, I will do everything I can to resolve the problems for next year.
When I look back at what I needed to accomplish before the con I am fairly pleased with how the website has come along, it does have useful information, it IS serving a purpose (not just infuriating MAC owners) and I am getting good feedback on what is liked, needed and should be discarded for future cons. Thanks for your support so far! I may not get around to making another news update, I still have a few things to do here, most of them are administrative in nature, I hope to keep the main site in the current form at least through the FOH 2007. The biggest....er, the most suggestions I have gotten so far involve the color scheme, rest assured it can be modified easily and will probably be changed before 2008 hits us.
27th JUNE 07 -
The vendor information is now posted on the (vendor) page. We have received our first electronic registration! Everything is running smoothly. No word yet on the photo section....gotta go kick that code monkey to get it done. I also got the registration documents up for registering by mail or registering to judge games by mail, both are in .doc format, if anyone needs them in a different form drop me a line and I will post for everyone to use.
10th JUNE 07 -
The online payment is up and ready to go! The process is fairly straight forward, we gather name and badge information from you before we send you off to paypal to pay, then you pay, we get a confirmation email and we (manually) confirm your payment and get your badges ready. Easy enough, however I have noticed things that seem 'easy' to me are sometimes not so clear to other people; I am a programer I make that mistake all the time. So...if you are having problems, drop me a line and let me know with the contact us page, I will help as quickly as possible!
Next up the events need to be streamlined. I would love to work on the photo section, but events are crucial to THIS year, photos are not. Plus I will have the silent auction pdf/word/open office document up for downloading this week too. This way anyone with a lot of items for the auction will be able to fill them out electronically and print them out or just print the forms and fill them out with pen, that works too.
8th JUNE 07 -
If not for my natural tendancy to check everything 9 times the payment system would be up. It will be up by Sunday the 10th, then I will start in on the events and finish up with the bazillion photos I have to sort through. Sunday should be a big day over all...
24th MAY 07 -
I worked on the payment system and the photo gallery.
13 MAY 07 -
Messed about with the photo gallery, still working on it, if you note any anomolies let me know! Upcoming projects include getting online payments working, adding some events and adding some vendor information. There should be some updates thoughout the week of the May 13th.