October NZLARPS meeting minutes

nzLARPS
#1

[size=200]NZLARPS MEETING MINUTES OCTOBER[/size]

MEETING START: 19:17

Apologies: Hannah
Present: Nikki, Anna, Kim, Gareth, Juliet, Vanya

[size=150]FINANCIAL:[/size]

About $2600 in the account but there is still some outgoing and incoming expenses due. Including some unpaid fees from Wolfgangs and a massive deposit of $700 for the next Wolfgangs game.

[size=150]PAST LARPS:[/size]

Wolfgangs: Good game. Still come outstanding player fees to come in.
$357 profit. $670 spent on gear including $140 on Paddywhack stock at bargain prices, $150 on fabric and make up. So good gear increase as well as monetary profit.

[size=150]UP COMING LARPS: [/size]

No projects in October

[size=150]GEAR: [/size]

We need to top op the First Aide kit as it is down two ice packs.

Motion for Vanya to purchase at his discretion $100 worth of masks, now while the Halloween sales are on. Motion raised by Nikki seconded by Vanya and unanimous acceptance.

Idea was raised to make more shields, and seeing as it is election year, we should try and get some of the billboard signs together.

We discussed the option of purchasing the larp gear that Scott from Christchurch is selling but decided it was outside our budget.

Action Points
Vanya to purchase masks for gear library
Juliet to check out costs of replacement ink cartridges

[size=150]MARKETING:[/size]

Vanya has the intention of approaching any up coming projects once they are announced and discussing with them, creating a poster for the individual games so he can then distribute these as advertising.

There was also discussion of creating a 1930’3 style larp, similar to Flight of the Hindenburg, made specifically to recruit people from the drama department at university.

We need to find someone who can code and is willing to put in some work to make a proper image gallery for the NZLARPS website so we can pull together all the photos we have so far and have somewhere to put any new photos.

We have about 19 covers left over from the last Immersion run. The next issue is due mid December and we need to buy more ink for the printer.

[size=150]OTHER BUSINESS:[/size]

Anna has a disk with digital copies of the photos taken at Chimera.

JOUST – Anna and others are in negotiations regarding NZLARPS involvement next year. We will be manning the gate and running an event called Knight School.
Knight School is a kids event that involves the kids making their own paper swords and then moving through an obstacle course, fighting baddies to rescue the princess at the end. The princess will then give them a token to be taken to the king for a prize.
Tickets for Knights school at this stage will be $4 per kid and the profit will be split 50/50 by NZLARPS and the Joust.

The joust will be donating to NZLARPS and as perks, the people who work on the gate and the Knight School will get free breakfast and dinner, free camping, free entry to the event and free entry to the Participants Banquet.

We need to start saving Newspapers for the sword making.

NEXT MEETING: Mon 3rd November 6:30pm

Action Points
Vanya to purchase masks for gear library
Juliet to check out costs of replacement ink cartridges
Everyone needs to save newspapers for the joust Knight School.
Nikki needs to start working on cleaning up the membership database.

MEETING CLOSED: 20:06

#2

I can help with the photo website side of things if needed.

There are a number of options out there that can be customised to suit, and provide excellant features like membership etc. Would save a lot of time, and make the site standards based. And, most importantly, they’re totally FREE :smiley: I’m currently replacing the one Im using now, so a good time whilst Im in the middle of testing a bunch of different ones… wouldnt take much to develop two side by side.

Another good thing about some of them… a backend that is easy to use to manage it all, that doesnt require a degree to use.

Oh… and it could be integrated into a Blog/CMS style site if needed via plugins. I.e. a site for easy publishing of articles and info, submission system for members etc… see http://www.joomla.org

#3

I think that ideally the photo posting feature would need to hook into phpBB so it can use the login / member details.

#4

The way I envision it (she says, knowing nothing about code whatsoever) is that it would hook into the nzLARPs website. I have it figured out in my head, I just don’t know any code.

#5

Check out:

gatheringdarkness.co.nz/foru … y.php?c=20

for a phpBB solution

#6

I guess coming from a Marketing background I saw an opportunity for nzLARP to make a move to something more powerful. Something that advertises, and has long term support from a large community (so less problem if the developer of a custom built version decided to leave nzLARP).

I also considered that perhaps more people might want to contribute to news and events, but that not all of us are necessarily computer geeks, so it needed to be easy for everyone to contribute as well. Much the same as there is a seperate URL and pages for Nightmare… but this way it would be integrated. You can even have group membership shown in your extensive personal profile, along with PM’s etc just like phpBB.

Joomla would let us put a very nice face up front, and provide each game with its own space and community but all in one place so its easy for others to find. Another really nice feature being the ability to easily send out newsletters specific to each game etc

You can integrate phpBB as well, there are a few plugins for it here:
http://extensions.joomla.org/component/option,com_mtree/task,search/Itemid,35/searchword,phpbb/cat_id,0/

Maybe I’m looking a bit too deeply into it, and I know Im not great at getting what I really think across in text form… perhaps I could put something quickly together as a preveiw so people can see what I mean?

#7

My primary intentions behind building an image gallery is as a marketing tool, with more of an aim to have a professional and easily accessed display of game photos. I would like this be accessible from the main nzLARPS site and be a marketing tool rather than a community tool (for the moment). I’d move that the Marketing Officer be responsible for keeping the image gallery updated with the best photos from each game that runs.

#8

I like this idea of “the best photos” on the NZLARPS site much better than “all the photos”.

It’s hard to get good photos of larp, only a rare few are attractive to people who weren’t at the event.

#9

That said, I would also like for all the larp photos to be archived somewhere, but that’s secondary at the moment to getting this advertising tool sorted. Good photos will do a lot sway people’s opinions. I remember spending hours on the Mordavia image gallery before I started playing going “omg it looks so cool”

#10

Ah ok… in that case there are heaps of options, and none of them would interupt the flow of what’s currently up.

I use Gallery2 for my own as, despite the recent trouble caused by my meddling, it’s perhaps the most comprehensive and feature rich option. It’s also the most polished and easy to administer.

The best thing for this circumstance is the availability of various ways to upload and manage the images. You can use Picasa (which many of us are already using), a free Remote tool, WebDAV, email (cellphone) etc etc.

Modules for Geocoding and Google maps are awesome too. There is also one for providing site maps etc to get better rankings in Google searches.

It can also be integrated into most of the major CMS systems fairly easily if thats the direction taken later.

Happy to setup an admin login to my own site for anyone wanting to see the backend of a working solution.

For archiving… I have a little space I can use on my webserver. Or, it could be as easy as regularly backing up the site to local computers… I.e. setup the site, add the photos, then a couple of trusted peopole could simply FTP to the directory and copy the whole thing down to their local drives.

There’s also this type of option: http://www.swisspicturebank.com/

#11

I’ll be harvesting the Green’s billboards as much as I can during the takedown on the Friday night before the election. Who would like to volunteer to contact other parties to see if we can get some of their billboards too ?

#12

I’ll be harvesting the Green’s billboards as much as I can during the takedown on the Friday night before the election. Who would like to volunteer to contact other parties to see if we can get some of their billboards too ?[/quote]According to my brother, who is likely to be correct on this matter, if you volunteer to help a candidate/party take down billboards, they’ll likely let you keep a lot of them. But don’t look at me, I’ve got four exams in the week after the election…