Convention

This weekend is the first Tyneside Games Expo.

It's a progression from the Northeast Tabletop Expo that Gareth of Farplace Games ran for the last couple of years in Gateshead.

The new version is run by me and four friends.

We're all experienced convention attendees.

Three of us are experienced convention exhibitors.

John has been on the organising committee of large sci-fi conventions.

And Sarah has helped to organise political party conferences.

It's been fifteen months of hard work.

In five days' time we find out how we did.

It's been exciting.

And gruelling.

And stressful.

The last couple of weeks I've had a few sleepless nights, which is unusual for me.

I'm really hoping it will be a success.

The north east deserves its own convention.

Especially with Airecon ending next year :(

I've got three days off work this week.

Several last minute things to do.

And some time that I need to work out how to spend in the most productive way.

As an added bonus, Eurydice will be exhibiting there, so I get to see Paul this weekend too!

Crunch

We're getting close to our next Gamefound campaign launch.

Which I pushed back last week.

And we're less that two weeks from Tyneside Games Expo.

Which Paul is attending as Eurydice Games.

And I'm one of the organisers.

I'm extremely busy.

But things are coming together.

And we've signed a game by another designer.

I'm making a little progress on the next prototype of that every day.

Tradition

I'm optimistic.

As a result, pretty much every Gamefound of mine gets pushed back before launch.

It's that time again.

I was targeting two weeks from the 20th October.

But that's just after the convention I'm helping to organise.

And my sister and her family are now visiting during half-term.

And Paul's mini-convention in Yorkshire is during that time too.

Plus, I'm nowhere near ready.

Time to admit that, and push it back by a couple of weeks.

Now targetting the 3rd to the 17th of November.

Photo by Christopher Luther on Unsplash

Hopefully, that date will stick!

MIT

I have a job (thankfully only 4 days a week now!).

And a family.

And now two side hustles.

I'm a busy man.

I've a todo list longer than most best selling novels.

It makes it difficult to see the wood from the trees sometimes.

So I've added another step to my daily habits.

What's my Most Important Thing to do tomorrow.

One thing.

That I need to complete or make progress on.

A priority.

Some much needed focus.

As a result, I've made loads of progress on our next Gamefound campaign this week.

It's not visible yet, but it's taking shape behind the scenes.

Biggest concern at the moment is the new EU law.

Which is going to make things harder (impossible?) to handle EU orders.

I'm still investigating that...

Improvement

Last financial year was awful.

We ran a Gamefound campaign during the year but didn't fulfil it until this year.

So all the costs.

And none of the sales.

We kept our cashflow up by running Meta ads.

Lots of Meta ads.

They worked.

Sorta.

We ended the year with some cash.

But made a massive loss.

The ads were barely paying for themselves.

This year is better.

We fulfilled a Gamefound campaign, but didn't run one.

All of the sales and few of the costs!

We've also massively reduced the ads.

They are still trickling along.

But ad spent is way down.

We're on course to have our third best year of sales.

And our second best year for profit.

Next year we're looking to do more events.

FlickFleet does well at shows

Run a Gamefound campaign and fulfil it.

Plus another new game I hope.

Time

Back in November I went down to four days a week in the day job.

It was amazing.

I got so much done on Mondays.

While awake.

Rather than trying to cram it in at the end of a long work day after family commitments.

We've just had six weeks of summer holidays.

So the kids have been off school and I've been hanging out with them on Mondays.

Plus a Bank Holiday last week.

Today is my first Monday by myself in a couple of months.

I've loads to do.

Some exciting stuff.

Plus Tabletop Scotland admin.

FlickFleet drawing a crowd as usual

Games design.

Work on the next FlickFleet campaign.

Best crack on!

Scotland

Mum and dad have left.

The kids go back to school this week.

Things are starting to return to normal.

But this coming weekend we’re away at Tabletop Scotland.

Our penultimate convention of the year.

It’s a fun one.

We stay with friends.

There’s a great vibe.

We have historically done pretty well for sales.

Looking forward to it.

But also catching up on things.

I’ll have more time to catch up on things afterwards.

Mondays are my own again once the kids go back to school.

And I can get stuff done in the evenings and on the weekends.

There’s loads to do!