by JR Cook - 10 years ago     show comments

This upcoming Saturday May 24, BlizzPro and Don’t Kick My Robot is partnering together to hold a Fireside Gathering event in Boston. Last month we also held in events in both Kansas City and Orlando. Both of our previous events went really well and players from them keep asking us when we will do more. While we plan on doing more soon, we wanted to show you that it doesn’t take being a fansite to run a successful fireside gathering. In fact, with just a small bit of planning and a little bit of work, you can easily get an event going in your city in a pretty small amount of time.

So let me take you through the steps of how to run your own Hearthstone Fireside Gathering event.

Get Help

You can do this venture on your own, but quite honestly you probably don’t want to. It’s more fun when you have other people involved helping you and you’ll also go a lot less crazy in planning the event with help from others. It’s easier to bounce ideas of each other and also helps with the work load up to the day of the event if you can delegate some things out.

• Friends – first you’ll want to reach out to any of your friends who already have an interest in Hearthstone or if you have any that have experience in planning and running small scale events.
• Local gaming groups – if you don’t have any friends that play you can start looking into local gaming groups. Maybe hitting up the local game shop and reach out to people there. Maybe use Facebook and find some groups that are built on there for the local scene. You can also see if Meetup.com has anything within the demographic.

What Do You Want at the Event?

After you got your help, now it’s time to plan. What exactly do you want to do at your event? I will say that for your first event you will want to keep it as simple as possible. If you try to do too much you will get overwhelmed. It’s better to start out small and look to expand from there.

• Casual – Have people show up and play Hearthstone. This is actually the route we went for our KC and Orlando events as we were unsure how the turnout would be. People had fun and wanted more but several wished we had tournaments, which we will definitely do next time.
• Tournaments – If you run a tournament what are the rules you are going to set? What happens if an opponent disconnects? What happens if there is a no show? What if 2 players have a dispute? There are many things you have to think of up front and detail how they will be dealt with.
• Prizes – Do you have prizes to give away? You might be able to convince some sponsors to get some stuff to you. Make sure you decide how you want to give the prizes out. Chances are a raffle type where you draw tickets given out to each attendee is the most fair way. You definitely don’t only want to have prizes to tournament folks.

Venue

This is probably one of the most important steps. Finding a venue that is willing to host is very difficult and you’ll want to pick one that will accommodate your needs. Last thing you want to do is show up without contacting them first and making sure they will be able handle what you need them to.

• Wifi – Make sure your venue can handle several wifi connections. Get an idea of how many people will show and realize people will be connecting with their laptops, iPads, and probably phones as well. If your venue can only handle 5 people being logged in it probably won’t fit your needs.
• Space – You want a place that can hold at least 50 depending on the size of your area and maybe more. Know your city and local gaming group well and try to get a count of how many might show. I expected 10 to show to ours but I told our venue to expect up to 50 or more. We got around 50. It’s good to overshoot and have them prepared if you can, but be realistic.
• Time and Place and Expectations – Make sure your venue knows what your intentions are and what exactly you are doing. Let them know what time the event is planned to begin and end. The more you work with them, the more accommodating they can be and more enjoyable the experience can be since everyone will be on the same page.

Advertise

You want people to show up to your event, right? If people don’t know it exists then you’ll be missing out on a lot of potential players to come to the event. You don’t have to have a name like BlizzPro behind your event, in fact, at our local events most people heard about it either through the venue we were hosting it at or through Blizzard’s site. We also had a lot of word of mouth attendees who came because a friend of their’s told them about it. If you get one person to see it there’s a good chance they will bring 1 or 2 more with them. Here’s a list of potential advertising places you can go to

• Fansites – you’d be surprised at how many fansites might help you advertise your event. Never fear to contact them.
• LiquidHearth – They actually have a really good listing of fireside gatherings that you can post on or find some in your area that might already exist.
• Blizzard – Blizzard has a good page up about Fireside Gatherings and they are still putting up posts. Visit the page linked to find out how.
• Social Media – Facebook and Twitter are your friends. Make an event on Facebook and share it out. Also make sure you link it on any advertising you do.
• Locally – at the venue and possible gaming/comic shops see if you can put out some flyers. It’s a good way to hit your demographic.

Running the Event

The day has finally arrived and your event is here. If you did your planning correctly you should be prepared enough to run this without a hitch. However, there are some things to keep in mind when the event begins.

• Have a sign up – Want to have another event? This is how you do it. Get everyone’s email so you can send out a newsletter and/or invite them to the group. Make sure they know up front what you plan on using their information for and let them know this is merely optional.
• Be available to explain things – Not everyone knows how to use the find people locally feature. Not everyone knows the venue wifi password (I had it written down on our sign up sheet). Not everyone knows exactly what you’re going to do at this event. Be available to explain things and be open to answering questions or finding out how. These were all issues we had at our KC event plus the fact that the wifi had issues and I had to work with the venue to reset a couple times.
• Name Tags – not required, but we had name tags where people wrote down their battletags on them. Many friends were added to friends lists that day.
• Thank People for Coming – These people showed up to your event. Make sure to thank them to let them know you appreciated that they took time out of their lives to come to something you helped organize. You’re more likely to get repeats.
• HAVE FUN – This is the biggest one and the hardest. Organizing and running an event is not easy and you’ll actually be the one in the entire event who has the least amount of fun in terms of being able to play. Be prepared for that, but also make sure you just sit down and enjoy yourself with the game when you can.

Want to Do It Again?

The event was a success and people want to know when you’re doing it again. Remember that sign up sheet? Let them know you’ll be emailing or creating a group on Facebook or something like that where they can stay informed.

At that point you want to look back and see what you did at the event that was successful, what didn’t work so well, and how you can improve. Act accordingly on each of those. The awesome thing is the next event is going to be a lot easier to set up. You’re going to have people who were at the event who will want to help with the next one. You’ll have a better idea of how you want to run the event and you’ll have a pre-existing work history with the venue now if you want to continue having it at the same place.

Remember that sign up sheet though from running the event? Make sure you use it to either email the participants or create a group on Facebook so they know when your next event will be. That will be the easiest advertising you will have as if it was a successful event, next time they might bring even more friends.

Now, I realize this is a lot of steps to running a Fireside Gathering, and I believe if you follow my steps you will be well on your way on making a successful one. It might seem like a daunting task, but just remember, you can make these events as small or as large as you wish them to be. The best advice I can give after all of this is to do what you feel the most comfortable with and the rest will end up working itself out.

Now get out there and start preparing to play some Hearthstone with your new friends!

Want to Learn More?

Check out the events BlizzPro has run

• BlizzPro Fireside Gatherings in Kansas City, MO and Orlando, FL
• BlizzPro & DKMR Fireside Gathering in Boston, MA