SIMAGES 2013.2 - Chair's Corner

Hello everyone,Your board and NASAGA volunteers have been quite busy these past few months expanding membership offerings, developing new ways to get information, and creating great programs.  We truly appreciate the work of Chris Saeger, our volunteer Executive Director.  He has been helpful in many of the activities we are reporting here.  Samantha Knight has served as an intern to NASAGA.  She now works for GP Strategies and says she’ll be helping to create the standing intern position for NASAGA.  Thanks to Sam for her work and paving the way for future interns!Board member Melissa Peterson has established #NASAGAchat, a Twitter based hashtag chat, where discussions take place twice a month.  She has hosted most of the chats, but two other board members—Anastasia Salter and Scott Nicholson—have guest-hosted as well.  See Melissa’s article about this new NASAGA offering in this issue and find links to all of the past chats.We are looking forward to a very creative conference hosted by board member Kate Koski this year in Sarasota, FL. Because of the weather and location, we plan to have more outdoor events, including field trips and a Geo-Pub Crawl hosted by John Chen.  The conference will end on Saturday night with the banquet and auction and I hope people stay to Sunday morning for even more informal fun with the new friends they have met at the conference. Volunteer Judee Blohm has been working on the content of conference with Kate.  Together they have created a unique program design with more variety than usual. The theme of the classic and the new is evident in the program offerings.  Our executive director Chris Saeger is updating the conference tab on our webpage  as more details become available.  You can already see the basic schedule and read details of the sessions and the presenters' bios.  See the links in the conference section of this newsletter.  Don’t forget that there are scholarships!Board member Anastasia Salter will be hosting the 2014 conference in Baltimore, Maryland.  Volunteer Chuck Needlman is assisting her with conference hotel exploration.A group of board members and volunteers are exploring a new format for our online newsletter SIMAGES. Moving away from our recent 'magazine format', the newsletter will, with this issue, be more compact with links to some of the content.  We want to thank board member Jen McCann for formatting our newsletter for the past few years through the sponsorship of her employer White Castle.And speaking of Jen, we also want to thank her for her work as treasurer and getting us a new mailing address.  We have updated our Terms of Service.  For any questions or concerns about our organization or our policies and procedures, please contact Chris Saeger or Jennifer McCann via e-mail at nasagaconference at gmail dot com or telephone at (980) 224-2637.  Our mailing address is 4023 Kennett Pike #530, Wilmington, DE 19807.We are reviving some of our old partnerships.  With ISAGA (International Simulations and Games Association), we will offer discounts to each other's conference if you attend both conferences in a year.  2014 ISAGA will be hosted in Dornbirn, Austria, and 2014 NASAGA will be in Baltimore, MD, as noted above.  We also hope to continue sponsorships by White Castle, HRDQ, and GP Strategies.  We are always on the lookout for new sponsors who appreciate what we are doing in the industry for promoting games for learning.  Do you have a suggestion for an organization with which we might partner?  Are you interested in helping develop a sponsorship or partnership?  If so, please contact Chris Saeger.NASAGA has been active on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.  Follow us on your favorite social media sites to see what we are doing as we share what is going on in the Games for Learning space.I look forward to seeing everyone in Sarasota this year! Greg KoeserBoard chair