Mysterium 2008 Location & Date Announcement

Shorah Explorers!

We are excited to announce the location and date for Mysterium 2008!
The community has chosen Boston, MA for this year’s event, for the weekend of July 25 – 27, 2008. We are already working on finding and reserving a hotel and once we have this information we will be making another announcement with the hotel details so that you all can make your reservations. We are hoping to have this information to you within four weeks of the date of this announcement, if not sooner. There will also be another gathering in Kirel Community Room and CyanChat next week (time and date TBA) for you to be able to talk with some of the Mysterium Committee members about the upcoming Mysterium.

Mysterium Location Survey

Shorah Explorer!

The nominations for this year’s Mysterium location are now closed. We have received bids for the following cities: Atlanta, GA; Boston Providence Corridor, MA; Cleveland, OH; Detroit, MI; Ft. Lauderdale, FL; Orlando, FL; Pittsburgh, PA. We’re running a survey to see which of the potential Mysterium locations has the most community interest.

Before the survey, you will be presented with some preliminary research data indicating the general cost associated with each location. We have also listed a number of attractions in and around the cities. We have compiled this data to make it easier for the community to make an informed decision as to which location would be best.

This survey will remain open until March 15th, and we will annouce the results soon thereafter. We will then begin scoping out accommodations in the chosen city with help from the city’s local contact, and then announce the hotel and date as soon as possible so you may begin making your reservations.

While your vote will be considered the deciding factor in the location of Mysterium 2008, the committee reserves the ability to overrule the top selection only in the event of severe mitigating circumstances, such as hotel availability, natural disaster, or other crisis. In this case, we will select the second-most popular location instead.

This survey will record participant’s preferences for the location, ranked from most-preferable, to least-preferable. The results will then be scaled, to give the most-preferable votes more weight, and the least-preferable the least weight. This will allow a more accurate picture of which city people prefer, and it will allow us to easily determine a second choice.

Please visit the Mysterium Location Survey to vote! You may only vote once, and duplicate votes will be detected and discard. Be sure to keep checking mysterium.net to keep up with any news!

Mysterium Committee

Mysterium Date and Attendance Survey

Shorah Explorer!

Things are hopping here at Mysterium HQ! While we work on some exciting details and announcements, we thought we’d get the community’s input on a couple of issues: we would like to know if you are planning to attend Mysterium 2008, and which weekend between mid-July to mid-August works best for you.

To take the survey, please go to the Mysterium Date and Attendance Survey.

Thanks for your input ahead of time, and watch out for more surveys and news very soon at mysterium.net!

-Mysterium Committee

Mysterium Registration Fees

After much research and discussion, the Mysterium committee has decided that there will be a registration fee for Mysterium 2008. The amount of the fee is yet to be determined, but we expect it to be between $10-$20 per individual. We also plan to have rates for families and groups.

Traditionally, Mysterium has had no registration fee. However, previous members of the Mysterium committee have paid for the majority of the costs out of their own pockets. We are instituting a fee in hopes of making Mysterium a more self-sufficient grassroots effort and to avoid financial burdens on present and future members of the committee. The collected fees will go to pay for such things as: hotel and conference room costs, presentation equipment, goodies and packets given out to attendees, and event reservations.

We intend to be transparent about all funds that are collected by the Mysterium committee and exactly what they are used for. The community will be able to see how their money is being used through quarterly financial statements posted to our website. We are currently determining how much money we will need and what events and purposes we will need it for.

Additionally, we plan to accept donations in addition to the registration fees for those who wish to contribute. In order to facilitate this, we intend to have a PayPal link on our website by this time next week. This is in the final process of being set up.

We’re currently planning hard in order to help make Mysterium 2008 a fun and memorable success. We will make more announcements about these topics as we determine them. :)

Thank you from your Mysterium Committee.

Mysterium Location Deadline Extension

The Mysterium committee has decided to move the deadline for bids for locations for Mysterium 2008 until Feb 14, 2008 in order to solicit any extra bids from community members to ‘sponsor’ a location. The location must be in the Eastern Standard Timezone, and this person would act as the local person to act as a point of contact, during which time they would join the committee.

Also, due to the recent, saddening announcement that GameTap is discontinuing Uru Live, GameTap’s participation in an Atlanta Mysterium is no longer viable. A Mysterium in Atlanta is still possible, with a local sponsor. We repeat, again, that this would be without GameTap’s participation.

We would like to take this opportunity to clarify the position of the Local Liaison. The responsibility of the Local Liaison is to consult with the Mysterium Committee on matters relating to the locality that is chosen. This includes local attractions, places to eat, hotel information, planning logistics (areas to avoid, what we might want to be aware of, etc) and any other information that would be helpful in planning the event.

The Local Liaison should be local to the suggested location, and the location should be within the Eastern Standard Timezone. This person should be relatively aware of the details of the location, as they reside there.

The Local Liaison will become a full member of the Mysterium Committee for the 2008 planning season leading up to Mysterium 2008. Therefore, they will function as a full member of the committee for this time, attending meetings, sharing ideas, etc. It is during this time that they will help us plan. This obviously might include any footwork that would be needed to be done locally.

We would like to stress that we will not be considering any locations which do not have a local sponsor. So if you want to have Mysterium in your city and are willing to commit, please let us know!

You can email us at cagraywolf@hotmail.com or lakem@tezhme.net.