March Reminders

Shorah!

I wanted to give everyone a quick run-down of what’s been going on in March.

First, we’re still hard at work on the hotel search. We have it narrowed down to the finalists, and we’re excited to share the official hotel with you very soon.

Second, registration is going to open this month. As always, you’ll be able to register for a single day, a whole weekend, or buy a weekend registration bundle that comes with swag and a T-shirt. You can still pre-order a T-shirt if you register for a single day.

Third, here’s a reminder that the art contest, convention book, and events submissions are all still open. The art contest ends April 14th and the conbook and events are due by June 9th.

To be notified when registration and hotel reservations are available, we have a mailing list available. You can sign up for that at https://www.mysterium.net/mailing-list/.

Looking forward to seeing everyone in Orlando in August!

Capella and OHB,
Mysterium 2017 Chairs

Mysterium 2018 Bidding Now Open

Shorah All!

Well, it’s that time of year again. I am happy to announce that the Falling Man Group (FMG) is now accepting bids for Mysterium 2018.

Submissions are due by May 6th, and you can find all the juicy details here: https://goo.gl/3QmPrT

And now, a quick Q&A:

Who is the Falling Man Group?

FMG is the parent organization for Mysterium. We provide support for the teams that run Mysterium every year, and work to make sure that the convention can continue to happen reliably in the future.

What do you mean by “accepting bids”?

A bid is a collection of information about a possible host city for Mysterium, and is submitted by a group of people who would like to run Mysterium in that city.

Why can’t FMG just choose a city and run Mysterium themselves every year?

That’s how things worked prior to 2016. As you probably know, Mysterium is entirely volunteer run, and experience has shown that having the same group do everything every year causes rapid burn out. The only way to make sure Mysterium continues to happen is to get more people to volunteer to run it, even if only for one year.

I want to submit a bid, but I don’t know anyone with the experience to be the committee chair. Can you suggest someone?

Certainly! If you want to submit a bid but need help in any way, please reach out to us. We’re here to support bid teams and Mysterium committees. We want this to be easy for you and we want you to succeed.

I want to submit a bid, but this is all a little overwhelming. Halp!

We get it. This can be a lot to figure out. If there is interest, we’d like to run a small online workshop later in March to help people navigate putting together a bid. If you’re interested, email us or leave a comment.

I don’t want to submit a bid, but I do want to volunteer to help! Can I do that?

We would love your help. Please send an email to info@mysterium.net and we’ll be in touch.

I don’t want to run a Mysterium/bid, but I want Mysterium to come to my home town!

We get that a lot. As explained above, though, Mysterium will only be coming to cities that receive serious bids.

I hope that helps to clear things up! If you have any questions about bidding, please don’t hesitate to email us at bids@fallingmangroup.org.

-Taniith
Chairman, Falling Man Group

Submissions Call!

Hello Mysterium attendees and friends!

It’s submissions time, and this year, we’re calling for three types of submissions:

Art Contest

Our art contest for this year is a poster art contest. We’re looking for travel posters to go along with the theme “A Fantastic Voyage to Magical Worlds”. A great example is Robert’s beautiful Age 233 art from last year:

Think about those beautiful NASA posters, or classic Disney attraction posters. We’ve got very special plans for these posters!

Contest deadline: April 14

Conbook

The Conbook is a glossy, full-color mini magazine featuring your Myst, Uru, and Obduction themed works. The conbook takes artwork, photos of crafts, works of fiction, or Myst/Obduction/Cyan-related non-fiction articles.

Conbook deadline: June 9

Events

Events at Mysterium range from favorite group events like ayoheek, marker missions, and building competitions, to panels and presentations put together by you: the fans.

Events deadline: June 9

Follow the links above to see detailed submission instructions. The Committee is really looking forward to what you come up with!

Capella & OHB
Co-Chairs
Mysterium 2017

Mysterium 2017: Orlando, FL

Shorah and Happy 2017!

As announced in Salt Lake City last year, Mysterium 2017 is happening in The City Beautiful: Orlando, Florida!

This year is going to be a little different. Instead of focusing on a single age, we’re going to celebrate them all with the theme From Myst to Obduction: A Fantastic Voyage to Magical Worlds.

Mysterium 2017 Logo (1)

Let’s meet your tour guides!

CapCapella
Hey there! Many of you will know me by now – I’ve been attending and running Mysterium for many years, and I’m thrilled to be chairing the organizing committee for the second time. I grew up in Central Florida, so it’s going to be a pleasure to return home in the company of a bunch of other Myst-lovers.

 

OHBOHB
Hiya! I’ve lived in Central Florida for many years and have been proud to call Orlando home since 2012. This will be my 4th Mysterium and I can tell you that we’re overflowing with ideas and working hard to make this the most amazing experience! See you real soon!

 

 

Mysterium 2017 is August 4-6 so mark your calendars now. But, there’s plenty of time before we set sail! Over the next few weeks we’ve got lots of information to share, including details about the much-anticipated Art Contest!

So check back and be sure to follow us on Facebook, Twitter , and Tumblr.

We can’t wait to see you there!

Capella & OHB
Co-Chairs
Mysterium 2017

Mysterium 2016 Wrap-up

Shorah all,

Well, another Mysterium has come and gone. We had a blast in Salt Lake this year, and we hope you all did too! Before we officially wrap up Mysterium 2016, though, we have a few more things to post. So let’s jump right in.

Wrap Up Survey

We want to make sure Mysterium is the best convention it can be. To that end, we’ve once again written up a survey to see what people liked and disliked this year. You can find it here:

https://goo.gl/forms/gIDUFEPc3AIlGtW03

This survey is also open to people who couldn’t make it this year. The more responses we get, the better we can gauge where we should bring the convention and what people want from it. The majority of the questions are multiple choice, so please fill it out if you have a few minutes. Send the link to any other Myst fans you know, too!

Mysterium Photos/Video & The Cyan Documentary

We know many of you took photos and video at Mysterium. We’d love to collect links to all of those so that we can share them with the rest of the community. If you have an album or playlist somewhere, please either let us know in the comments or by sending us an email: https://www.mysterium.net/contact/.

Also, as announced at the beginning of Mysterium, filmmaker Philip Shane is creating a documentary about Myst, the Miller brothers, Obduction, and the Myst/Cyan community at large. He is currently in Spokane recording the final days of Obduction’s development. He is planning to launch a crowdfunding campaign in the future to raise money for the project, and will hopefully be able to interview fans and attend a future Mysterium. In the meantime, he has asked that anyone with photos or video of Mysterium please send them to him for possible inclusion in the documentary. You can get in touch with him at http://myst.movie/.

Event Recordings

We have uploaded all of our event recordings to Youtube. You can find the playlist here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxkV43WY77wFFCvBZPm_6LgXxC1zf6Q0x.

We’ve received feedback about the quality of the stream and recordings of Mysterium events, and I’d like to take a moment to address that. In the past few years, we have invested in better A/V and streaming equipment to improve recordings and streams of our on-site presentations. However, good A/V equipment is very expensive, and we have to prioritize our extremely limited funds for the on-site attendees who have paid to come to the convention. We are also an entirely volunteer-run organization, so sometimes our staff’s available time can be just as limited as our funds. We do the best we can with what we have, and will continue improving our technological capabilities as we are able to do so.

I’d like to give a big shout-out to Drew/Tanshin, who spent pretty much the entire weekend manning the A/V system, and then took the time post-con to clean up all the videos.

Mysterium 2017 Announcement

As announced at the end of Mysterium 2016, our 18th annual convention will take place in Orlando, Florida on the weekend of August 4-6, 2017. The con-chairs for 2017 will be Capella and OHB. From what I’ve seen, they already have some fun new ideas, and we all hope you’ll be able to join us in Orlando.

Wrapping Up

I’d like to close by thanking all of our Mysterium volunteers, our presenters, our prize donors, and the Myst community for making Mysterium 2016 another fantastic event. We had over 90 attendees this year, and are thrilled that our numbers continue to grow. Please don’t forget to take the survey above so that we can make Mysterium even bigger and better in future years!

Well, that’s it for Mysterium 2016. See you in Orlando!

-Taniith
Mysterium 2016 PR Bah’ro