U-Con 2021 – Announcement
The U-Con Board met earlier this week to discuss our format for 2021 and, after intense discussion, we have decided that U-Con 2021 will be held as a virtual convention.
Gamemasters: you will be contacted to find out whether you still want to run your event(s) virtually. We understand that not everyone will want to — and that some of you, for example miniatures GMs, won’t be able to — and we’re very sorry for the inconvenience. If you were willing to run in a virtual environment this year but not face to face, and have not yet submitted your events, please let us know!
We didn’t make this decision lightly. It’s been a long couple years for all of us. Like many of you, we all want to see our friends at U-Con. We recognize that the virtual format will make it more difficult or impossible for some. We considered running a physical event with mandatory masking and proof of vaccination instead, and we explored the logistics involved, but in the end, we felt that this was the only choice for us in November 2021.
We have Eagle Crest reserved for the next several U-Cons, and we have every hope that the pandemic situation will be under enough control by next fall to allow us to get together physically. Within the next ten days, we’ll be announcing more details of our plans for U-Con 2021, including details about our badge pricing.
Thanks for supporting U-Con, and we look forward to seeing you online in November!
Joe Saul
President, U-Con
Fred Paffhausen
Chair, U-Con 2021
On behalf of the U-Con Board
FAQ
Is there any chance you’ll switch back this year?
No. But if we had gone forward with a face to face con, we might still have been forced to shift to virtual, possibly days out.
What about our hotel rooms?
Eagle Crest should allow you to cancel your hotel rooms without penalty, but do it soon, don’t play chicken with their deadline. If you have any difficulties, please let us know.
But (X Other Con) is running face to face!
Yep. Some of the larger (e.g. for profit) ones have both the logistics capability to run a con safely in these conditions, and hotel contracts which will injure them if they don’t. Every con has to make its own call.
But COVID is over!
Unfortunately, it isn’t. Case loads in Michigan are still increasing. And there’s real uncertainty about when kids will be able to get vaccinated and whether that would be far enough ahead of the con.
I want to argue about pandemics!
There’s a great series of board games on that topic which we recommend. We’re not going to play out the public health debate in any U-Con space..
Very disappointed. I toyed with the idea of going to other Cons earlier in the year, but time and money only allow me to attend one and UCON was it. Sorry to see you waited until a month before to come to this decision.
The reason it happened on this timeline is because we’d really hoped that we could run a face to face con, and didn’t want to flip to virtual prematurely. We’re sorry it worked out this way too.
I am beyond disappointed. I will not be attending the virtual conference, but would have been there every day in person, fully vaccinated and mask as required. If both Gen Con and Origins managed in person events, why can’t U-Con?
We’re also disappointed that we had to do it, but every con’s situation is different. We did cover this topic in the FAQ:
“But (X Other Con) is running face to face!
Yep. Some of the larger (e.g. for profit) ones have both the logistics capability to run a con safely in these conditions, and hotel contracts which will injure them if they don’t. Every con has to make its own call.”
I know you guys are going to catch a lot of crap for the decision to continue virtual and I wanted to say I understand and I support the decision wholeheartedly. You all do an amazing job, thank you!
Thank you! No matter what we decided to do, it was going to make a subset of our community unhappy. It’s unavoidable in a situation like this.
I hope things will be back to normal next year.