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Gamescom 2011 is coming up from August 18th (17th for trade visitors) to August 21st. I was thinking about sponsoring the Gaming community there, if possible. It's located in Cologne, Germany and will be taking place in the Koelnmesse (Cologne Exhibition Center).

What is Gamescom?

Gamescom began in 2009 and is is now the largest games trade fair not only in Europe but the world (yes, even larger than E3!). Big name publishers in the industry such as Activision Blizzard, Electronic Arts, Microsoft, Namco-Bandai, Nintendo, Sony Europe, Square-Enix, Take Two, and Ubisoft have been there in the past. It was the site for major announcements such as the Sony PS3 Slim, and the games Fable III and Resistance 3.

Who will be there this year

Some of the currently known plans include:

Why is this interesting for Gaming.SE?

Well, we love gaming, obviously! We have a site full of passionate gamers who are very interested in what's coming down the pipeline in regards to new software and hardware. Some of the aforementioned publishers will be making announcements about game releases, and we look forward to having questions about those games on the site.

Some of the biggest publishers in the industry will be there, as well as other journalists and news sites. While our audience has steadily grown over the past year, this represents an opportunity to reach out to a broader audience that can provide us with more traffic and higher visibility to the gaming community at large.

What could I do for Gaming while I'm there?

I only live about a 2.5 hour drive from Cologne, so getting there wouldn't be a problem for me because my boyfriend would be able to drive me, though I'm currently unsure if I could go more than one day because hotel costs are rather considerable. I'm hoping I'll be able to swing it though. I know that @Ivo Flipse is also interested, as he, too, lives within driving distance of Cologne, but would likely only be able to make a daytrip.

What I'd want to do to promote us there:

  • Take photos and do tripreports for the Gaming blog. I would plan on covering games and events that are relevant to the community and could also bring more traffic to the blog and site. I unfortunately do not have the resources to record any videos or do live streaming, but I would be able to do take lots of pictures and write up articles on what I'd seen. I can't guarantee I'd be able to make every single event because the event schedules may overlap for certain things, but I'd do my best.
  • Give out swag. I already have my Gaming t-shirt which was sent to me for being one of the top users on the site, so I could wear that during the event. Having something to actually give to people though would be great because our URL isn't exactly that easy to remember off the top of your head at first glance. If I had stuff like business cards or stickers to give out to people at the convention hall, that would be awesome.
  • Be awesome. Representing a community, website, and well, business, is a big responsibility. I have experience in public speaking as well as promotion, and I'd like to think that I would make a good representative for Gaming.SE in a public space.

So, what do you guys think about this? Do you have any questions/concerns? Personally, I really think this would be a great chance to increase our visibility. :)

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That sounds so awesome! This is actually one of the closest big events to me (Belgium) regarding Gaming, sad enough I can't be there because I have exams on the 22nd August and skipping them for Gaming purposes would be bad. I'll show of my T-shirt at a later students' LAN Party though...

For the business card idea, we could make a template that you could print out on photo paper. It doesn't necessary have to be official if there is not enough time to get them delivered to event participants, just don't throw it around at people as that could be seen as advertising and is often not accepted unless you asked if you can literally give them away in a visible manner.

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I personally think FallenAngelEyes should go for as long as possible and do her best to cover the event. If that means re-allocating funds that would have been used to let me go there to her, then I'll gladly pass the opportunity.

I'm not sure your internet connection would be, but the ideal situation would be if you tried to take pictures and notes and when you get to the hotel upload them to a shared Dropbox folder. Then those users interested in helping out can take those pictures and your notes and help push out some blog posts. That way we can crowd source the work a little bit and minimize the cost of actually sending people over there.

While this is meant to compete with any big Gaming blogs, I do think it would be nice if we could cover the news as good as possible in a way that our users care about. Perhaps we should hold a poll to see which news events our users want to hear about, perhaps even with questions they want you to ask or things they want you to try. That way we extract the maximal value for our community out of you going there and having an awesome time :-)

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