Welcome to the new Venture-Captain of Latvia!

[Michael Brock]

Please join me in welcoming the new Venture-Captain of Latvia, Aleksandrs Zdancuks. He will be based out of the city of Riga.

I will let him introduce himself, how he will be coordinating events, etc..

Welcome to the team!

[Preston Hudson]

Congratulations!!

[Mike Bramnik]

Congratulations, and welcome aboard!

[Aleksandrs Zdancuks]

Hello, everyone!

Thanks Mike for your trust and I will work hard to justify that.

[Samuel Hutton]

Hello and welcome! From Springfield Mo.

[Aleksandrs Zdancuks]

Ok, this is my second chance to do a first impression.

I've been involved in Pathfinder Society for more than 4 years now. I've played previously, started GM privately last year and earlier this summer, I started organizing open games in the area. Now I have other guys, who are ready to become GMs and I want to advance more and bring more people into hobby I like.

We have Facebook group setup for our internal communication, event coordination and sharing different sources.

I plan participating local convention and bring more GMs, than just myself in 2015. As well, I'll be visiting my local PFS mecca - Ropecon to catch up with great guys there.

[Miguel Madrid del Ama]

Wellcome Aleksandrs!!!

[terry_t_uk]

Congratulations and good luck.
Awesome bananas - Riga, here I come :-)

[FranKc]

Awesome and congratulations!! I trust we'll see you again next Ropecon?

They changed the date to May in 2015.

[Aleksandrs Zdancuks]

@FranKc, yes, I'm planning to attend Ropecon in May, 2015.
Hopefully, I get approval to catch all of it, otherwise I will travel only for Saturday and Sunday.

[zefig]

Congratulations!

[Shifty]

Well played!

[Christopher "Crispy" Woldridge]

Congrats!!

[Andrew Christian]

welcome!

[Kess, Humble Servant of Abadar]

Congratulations and welcome!

[Tiaburn]

Sorry for self-bumping, but I'd like to note somewhere, what happened during my first month of being VO. And this thread looks like a pretty valid place for that.

Player number: I started with 20 regular players rotating between irregular games (1/month or less). This number bumped as I organised a public event during community meeting of another group. My recruiting post - "welcome to PFS games" - was reposted by several local gaming groups. At the end, I had 2 volunteering GMs and total 17 players (9 new to Society).

New GMs: I was quite a long time only GM in the area. But because of event 2 new GMs stepped up.

Participants number: More people become aware of Society. Number of Facebook group members changed 24 -> 45. Those are people that are interested in following news, discussing questions and so on.

Private games: One of players, requested me to assist him into organising his first home PFS game. So, another GM is planning to join PFS.

Currently, we are approaching holiday season. I don't think, we will have many games in December, but 2015 comes and I plan to push on our success to work more on community and involve more people. As well, I'm working on expanding south a bit and as first step, I will be travelling to Lithuanian regular gaming event RPG Fiesta on December, 6th.

Have fun everyone. Next report will be around February, 1st, but if you have questions or comments, feel free to PM me or ask below.

[Rusty Ironpants]

Welcome Aleksandrs!

Am I the only one who mis-read the subject as "Latevaria" instead of Latvia? Too many marvel comics as a kid!

[Rob Silk]

Welcome, welcome. I hope to meet you, Aleksandrs…maybe at GardenCon, Geneva or maybe we will even persuade you to visit us at Paizocon UK. Anyway, very best of luck to you. It sounds as though you have made a great start.

[Tiaburn]

Hey, I promised to report on February, 1st, but I got busy and totally forgot. I even almost missed March, 21st, which is my 5th-month anniversary as VC for Riga, Latvia.
I'd like to outline what has been done for now.

Player number: Last Saturday, March, 21st, we had our first Gameday here. It took some effort to organize it, but it was great amount of fun. 2 slots of 4 tables: we had normal scenarios running first half of the day and Race of the Runecarved Key in the second. Massive fun, lots of new players, TPK at mid-level table (due to bad scenario selection from my side).

New GMs: I couldn't achieve that without other supporting me. First, I have my VL, who was taking care about some stuff and covering me with new players. Great thanks to Kukish, who was GMing all day long. Thanks to others GMs. Actually, there were some GMs that were new to PFS and they managed to keep game at consistently high level, so other players were not disappointed. So, currently we have 4-7 GMs in area.

Participants number: More people become aware of Society. We had Number of Facebook group members changed 45 -> 80. Those are people that are interested in following news, discussing questions and so on.
I'd say about 60 of those played at least once. We had about 30 people attended our Runecon Gameday.

Other connections: As I working to expanding PFS network, I visited Lithuanian RPG Fiesta in December and had full table in both sessions. I have built a good connection with Russian PFS community and we are working together on common things, like Pathfinder / PFS materials translation into Russian, to make local players easier to understand basic game things.

Further plans: May, 15th - I will be visiting my friends in Finland and I will GM couple slots there for people I played with and who introduced me to organized play concept.
August, 1st-2nd - taking part in major multicultural convention in Riga, Unicon. Last year it had about 1500 attendant. PFS & other tabletops this year will have a dedicated space of 20 tables, so probably it will require even more dedication to fill that and make everything go smoothly. Feel free to inform me if someone want to travel and attend!
I plan to visit Russia during Summer to meet my new friends, but this still in early drafts.

Have fun everyone! Next report will be around end of October, (probably after 21st, which is my year as VC). If you have questions or comments, feel free to PM me or ask below.