RSVP For Our Annual General Meeting

Our last AGM at Bento

The Hand Eye Society is nearing its 5th anniversary (our first Social happened in February 2009) and we’re going to be taking stock of where to go from here at our Annual General Meeting. Things have changed a lot since we started the project, and we need to explore what the community needs now as opposed to when we started — and to empower the people who have the fresh energy to make it happen.

If you have volunteered any time (to any game culture project in town, not just a HES event) since March 2012 or are interested in volunteering in the future, you are encouraged to attend. This is a great time to get involved and have a real impact on the organization.

Please RSVP here.

Sunday May 26th, 1pm
Academy of the Impossible
231 Wallace Ave, 10 min from Lansdowne station

2012: Level Complete

Before we say goodbye to the past year, we thought we’d do a quick round up of some of the highlights of Hand Eye Society activity in 2012:

• co-presentation of D-Pad
• Comics VS Games at Toronto Comic Arts Festival (press and panel video) 
• First Annual General Meeting
• First Outdoor Social
• New Media Literacies at TIFF Nexus
• talk at No Show Conference, MIT
• Torontrons at DIY Games Room at Canzine
• co-presentation of After Darkcade
• First Education Working Group meeting
• Roguelike Social (video and links added!) 

Thanks to the amazing volunteers and partners who made all this stuff possible, in particular Alex Bethke, Skot Deeming, Jaime Woo, David Fono, Randy Orenstein, Thao Lam, Emily Claire Afan, TCAF, Bento Miso, After Dark, the Monarch Tavern and TIFF!

We did fewer Socials this year to give us the bandwidth to do infrastructural stuff like bylaw-writing (feel free to propose a Social speaker/theme for 2013 — give our FAQ a read for the deets). Other behind-the-scenes work we did last year has borne fruit with some exciting new partnerships, which we’ll be announcing in the months to come. The first one we’ll be posting about in the next couple of days — can’t give too much away, but it’ll help us get through these long winters we have…

Education Working Group Meeting

Newly formed at the last Annual General Meeting, the Education Working Group is meeting for the first time this Wed. Sept. 5th at 7:30pm to discuss some proposals for programs and partners in the coming year.

Building on the experience of previous projects like last year’s Difference Engine Initiative, we’re in a unique position to facilitate game education in a variety of institutional and community-based contexts .

If you have any experience teaching people (informally or not) about games we’d love you to come and share your perspective.

If you have an interest in games and education but no experience, but may be able to volunteer some time to these work on these initiatives, you’re also welcome. (Ten hours of volunteer time makes you a full Hand Eye Society member and eligible to vote in the next AGM.)

We’ll be meeting at Education Through Media (1610 Bloor Street West, between Keele & Dundas West). Please RSVP to jim@handeyesociety.com.

Annual General Meeting Minutes and Hand Eye Society Bylaws

The brainstorming session prior to the AGM. Click to see Henry Faber's other pics.

Thanks to everyone who took part in the brainstorming session prior to the Annual General Meeting on March 17th. There were some terrific ideas brought up — they’ll generate volunteer opportunities throughout the year, so those looking to get involved should keep an eye out for those posts. The administrative part of the day can be reviewed in the AGM minutes.

We have also posted the newly adopted Hand Eye Society bylaws. They include some changes to membership qualifications which we will be discussing in a future post. In the meantime, any questions you have are welcomed!