Hi, everyone! Just some initial feedback on the day – final numbers and such to come once we get our surveys back from you all. You should all have received the link via email, or else should receive it soon, but given our problems with spam filters this year, I’m going to post the link here as well.
Please fill out your surveys at http://bit.ly/igd14survey!
It helps us hugely in talking to potential donors, journalists, other library bodies, and administrators. (Plus it makes all your achievements in making IGD happen in your local community visible to more people – to each other and to the rest of the world!)
However, even before that’s posted, I can say that signs point to IGD being hugely successful this year!
Library numbers
After a reasonably thorough attempt to remove duplicate registrations, junk/test/partial registrations, and so on, we’re left with a little over 1250 valid, unique registrations (1257 to be precise).
The thing is, it’s become clear to me that in Australia at least there are several library services that have used a single registration while actually running IGD at several branches! Just through local Melbourne word of mouth I know of about a dozen libraries that participated but didn’t register. I’m happy calling this as around 1300 libraries in IGD this year.
Add to that the fact that only 25 libraries registered with IGD from Scandinavian countries, whereas 115 were registered with our partner event Nordic Game Day, and that’s another 90 libraries playing along with us last Saturday.
So, all things considered, I’m comfortable bumping our ballpark total for the year to
1400 libraries celebrating International Games Day!
(Pretty good for a volunteer-run event!)
Locations
OK, so we didn’t get Antarctica again this year, or that other interesting travelling library I was hoping to get. But we did reach every settled continent once again! Here’s our breakdown of where those registered libraries were located:
Argentina (3), Australia (75), Bangladesh (1), Belarus (1), Bosnia and Herzegovina (1), Canada (26), China (2), Croatia (1), Cuba (1), Denmark (10, or 30 NGD), Finland (3, or 34 NGD), Germany (7), Greenland [Denmark] (1, included in above), Honduras (1), Iceland (2, or 4 NGD), India (1), Indonesia (1), Iran (1), Ireland (1), Italy (10), Japan (3), Kosovo (1), Nigeria (1), Northern Mariana Islands (1), Norway (5, or 35 NGD), Paraguay (2), Philippines (3), Portugal (2), Romania (1), Russian Federation (1), Serbia (1), South Africa (1), Sweden (5, or 12 NGD), UK (16), USA (1151).
Global Gossip Game
The GGG was successful again this year, despite a slight increase in numbers (80 slots, 79 libraries), a reasonable jump in complexity (4 official branches, more international transfers and libraries with special communications requirements), and a couple more glitches on the day than last year. It ran for a total of 26 hours, 30 minutes, starting in Scoresby, Victoria, Australia and finishing in Clinton, WI, USA. I’ll be publishing a final report as soon as I can (once I get back all the Gossip logs) and will link to it from here.
International Minecraft Hunger Games
In case you missed the last post, we have a winner! Congratulations to Denver Public Library, Grafton Library, Providence Community Library, and Stadtbücherei Münster for their regional victories; to Rexalicious of Munster for achieving runner-up status; and to CadyBrun of Providence, Rhode Island, for the final victory in the inaugural International Minecraft Hunger Games! See AADL’s post for details.
Otherwise, I’m holding off on proper thanks as the full final report is still to come – but thanks again to all of you for joining and making all this possible! Hope you had fun, and keep reading – after this post there’s ANOTHER surprise on the way! And if what I’m hearing is any indication, the final report should – as usual – be chock-full of terrific stories.
Cheers everyone!