Good day, everyone. This is Speaker Conjurer Don with an important announcement.

I’ve been given permission by Queen Elyse to pimp one of my other projects, a guerrilla Skeptical Symposium I’m spearheading at Gen Con Indianapolis 2010. Why guerrilla? Well, we have no special recognition from Gen Con (as yet, at least) and are self-organizing from the ground up to bring science and critical thinking to Gen Con.

See, in 2008, I, Skepchicamp presenter Tom Foss, and a couple of other friends sat through an excruciating panel at Gen Con called “The Science of EVP,” delivered by The Indiana Ghost Trackers. We decided then and there to bring skepticism to Gen Con ourselves. In 2009 we gave a pretty successful panel on everything from logical fallacies to bigfoot. We decided to expand the program in 2010 and it’s shaping up to be quite awesome.

As it stands now, we have 7 panels and/or presentations, some of which are being delivered twice, for a total of 10 talks. We’re doing a revamped and much improved version of last year’s panel, plus talks on cargo cult science, evolution and creationism, scams, and pseudoarchaeology, and that’s not even all of them.

Most importantly, however, is the fundraiser I’ve arranged with Gen Con to benefit the Indiana Immunization Coalition. Gen Con gave us a free booth in their Family Fun Pavilion from which to harangue passersby to donate money 100% of which will go to the IIC to fund new educational initiatives for vaccination in the state of Indiana. We’re incredibly excited about this development, and one of our talks is going to be an educational pro-immunization talk to act as a companion to the fundraiser.

As awesome as this all looks, though, we still need more help! First and foremost, we need volunteers for the fundraiser booth. Our deal with Gen Con includes a clause that the booth will be manned from open to close of the exhibit hall every day, and we simply can’t do it ourselves; we have talks to give, meals to eat, and a convention to see at least a little of. So come on down to Gen Con, have a good time, and help collect money to educate children and parents about the value of vaccination!

We would also love more presenters. Anyone that has a hankering to give a skeptical talk should e-mail me (causticbox[at]gmail[dot]com) and let me know before March 13th, which is the final cutoff for event submission for the convention.

For more information, you can check out this post, which is very detailed, or simply visit our website, Gen Con Skeptics, and read all about our planned presentations and the vaccine drive and check out our current schedule of events. Finally, I was interviewed Wednesday for next Friday’s episode of the podcast Skeptically Speaking, which will air March 5th at 8PM eastern and be available to download on iTunes subsequently.

Gen Con Indy is happening August 5-8. If you’re going to be there, we’d love to have you in our little group of grassroots skeptical activists. If you’re not going to be there, what the hell are you waiting for? They don’t call Gen Con “The Best Four Days in Gaming” for nothing, and this year there’s going to be tons of skepticism! Join us, folks, and help make the world a more rational (and vaccinated) place.

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