Waiting: Coffee shops & consequential choices
All right, luvvies? Matt here with the Waiting edition of Ready & Waiting, a fortnightly newsletter from Foggy Outline.
This edition is going out to 27 of you; an exclusive and highly appreciated club! But not so exclusive we don't let you invite friends. Just forward this email to anyone else you think would appreciate it.
Karen and Richard at Skipton Business Expo
12 March, 10:00GMT, Skipton Town Hall
We're attending, not exhibiting, so if you want to say hello at the Expo you might need to keep a sharp eye out. If you're exhibiting, expect us to come around and say hi to you! We're attending to make new local business connections.
Matt runs Spindlewheel and The Hunted at Airecon
15-17 March, Harrogate Convention Centre
It's my first Airecon! My first games convention outside London, in fact. I've had fun running roleplaying games for people at Dragonmeet before, so I'm offering a couple of games here too:
2 sessions of Spindlewheel, a tarot-inspired storytelling game that uses a beautiful custom deck of oracle cards, at 7pm on the Friday and 10:15am on the Saturday
1 session of The Hunted, a folk horror game where the group builds the mythology of a terrible monster through campfire stories, even as it hunts them, at 2pm on the Saturday
Last I checked I had enough sign-ups to each game to guarantee they'll go ahead, but there were still spaces open – if you're going to Airecon and those games sound good, sign up and join in.
Karen and Richard at Skipton Business Social
19 March, 18:00GMT, Elswoth at The Mill, Skipton
Helen Wardley of Wardley Communications is giving a mini PR masterclass at this month's Skipton Business Social. Karen and Richard will be there in the audience, soaking up some knowledge.
Skipton Business over Breakfast Club
20 March, 08:00 GMT, Cooper's Cafe Bar, Skipton
We’re attending the BoB Club again, not as presenters this time – it’ll be another business’s chance to present, and our turn to learn.
Environmental literacy courses
Introduction to renewable energy
We're making progress on the new suite of renewable energy courses, including creating a set of illustrations – like this one explaining the principle behind an Archimedes screw.
X reasons to think about the environment when making business decisions
We previewed this course-in-progress at Skipton BoB Club earlier this month, and the feedback showed there was definitely interest in it.
Incidentally, another discussion at the same meeting showed there was also enthusiasm for a course on the impact of food choices on the environment – which is something else we're actively working on launching right now.
The X is there because we haven't yet worked out how many reasons there are! We're considering delivering this course face to face or virtually in real-time, rather than as a self-serve e-learning course, but it's still very much in the beta testing stage. We'll probably want to test it out at least once more at some point before launch.
Merely Roleplayers: coming up in the Studio
Fan Fic Mish Mash
Tomorrow (12 March) the first half of our Dragonmeet 2023 live show, Fan Fic Mish Mash, goes live on the podcast feed!
Morgana Le Fay (Alexander Pankhurst), Jemima Puddle-Duck (Natalie Winter), Tom Thumb (Strat), John Silver and the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland all work in the coffee shop 'Hey, You!' – and some new customers are ruining the cosy vibes.
We're playing Interstitial: Our Hearts Intertwined by Riley Hopkins – who is crowdfunding a second edition of the game right now!
Part 2 is out next week (19 March).
The Ultimate Micro-RPG selection
Then from 26 March, we're starting the next Studio season proper. Instead of our usual 3 to 5 episode story, we're doing a series of 5 completely standalone episodes, where we're playing a selection of games from The Ultimate Micro-RPG Book edited by James D'Amato:
Heartbeats by Keith Baker and Jenn Ellis (26 March)
Event Planning in Zero G by Jenn Martin (2 April)
Hero Dog Saves Town by Alex Roberts and Wild Rovers by Shanna Germain (9 April)
Summer Break! by Joey Barranco (16 April)
Wonders by Alex Flanigan (23 April)
Enter the Labyrinth
And in April we're recording our next Studio production, where Natalie Winter (Jemima Puddle-Duck in Fan Fic Mish Mash) takes on the role of Goblin Queen in a playthrough of the Labyrinth roleplaying game (yep, the Jim Henson/David Bowie Labyrinth).
I get to be a player in this one, alongside Ellie Pitkin, Helen Stratton and Strat. Appropriately enough for a story based around goblin mischief and fae bargains, it should start airing around midsummer.
We're starting Greenpeace's Big Green Plastic Count today – counting all our plastic waste from now until 17 March
Love and Lattes: How the Coffee Shop AU feeds romance by Alexandra Lange at Dirt – explaining the coffee shop alternate universe (AU) fan fic trope, for anyone who read the description of Fan Fic Mish Mash earlier and went "what?"
As Use of A.I. Soars, So Does the Energy and Water It Requires by David Berreby at Yale Environment 360 – an up-to-date environmental angle on tech boosters' latest big con
Seen And Not Heard by Caroline Mincks – an audio drama about hearing loss, deaf gain, and navigating the world through changing circumstances; the British Sign Language course I just started has a section up-front about audism, and honestly they should just make you listen to episode 1 of Seen And Not Heard
See you in two weeks for the Ready edition: a round-up of Foggy Outline things you can enjoy straight away, no waiting.