ConTribution! Earthquake relief convention – 12th to 13th February

Solidarna Foundation (English)
2020 Petrinja Earthquake (Wikipedia)
ConTribution Facebook event
Call for Speakers – Google form

Petrinja before the earthquake

Petrinja before the earthquake

WHY?

Croatia, home to one of the more popular movie sets for some of the most popular shows and movies in recent history (Game of Thrones, Star Wars) had suffered a devastating earthquake.

The Earthquake struck on the 29th of December and had a magnitude of 6.2 on the Richter scale. It struck just 3 kilometers (1.8 miles) from the small town of Petrinja which is located around 50 km (31 miles) SE from the Croatian capital Zagreb. The earthquake claimed 7 lives and left a lot of people without their homes. Most of the buildings (which were old, to begin with) are now completely uninhabitable and will have to be torn down and rebuilt.

WHO?

The convention is at this moment being organised by a number of individuals from multiple SF clubs and organisations. The “committee” is yet to be established (maybe) and names will be made public as soon as they emerge from the chaos of birth.

It started as an idea of playing a charity D&D game for 24 hours (the idea still hasn’t been scrapped). However, a lot of people responded and wanted to do something bigger. So we reached out to the geek community here in Croatia. The response was tremendous.
Then we reached out to the international community and the response was amazing. We are expecting a lot of international guest speakers and hopefully international guests. We will be announcing the names as soon as we get the final confirmations. Just to tease a little bit, there will be some very notable game developers, writers, and YouTube streamers as guest speakers at the ConTribute convention. So, stay tuned!

WHAT?

The concept of the CON is FUN! Since most of us have some experience organizing small geek conventions it will be a similar concept. To see how these conventions are conceptualized you can look up WorldCon or EuroCon.
So, there will be talks, panels, presentations, quizzes, games, maybe even CosPlays.
All of the categories can be found on our online Call To Speakers Form
So, what exactly will there be on the Convention depends on you. And we look to you and your creativity to make it interesting, informing, and fun for the visitors.
The programme can be on Croatian and English. However, if you can, since the convention should have international visitors, make your content on English.
Not to discourage any Croatian content. Every little bit helps. We do know this is all short notice. But we have to ride out this first wave when people are still willing to help. That is also the reason we will be resolving problems as they come up.

HOW?

You can send your prerecorded content, or you can go on live.
Most of the programme will be held on a Discord Server that we will create. However, we are not opposed to the idea that the convention goes across platforms (Zoom, YouTube, Facebook, YouTube).
To go live you will need to have a way to connect to the Discord Server (best by laptop and microphone and web camera). We at least need to hear you. We would most certainly like to see you as well.

*Technical Support for Croatians

If you do not have a way to stream from home, there will be places in Zagreb where we will organize all you need for streaming. All you need to bring is yourself.
There’s a possibility that there will be an option to go to some places in other cities as well.
We will post the addresses and places as we get the confirmations.

HOW DO WE HELP?

The idea is that all we have to do is make a fun-as-possible convention and the people visiting will contribute with donations.
There is also an idea to organize a charity auction within the convention (more on that later).
We will be working with the SOLIDARNA foundation which has a great track record in helping people. We will be introducing in more detail later on.
This should be enough to get us started. The event banner is a placeholder for now. We will post updates as they come up.
Geeks, assemble! Let us show the World the power of a unified Geek community. Let’s bring some smiles to the people suffering. WE CAN DO THIS!