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Ivan Tulovskiy
Russian Federation
Moscow
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I recived text about AKNIR – Association of Boardgame Clubs (Russia) from my colleagues:
In recent years boardgame movement in Russia and former Soviet states is booming.
The number of boardgame fans is growing explosively, new specialized stores in different cities are being opened, clubs and societies of people who enjoy this type of activity are created.
Three publishers presented boardgames designed by Russian authors at Essen 2011.
In December 2011 Second specialized expo of boardgames took place in Krasnoyarsk.
A distinctive society is forming around the boardgame hobby, special boardgaming blogs and other online resources are springing up.
In 2011 a group of enthusiasts founded the first Assosiation of Boardgame Clubs in Russia – AKNIR - ABC .
The idea of AKNIR http://aknir.org/about/en first surfaced in November 2001 in one of Moscow-based boardgame clubs.
Primary areas of activity of the future organization were specified at that time and an appeal to other boardgame clubs all over Russia was written.
The idea was well accepted by the society, and as soon as 10 clubs have pledged their support, a web-site of AKNIR was launched.
The web-site is regularly updated, it gradually evolves over time.
Literally in a month and a half ranks of AKNIR have swelled with more than 40 clubs from more than 30 Russian and Ukrainian cities.
A unified coordination center has been set up to help the clubs organize major tournaments and local events, consolidate their experience, grow their game collections.
The geography of AKNIR's clubs can be viewed on the interactive map: http://aknir.org/map.
Several analytical reviews were published on the web-site, and this work is continuing.
We try to follow current news from clubs all over the country.
All-Russian 7 Wonders tournament
On February 1, 2012 took off the first All-Russian 7 Wonders tournament organized by ABC (Russia). It is supported by 15 clubs with total of 169 people participating.
The tournament is being supported be the publisher of the game, Repos Production, who will provide prizes for the winner and runners-up.
We plan to continue tournament activities and hope to attract more support from game publishers and distributors (negotiations are currently underway).
The most popular online boardgaming portal Tesera (http://tesera.ru) has become our General information partner.
We opened negotiations with global and foreign organizations and firms. In general our ideas are well accepted, people are willing and ready to cooperate. However at the present time our negotiations are at the "intentions declaration" stage.
Master-class form the market experts
To continue successfully and productively develop the boardgame market it is important to share the accumulated experience between acknowledged professionals and new entrants.
That's why AKNIR has decided to organize master class "BOARDGAME STORE/CLUB".
It will take place on March 16 in Moscow.
At the master class managers of major Russian publishers and distributors will share their experience with all participants of the event. The primary question to be discussed – how to effectively create and support a boardgame store with an attached club so that it is both interesting for visitors and profitable for the proprietors because only this allows for successful operation of the store/club setting.
Sister clubs
In 20th century a tradition of town sistering was established. Sister towns are geographically distinct towns or cities that concluded a cooperative agreement in order to promote cultural ties.
Upon remembering this tradition we had an idea – why should not there also be sister boardgaming clubs?
Russian clubs readily embraced this idea.
We sincerely hope that eventually this idea will grow up to the international scale.
Forthcoming projects
We are working on two major projects:
- creation of a museum of boardgames,
- design of a player rating and ranking system in our clubs
We have many other ideas that are not quite established yet.
We are very open and in need your support and initiatives!
We will be glad to hear any responses and wishes from people to whom boardgames are a part of their lives.
E-mail: osi@aknir.org
AKNIR team
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