Holy Moly. Where to even begin. We have been trying to get into the GAMA Expo for years! “What the heck is the GAMA Expo,” you ask? Well GAMA, or the Game Manufacturers Association, has been hosting the GAMA Expo for the past several decades, showcasing the latest and greatest developments in the non-electronic gaming world. If you operate a business in the tabletop gaming industry (such as we do), this is the premiere event to meet with your peers, collaborate on projects, and show off your latest innovations. For TCG Machines, the GAMA Expo is our mecca. And, might I say, it did not disappoint!

In our envoy, we sent Dan (our CPO), John (our Operations Manager), and myself (Head of Janitorial Services). The trip started by placing the three of us off balance with a 12:30 AM flight from Calgary International Airport to Atlanta, Georgia. From there, we were meant to catch a connection flight to Louisville, Kentucky – our final destination. Well, our 12:30 AM flight was a full hour late to depart, and we had only scheduled an hour to make our connection flight. I’m not sure how good you are at math, but we missed our second plane. That’s when you get that sinking feeling, and your mind starts reeling with the implications of missing your flight. Will there be significant fees to rebook? Will there be another flight with room for us today, or are we spending the next 24-hours at the airport? What is going to happen with our checked bags? Ah crap, are we going to miss the first day of the Expo?! When did “rizz” become a thing!? And so, with hat in hand, we approached the Delta Airline desk to plead our case and explain our misfortune. Amazingly, and huge kudos to Delta Airlines, they placed us on the next flight (just two hours later), there with no fees, and they assured us that our checked bags “will follow you.” Never before in all my years have I ever been pleasantly surprised by an airline. Blown away. As an added bonus, the two-hour wait gave the three of us a chance to get breakfast.

Sunday, March 3rd, we arrived at Louisville International Airport and ran into our friends from Game Haven, who were also on their way to GAMA. Running into the Game Haven crew would be a theme for the week :p. By the time we got to our hotel in downtown Louisville in the early afternoon, it was a beautiful 19°C [66°F] sunny day. I took full advantage of being away from my kids and went for a nice 8 km [5 mile] run along the Ohio River (first run of 2024 for me, sadly. Hopefully not my last!). For dinner, our troop headed to the Troll Pub Under the Bridge where we each enjoyed a Hot Brown, Louisville’s signature dish, which is apparently infamous enough to warrant having its own Wikipedia page.

That evening, we headed on over to the Galt House Hotel to attend the Retailer Networking Reception – our first GAMA Expo event! There, we got to meet with dozens of game store owners from all over North America, including many of our existing customers. We also got to meet several of TCGplayer’s Roca Robotics team (the Roca Sorter being the main competitor to our PhyzBatch-9000), and they turned out to be a really nice group of people.

The next morning, Monday, March 4th, I woke up to text messages from my wife informing me that our son had been throwing up all night – a bad omen. After a light breakfast at the hotel, we headed over to the KICC (Kentucky International Convention Center) Ballroom for the keynote address by Peter Shankman: “Future Economy Will Be Run by Customer Experience”. It was a good speech, and Peter really underscored the importance of being honest and transparent with your customers. A key takeaway: it is OK to make mistakes, but make sure you own them and work to correct them. I think we’re doing a pretty decent job of this, but it’s always good to keep it in mind as a guiding principle.

After the keynote, we headed over to the Power Retail Awards. Last year’s big winner of the Retailer of the Year award was our long time customer and friends at Red Claw Gaming, based out of Edmonton, Alberta. This year, we were surprised and delighted when Red Raccoon Games, based in Bloomington, Illinois, (another long-time customer of ours) took home the top prize. Perhaps there is a trend here? It also may help to have “red” in the name of your game store.

Next, we went to the Exhibit Hall to start setting up our booth. Around this time is when I started to feel not-so-great. Whatever stomach affliction had befallen my son had followed me to Kentucky, so I spent the remainder of the day in our hotel room. Lesson to be learned? Do not eat your kids’ leftover food. I hate wasting food, but it’s just not worth it. Little disease factories, those kids. The upshot was that I was slightly less than my usual high-energy self for the remainder of the trip, and my stomach has honestly still not completely recovered 😦

That evening, John and Dan scrambled to cobble together a stable internet solution for our PhyzBatch while I lay in a corner being useless (such fun!). Wi-Fi networks at large conventions are particularly complex and unreliable, and each one tends to offer its own unique challenges. To make things even more difficult, we had just finished rolling out The Great Refactoring of our code base prior to leaving for GAMA, meaning that the PhyzBatch-9000 we shipped as our demo unit did not yet have the new code. This meant we had to transfer a substantial amount of data over our piecemeal network connection. John was up very late.

Tuesday, March 5th, and the GAMA Expo kicked off in earnest, with the opening day of the Exhibition Hall! This is what we had been waiting for, to be shoulder-to-shoulder with hundreds of other tabletop game businesses, with thousands more industry professionals walking the floor each day. What a whirlwind it was. In terms of robotics and automation exhibitors, we were in good company, with both TCGplayer’s Roca Max and CardCastle’s CardBot being showcased. The only machine missing from the picture was the Magic Sorter, but three out of four trading card sorting machines is pretty good! Embarrassingly, despite there being hundreds of interesting exhibits, including all the big TCG producers (Asmodee, BANDAI, BUSHIROAD, KONAMI, Ravensburger, Wizards of the Coast, and others), I really only made my way over to our competitors’ booths. The rest of the time, I was glued to our own spot!

We were a popular booth. All three days of the exhibition (Tuesday March 5th through Thursday March 7th), we were in nearly unbroken conversation with people who were interested in the PhyzBatch-9000. We even had people come from as far afield as the California coast specifically to see us – that’s over 2,000 miles! That makes you feel pretty special. Among the discussions we had were several really heartwarming dialogues with current, and even some former, customers who had really wonderful things to say about us and our product, and they were genuinely excited to see the improvements we have made over the past several months. All in all, it was a fantastic experience.

When we are back in the office, generally the only customer interactions we have are when there is a problem, so it puts everything into a bit of a negative light. When that is the only interaction you have with the outside world, day-in, day-out, month after month, you can start to feel like everything is terrible and nothing is working. Being at GAMA was a complete refute of that perception, and an incredibly validating experience for Dan, John and I. Hearing directly from people that something we made has significantly reduced the hardships associated with running their business, and that their quality of life has been improved as a result, that was really, really great.

Apart from exhibiting, we also attended a number of the seminars and after-hours events, such as the (very well attended) GAMA-hosted Game Nights. We also went to a couple of the vendor-hosted events, such as Southern Hobby’s Game Night, where I got to play the new Star Wars Unlimited card game.

At the end of the show we participated in what must have been a world record-breaking teardown of the exhibition space. The only other point of comparison I have is the Calgary Expo, in which we were one of the first booths to be packed up and out of the building. At GAMA, everyone was fully packed up in minutes! Including the event space itself – carpets, back stands, tables – it was nuts! A clear hallmark of seasoned industry professionals. It was one heck of a ride, and I look forward to being back again next year to do it all again 😃