April 2006 Community Roundtable
From Zelda Wiki.org
The April 2006 Community Roundtable refers to a special roundtable organized by TSA, then of The Hylia, for webmasters of various Zelda and gaming websites to convene and talk about the future of the Zelda series.
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Organization and Structure
The gathering was organized by TSA as a way to bring the major Zelda fansites of the time together and chat about the future of the Zelda series, as well as the fan community. While specific sites were invited ahead of time, TSA left it open for other webmasters to apply, which resulted in the inclusion of a couple non-Zelda-specific sites as well.
It was to take place on The Hylia's preferred IRC network, Initialized.org. Two rooms were setup ahead of time: #zeldaroundtable and #zrtwebmasters. The webmasters would convene in #zrtwebmasters, with the "audience" in #zeldaroundtable. A special script was setup so discussion in #zrtwebmasters would "broadcast" to the public room, replacing the webmaster's simplistic IRC nicks with their full handles and site address, where the audience was able to not only listen but comment as well.
Participants
- Mike "TSA" Damiani of The Hylia
- Dennis "Captain Cornflake" Wyman of VG Resource Center
- Scott Smallback of Zelda Universe
- Max "lord-of-shadow" Nichols of Zelda Legends
- F3 of HTLOZ II
- Archaic Sage of Rauru's Return
- Goddess Rinoa of Zelda Infinite
- Lysia of Legends and Adventure
- Dabombster of Exploding Deku Nut
- Jack of The Desert Colossus
- 4JC of PSLOZ
- Alex "Link of Hyrule" Jones of LegendOfZelda.com
- MNGoldenEagle of Zelda's Secret Ocarina
- Nathan of Zelda Domain
- The Real Link of Nintendo-Universe
Results
The complete roundtable took place on April 22, 2006, and took a whopping 4 hours from start to finish, with the public chat log comprising over 7500+ lines and 61 thousand words spoken between the roundtable participants, mods and spectators.
A complete raw chat log can be found at [1]
A concise version, edited to only contain webmaster discussion, existed for a time. It is currently being re-compiled from the surviving raw chat log.
Long-Term Effects
Most of the participating sites are still around today. While the roundtable did bring a good deal of people together, no subsequent "roundtables" ever happened.
The roundtable did indirectly contribute to the foundation of ZeldaInformer a year and a half later. When VGRC owner Dennis had went to the Hylia's forums and hung around in the days leading up to the roundtable, he was reintroduced to Dan, a.k.a. Mess, a then former-ZU member who had become a mod for The Hylia. After a brief exchange of words, Mess jumped ship to VGRC, where he would later become a webmaster, and subsequently one of the driving founders of ZI.
