Registration for Connections US 2024 now open

An update from Timothy Wilkie and the Connections US team.

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On behalf of conference founder and co-chair Matt Caffrey and the rest of the Connections organizing team, I am pleased to announce that registration for Connections 2024 is now open!  This year’s conference will be hosted by the U.S. Army War College at the Army Heritage and Education Center in Carlisle, PA, June 25-27.  This conference is held at the unclassified level and is open to all members of the professional wargaming community, from military to government to academic to commercial hobbyist to contractor to private sector.  We especially welcome our international participants.

The day before the conference begins, the Army War College will be hosting a series of classified wargame briefings on Carlisle Barracks.  The classified event is open to all U.S. citizens with a SECRET clearance.  The form linked below will register you for the unclassified conference June 25-27, and will collect your contact information to receive additional information about the classified session on June 24 if you indicate your interest.

Please follow the link below to the registration form:
https://forms.gle/LvxNjdW8SCSxC4CK9

The above link is to a Google Form, which sometimes are difficult to access from some military networks.  If you have problems viewing or completing the form at work, please try from a personal device at home.

More information is available at the Connections website:
https://connections-wargaming.com/registration-and-logistics/

We have an exceptional program lined up this year and will be posting the conference agenda to the website soon.  We are pleased to announce our two keynote speakers: John Nagl and Tom Mouat.  The rest of the program consists of panels, seminars, game demos and playtests, small-group workshops, and more!

Since 1993, the Connections conference has brought together practitioners with a professional interest in wargaming from all elements of the wargaming field.  Please help us expand our reach even further by passing this registration information along to those you think might be interested.

Connections (US) 2023 registration open

Registration is now open for the Connections (US) 2023 professional wargaming conference.  This year’s conference will be hosted by National Defense University (NDU) at Ft. McNair in Washington, DC, on June 21-23.

• Registration form

(The above link is to a Google Form, which sometimes are difficult to access from some military networks.  If you have problems viewing or completing the form at work, please try from a personal device at home.)

More information (including a link to the draft schedule) can be found at the Connections (US) website.

Connections US 2023 call for papers

Connections US 2023 will be held at the National Defense University (NDU) in Washington, DC on 21-23 June.

In order to provide the widest possible range of panelists and topics to Connections 2023 attendees, the Connections interdisciplinary wargaming conference is seeking proposals for presentations from all interested parties.  Our conference theme for 2023 is “Next Generation Wargaming Tools and Methods” and we would especially welcome any presentations that touch on some aspect of this topic.  However, relevance to the conference theme is in no way a requirement and we will fully consider any presentation relevant to other dimensions of wargaming.

You’ll find full details here. The deadline for submissions is March 3, 2023.

Armchair Dragoons: Connections US 2022 AAR

At Armchair Dragoons, Betsy Joslyn, Sarah Chen, and Andrew Olson provide a report on the recent Connections US 2022 professional wargaming conference.

IDA researchers discuss wargaming innovation

The Institute for Defense Analyses has released a new video in which Dan Chiu, Yuna Wong and Akar Bharadvaj discuss the value of wargaming—and the importance of innovation and diversity in wargame design.

IDA will be hosting the Connections US 2022 professional wargaming conference later this month.

Connections (US) 2022 registration now open

Registration for the Connections (US) 2022 professional wargaming conference is now open.

On behalf of conference founder and co-chair Matt Caffrey and the rest of the Connections organizing team, I am pleased to announce that registration for Connections 2022 is now open!  This year’s conference will be hosted by the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) at their new headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia, July 26-29.

The registration form cane be found here.

(The above link is to a Google Form, which are sometimes difficult to access from some military networks.  If you have problems viewing or completing the form at work, please try from a personal device at home.)

More information, including a link to the draft schedule, is available at the Connections website.

Since 1993, the Connections conference has brought together practitioners with a professional interest in wargaming from all elements of the wargaming field.  Please help us expand our reach even further by passing this registration information along to those you think might be interested.

We hope you can join us at our first in-person conference since 2019, after two years of online events.  Register early to ensure that you will be able to attend in the event that we reach our capacity, and please let us know if your plans change so that we can keep an accurate count.  We expect this will be the largest in-person Connections conference yet, but only your support will get us there. 

Connections US 2022 call for papers (and Connections North update)

Connections US has issued a call for papers for its July 2022 professional wargaming conference:

Connections US 2022 is expected to be conducted in person at The Institute for Defense Analysis (IDA) Alexandria, Virginia, July 26-29. We will reassess our plans should public health considerations warrant.

The Call for Presentations is now open and can be accessed here.

For more information, vist the Connections 2022 website.

The Connections Wargaming Conference is an annual event which is held each summer to bring together practitioners from every segment of the wargaming community. Connections is open to all wargaming practitioners, and we welcome international participation.

Connections US has been held every year since 1993, Connections UK was established in 2013 at Kings College London, Connections Australia was established in 2014 at the University of Melbourne, and Connections Netherlandswas established in 2014 by SAGANET, and Connections North (Canada) was established in 2016. These conferences are all independently managed and hosted, but they share a common mission to provide wargaming practitioners with a venue to share best practices and advance the field. Together, the Connections conferences around the world are building the wargaming community of practice and working to improve the use of wargaming as a tool for research, analysis, education, and policy.

As for Connections North (virtual, February 19-20), the conference registration site will go live in a few days. Look for the announcement here on PAXsims.

IDA to host 2022 Connections US wargaming conference

The Institute for Defense Analysis will host the 2022 Connections US professional wargaming conference on 26-29 July 2022 in Alexandria, VA:

ALEXANDRIA, VA (August 2021) — IDA will host the 2022 Connections Wargaming Conference on July 26–29, 2022. This in-person event will be held at our future headquarters’ location in the City of Alexandria’s high-tech Potomac Yard corridor.

The Connections Wargaming Conference is an annual event that brings together practitioners from every segment of the wargaming community. The conference gives attendees the opportunity to exchange information on achievements, best practices and other elements of the field of wargaming…from military, to commercial, to academic applications.

IDA is moving its headquarters and Systems and Analyses Center to the Potomac Yard later this year. The new facility will enable IDA to hold large meetings, such as this one, with sponsors and industry. There will be a large auditorium that seats 300 people, breakout rooms, a green room for speakers to prepare for events, and other large conference rooms.

Registration and logistics information will be available closer to the conference.

IDA is a nonprofit corporation that operates three Federally Funded Research and Development Centers in the public interest. IDA answers the most challenging U.S. security and science policy questions with objective analysis leveraging extraordinary scientific, technical, and analytic expertise.

Connections US approaches!

This is a reminder that the Connections US professional wargaming conference will take place on 21-25 June 2021.

Connections USA 2021 update

For more more information on the Connections USA professional wargaming conferences, visit the Connections US website. The registration link for this year’s conference can be found here.

Registration now open for Connections US 2021

Registration is now open for the Connections US 2021 professional wargaming conference, which will be held (virtually) on 21-25 June 2021. The theme for this year’s conference is Ethics and Wargaming.

You will find addition information on the conference at the Connections US website.

Connections US: Call for game lab proposals

The organizers of the Connections US professional wargaming conference have issued a call for proposals for their “game lab” sessions. If you wish to proposal a topic for discussion, USE THIS LINK (since the ones in the image below won’t work here).

As noted above, the deadline for proposals is May 30.

Connections US 2021 call for papers

Tim Wilkie (National Defense University) has passed on a call for papers for Connections US 2021:

Happy New Year from the Connections US interdisciplinary wargaming conference!

The call for presentations for Connections US 2021 can be found here.

Connections US 2021 is expected to be conducted in person at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, June 22-25.  There is, of course, a great deal of uncertainty about what the public health situation will be in June.  We will be reassessing our plans as more information becomes available.  Updates to the planning for this year’s conference will be found at: connections-wargaming.com

Since 1993, Connections has brought together practitioners from every segment of the wargaming community to share best practices and advance professional dialogue in the field.  Connections is open to all wargaming practitioners and we welcome international participation.

Please feel free to further distribute this call for presentations.

Don’t forget either that registration is now open for Connections North, which will be held virtually on 19-21 February 2021.

Pellegrino: Distributed gaming taxonomy

Fortunately for all of us, Pete Pellegrino recorded his excellent presentation on distributed wargaming to the recent Connections Global 2020 conference—so here it is.

The slides for the presentation can be found here:Download

Pete Pellegrino is a retired USN commander and former Naval Flight Officer, currently employed by Valiant Integrated Services supporting the US Naval War College’s War Gaming Department as lead for game design and adjudication and lecturing on game related topics for the department’s war gaming courses.  In addition to his work at the college since 2004, Pete has also conducted business games for Fortune 500 companies and consulted for major toy and game companies. The views expressed are those of the author and do not represent the official policy or position of any agency, organization, employer or company.

Successful professional wargames: The Movie

Graham Longley-Brown had the foresight to record his recent presentation at the Connections Global conference, in which he highlighted some of the key points from his book Successful Professional Wargames: A Practitioners Guide (2019). Here it is, via YouTube, for those who might have missed it.