1997 Dargon Writers' Summit

In mid-May, seven DargonZine writers descended on unsuspecting Alexandria, Virginia for the annual Dargon Project Writers' Summit. Hosted by Jon Evans, the '97 Summit was the first time we'd gotten so many of our writers together. This page shows thumbnail versions of some of the pictures we took at the Summit. Clicking on an image on this page will bring up the full-size picture with a more detailed caption.

During our time together we visited the Mall and Roosevelt Island in Washington DC, played mini-golf, bowled, played laser tag, went go-karting, were entertained by belly-dancers, and ate and drank in all kinds of interesting places.

Although it's not depicted well in the photos, we also worked pretty hard. We had discussions about DargonZine's purpose, our culture, and how to bring both new readers and new writers up to speed. We also talked about what makes a "good" story, how to generate story ideas, and how to do a good job with character portrayal. In addition to these discussions, we had a handful of teambuilding events which helped us get to know each other better, and came to closure on a bunch of tough issues we had felt required face-to-face debate.

And we discovered that although our mission is focused on writing, we also highly value the social aspect of the project, and just plain having fun. By balancing our time between topical discussions, informal chatting, and entertaining activities, I think we managed to derive a lot of value from our few hours together in Washington.