Planning a PIE - Player Ingress Event

Last March I attended my first anomaly in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.  After the event I felt an overwhelming need to host my own event.  On May 4th, 2012 the Seattle Ingress community hosted the #seattleconvergence.  After event a lot of people asked about hosting their own anomaly.  There's lots that goes into planning an anomaly but ultimately it comes down to a few key things Location, Date/Time, Rules & Swag.  

Really an event can be anything you choose it too be as long as you're having fun.  But here are some suggestions for getting started. 

Rules
So you want to do an event, what's the first step? Start talking to members of the opposite faction about what type of event you want to have.  When you work together you find out all kinds of ideas that other people have and they help you make an event 10 times better then you ever could on your own.

If you're stuck on the rules here's a starting point that many campus agents are using:

Have all agents check in where you record their codename, faction and current AP.  All Agents are given 90 minutes to gain as much AP as possible any way possible. AP gained by L1, L2, and L3 Agents are given a 2X multiplier in their final AP gain calculation. 

That's just a starting point you can add or change anything you want to the rules as long as both sides agree on what the win condition is.  But with these rules you only need a few people to have a really cool event. The biggest thing going into an event is remember that the goal is for everyone to have as much fun as possible.

Location
It's best to have an event where people don't need to drive.

Cooperation
If your factions aren't getting along then start with a small event with the people that do get along and start posting pictures of how much fun you had and eventually people will come around and want to join in the fun. 

Swag
Working with both factions you'll also find out that there are very creative people on both sides who have great ideas for swag that don't cost a bunch of money.  It cost $15 on Amazon to order 12 blue & 12 green bandannas and that gave everyone a way to show off their faction pride.  Ask your community for help, people want to show off their skills and they'll probably be willing to help. 

There's always an acronym
PIE - Player Initiated Event

Remember
The goal is to have fun!

If you need help
Please feel free to ask me +Kira Kroger 
(Send me a post on G+ and I'll approve a hangout request)

Another good resource is +Linda Besh who is helping with College anomalies.

Top Picture by +Steve Groves 
I'm not sure who took the bottom picture