Ready to Play? The NASAGA 2026 Call for Speakers Is Opening Soon
Editor’s Note: We’re publishing this piece outside of our usual Monday rhythm because we want to give the NASAGA community a chance to think about their submissions before the Call for Speakers goes out. We’ll update the title of this piece and include a link once that call is published.
If you’ve ever left a NASAGA conference thinking, “I wish I could share this activity,” or “I’ve been tinkering with a game idea…” — this is your moment. The NASAGA 2026 Call for Speakers will be opening soon, and we’re inviting the community to help build the playful experiences that make our conferences so memorable.
The 2026 NASAGA Conference will take place October 14–17, 2026, in Rochester, New York, and this year’s theme is “Sustaining Human Connection through Play in the Digital Age.”
Let’s be honest: we spend a lot of time with our devices. Phones buzz. Notifications ping. Meetings happen on screens. Much of our interaction with technology is individual and asynchronous, which means fewer opportunities for those rich, human moments of collaboration, laughter, and shared discovery.
That’s where play comes in.
Play has never been just entertainment. Games have been a part of human culture for thousands of years. They help us wrestle with big ideas, experiment safely, build new skills, and—perhaps most importantly—connect with one another. Whether we’re rolling dice, negotiating alliances, solving puzzles, or stepping into a role-play scenario, games create spaces where people can think together, learn together, and have a little fun along the way.
NASAGA conferences are built by the community. The sessions you experience—those unforgettable games, clever facilitation tricks, surprising insights, and creative prototypes—come from people just like you who decided to share something they were curious about.
If you’re thinking about submitting a proposal, the process is fairly simple.
The Call for Speakers form will ask you to briefly explain how your session connects to the conference theme and to share a few learning objectives, typically written as “Participants will be able to…” statements. These help reviewers understand what participants will gain from the experience.
Because NASAGA sessions are meant to be interactive, the proposal will also ask you to describe what participants will actually do during your session. For example, a 90-minute session might start with a short introduction, followed by a quick explanation of a game or activity, time for participants to play or experiment, and a debrief where everyone reflects on what they discovered.
Speakers can propose sessions of several different lengths, including 45-minute, 90-minute, and a limited number of 2-hour sessions. Some presenters bring polished, fully developed games. Others bring prototypes they’d like to playtest with a room full of enthusiastic game-loving humans. Both are welcome—and often the playtesting sessions produce some of the most interesting conversations of the conference.
A question we often hear is: “Do I need to be an experienced presenter to submit a proposal?”
Not at all.
NASAGA has always been a wonderfully welcoming space for first-time presenters, students, facilitators, designers, and curious experimenters. Many beloved NASAGA sessions started as rough ideas scribbled in notebooks or half-built prototypes in someone’s backpack. The community is generous with feedback, and the conference is a great place to try something new.
The deadline to submit proposals for NASAGA 2026 is Tuesday, June 2, 2026, and proposals will be reviewed on a semi-rolling basis until session slots are filled, so submitting early is encouraged.
So if you have a game you’ve been designing, an activity that always works in your classroom or with clients, a facilitation trick that unlocks great conversations, or even a playful experiment you’d love to test with a room full of fellow game enthusiasts—consider sharing it.
After all, NASAGA is at its best when we’re learning together, laughing together, and discovering new possibilities through play.
We can’t wait to see what you bring to the table.
Image Credit: OpenAI GPT Image 1 via BoodleBox