Public Gaming Magazine July/August 2020

8 PUBLIC GAMING INTERNATIONAL • JULY/AUGUST 2020 From the Publisher I nsofar as these continue to be interesting times, we want to channel our energies towards building a sustainable future. We all know about the bright-spots of increasing instant ticket sales and online iLottery. at is why this issue includes fabulous articles that speak at length to opportunities to build on those. is is also a time to take a deep breath and appreciate the epochal moment we live in, and the serious impacts that our current actions will have on future generations. at’s true in the big-picture, and it’s true for all the component parts of that picture – like the lottery industry. e pre-COVID19 world may have allowed us time to wait and see how trends would unfold and then try to be the “fast- follower” who watched as others blazed the trail and incurred the cost of a learning curve. ere was typically a chasm of time that separated the “early adopters” from mass-market embrace of new technologies like decentralized computing, the internet, the Mobile as primary personal digital device, etc. at allowed some time to catch up. One of the e ects of the current crisis is to reduce that lag-time between early-adopters and mass-market acceptance. We no longer have the luxury of time to wait and watch and following fast to catch up. We need to spend the time now to understand the big-picture implications of current crises, discern how those will impact and shape our own world, and chart a course forward and act decisively to shape a future that e ectively supports the goals of our stakeholders and Good Causes. PGRI Lottery Expo Nashville presents … drum roll … Post COVID-19 Lottery: e Movie. What does that mean? First, we do not know what the world will look like in October. We hope that the number of new virus cases and other metrics will have subsided to the point where everyone feels OK about getting on a plane to go to an in-person meeting. We expect that strict social distancing standards will still be observed, but we hope that won’t discourage too many colleagues from attending. ere’s that. Next, we want to take this opportunity to take a giant leap, pushing as hard as we can to forge a future that will be even better than the past. at begins with live-streaming the event, and archiving the production in real-time to make it available for instant reviewing. Of course, that is already being done by others as we speak. Insofar as there are varying degrees of quality of production and user- interface, we have the opportunity to learn from the best and improve on that. It is the content side of the current webinar scene that holds the most head-room for improvement, and we will apply ourselves to raising the quality of content. One obvious low-hanging-fruit observation: Digital A/V media are completely di erent than the medium of a live stage performance. What may be an engaging session in-person with live-on-stage action seems to drag when transposed to the “hot medium” of TV or its proxy, the desk-top computer. Just like iLottery involves more than simply making o -line games available to the community of online players, we need to realize that the user-experience (UX) at a live physical conference is much di erent, and comes with much di erent expectations, when delivered on digital platforms. But again, the early pioneers of webinars have made some excellent progress and we commend them for stretching to build out the new platform of digital conferences, and thank them for the shoulders to stand on as we endeavor to improve! So … Why do we call it a “movie”? Our aspiration is to use this moment to pivot, to modernize the way we spend the time and money to collaborate and share ideas, to reinvent the whole concept of “conference” in either physical meeting or webinar form. We will do that on the media/infrastructure side, and we will do it on the content side. Our concept is that the content needs to be more purpose-driven to deliver a more cohesive, integrated narrative and ultimately a more engaging and rewarding UX, i.e. more like a “movie”. We need your help to do this, to create Post COVID19 Lottery: the Movie and look forward to our industry-wide collaboration! I want to thank Shannon Dehaven, Stephanie Weyant, and all editorial contributors to this issue. I also want to thank Sarah Taylor and Team MUSL for the creation of a new feature to update us all on the initiatives and leadership of the Multi-State Lottery Association. I want to thank Jim Acton for the extensive work he did to facilitate, write, and edit so many of the articles in this issue. It has been a pleasure to work with Jim and I appreciate his collaboration and friendship. And lastly, I want to thank our new designer, Dan Eggers, for creating the new look and feel for the magazine (the last four issues) – I hope you like it! It’s on! PGRI Lottery Expo will be held October 13-15 in the Sheraton Downtown Hotel in the fabulous Music City of Nashville, Tennessee. Check out conference website PublicGaming. org or news website PublicGaming.com for conference updates. We thank you for your support and re-commit to an industry that serves the interests of society, of good causes, of players and retail partners, and of countless Lottery-sector stakeholders. We are thinking about you with a new sense of appreciation for the great privilege of actually being together again in person – and sooner than later! Paul Jason, Publisher Public Gaming International Magazine