1.   Tell us a little about yourself…

I was born in San Francisco, a fourth generation Californian and I currently live in San Carlos with my wife Mary and our cat Dorian (he's gray). I grew up in Mt. View and Menlo Park and come from a large Irish Catholic family. From as far back as I can recall, I played games with both my dad and my mom. With dad I played chess, Stratego, Breakthru and Twixt, while Scrabble, Boggle, Acquire and other family boardgames were more to my mom's liking. I also played many a game of Risk and the like with my brothers and friends.

While Board games rule the roof among games in the house, they do not do so alone. I am quite the pinball fan and own 4 great pinball games, along with a few video arcade games. Games may be my primary hobby, but my true passion is wine. My walk-in cellar is nearly at its 2,000 bottle capacity.

To support my habits, I work as a project manager at Hewlett-Packard in Cupertino.

2.   What do you do at KublaCon?

I started out as the Director of Board games and with some behind the scenes effort, was also named as an associate producer a couple of years ago. Last year, I took on the role as Director of Events, freeing up Anthony to spend more time in his Producer role.

3.   How did you get involved with KublaCon and how long have you been here?

I joined Japji and Anthony as the director of Boardgames at ManaFest in 1999 and 2000. In December of 2000, there was a meeting between GameCon and ManaFest; KublaCon was born in 2001, a scant 5 months after the meeting.

4.    What motivates you and what rewards do you get out of being involved with KublaCon?

The convention itself motivates me. There's something about a game convention that defies description, since it is different for everyone. That's the reward, that I'm a part of something that tries to meet all of those different expectations. The best reward is seeing happy people, especially the young players engrossed in a game or winners getting their KublaCon Winners Pin....

5.   What is your earliest gaming or game convention memory?

I grew up playing games with my family. My earliest recollection is playing checkers, then chess. The first game convention I went to was one of the early Pacificon conventions. Don't ask what year, but I think it was 1980 or maybe earlier.

6.    What is your favorite gaming or game convention memory?

I play Magic at lunch quite often. Mike has this graveyard deck and played Living Death, which puts all creatures in play aside, brings all creatures in the graveyard into play and then the ones set aside go into the graveyard... A certain win against a red deck? NO! Craig played Fork causing a second copy of the spell... The end result was that no creatures were in play... Stunning move... 

7.   What is your least favorite gaming or game convention memory?

In an AD&D game, one young player in the group was aligned evil in an all good group. During the night, a pair of them killed the character. I felt really sad for the young player... I always felt the GM should have misled them to keep that from happening.

8.   Give us a top 3 list of your favorite games and tell us your least favorite game.

Only Three???? Good lord man, have you no decency?

         (Editor’s note: Kevin owns hundreds if not thousands of games.)

Okay, here goes.... in no particular order:

Acquire: It's a classic game and the amount of strategy and luck are about equal in a four player game... However, as a three player game, the strategy becomes more important and the game just flat out excels.

Magic the Gathering: I know this will surprise a lot of folks, but the game is still evolving, it's easy to play, even a bad deck will win once in a while... And sometimes, you see the darndest responses... (see favorite game experience)

Euphrat and Tigris: Mostly because it took me so long to understand the strategies behind winning this game. I may not win often, but I am no longer left in the dust...

9.   Where do you currently play games and what do you play when you are there?

Once upon a time I used at play with the Silicon Valley Boardgamers, but alas, I have not had a free Wednesday evening in quite a while. I have been getting a lot of play time at Doug and Shelly's on a monthly basis. Boardgames, only boardgames...

10. If you want to tell all of the KublaCon attendees one thing, what would it be?

Have fun, but above all else, remember that it's only a game and that others are trying to enjoy the game with you....