:strip_icc()/pic8542745.jpg?w=1200&resize=1200,630&ssl=1 "In Memoriam: Amber Cook dinner and Ben Baldanza | BoardGameGeek Information")
Amber Cook dinner, who handed away on October 25, 2024, largely match into the latter class. I met her within the early 2010s when she was director of gross sales and advertising at Looney Labs, and she or he later had the same function with Asmodee Digital and Roll20, whereas additionally working as an impartial advertising and gross sales advisor. (I’ve seen a lot reward for branding tasks that she led.) She was a co-founder of The American Tabletop Awards and began The 100 Video games Mission within the mid-2010s.
I noticed Amber at varied conventions over time, and she or he was all the time competent and cheery in our interactions. She additionally supplied glorious, discreet recommendation in a piece scenario, one thing I’ve heard many within the recreation trade be aware after her passing.
Amber had a six-year-old son, James, and her companion Paul Alexander Butler — who runs the Video games and Stuff retail retailer in Maryland, a retailer that was one among her re-branding tasks — together with Amber’s longtime mates Jayme Boucher and Nicole Hoye have began a GoFundMe challenge to make sure help for James within the years forward.
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Ben Baldanza, who handed away on November 5, 2024, was recognized to the general public because the CEO, then chief government of Spirit Airways from 2005 to 2016. As The New York Occasions notes in its obituary for Ben:
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Somewhat than trim on the edges, he took a radical strategy: what he known as the “naked fare”.
Passengers would pay a primary worth for the flight after which shell out for just about every little thing else, from printed boarding passes ($10) to water bottles ($3) and carry-on baggage ($35 if the tag was printed at house, $50 on the airport)…
Fliers flocked to Spirit, even because it often ranked worst amongst airways in buyer satisfaction.
Mr. Baldanza refused to again down. As an alternative, he ran a “Hug the Haters” marketing campaign, providing 8,000 frequent-flier miles to individuals who submitted their rants in opposition to the airline to its web site.
“Nobody goes to Chick-fil-A and complains they can not get a burger. And folks should not come to Spirit if they need a lot of legroom”, he informed The Wall Avenue Journal in 2015. “Decide us for who we’re.”
Whereas I knew about his job, for me Ben was only a fellow gamer. (The NYT obituary mentions that he had about 1,700 video games.) I noticed him at conventions, he paid for membership at BoardgameNews.com within the first decade of the 2000s after I ran that website, and I purchased video games from him on eBay.
Ben’s son Enzo was a few years older than my son, and after my first buy from Ben, he’d attain out to me about every year with topic strains like “Extra Youngsters Video games?” He requested me to pay for transport, together with a token price, so long as I promised to do the identical with the video games sooner or later. (Lots of these youngsters’s video games later migrated to BGG promoting supervisor Chad Krizan for his youngsters.)
Baldanza was a member of the Worldwide Players Awards jury, and he wrote often for Counter journal and different game-related publications.
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Baldanza in 2014 (Picture: Alan Diaz/Related Press)
