Donald Dennis, GameLab: "Building a Game Community and Game Friendly Environment"

Advice from a conventioner, podcaster and game support, and now a video game designer.

Define your physical and social environments

• lighting
• power
• furniture (flexible, tables that can be pulled together or pushed apart for versatility)
• storage (security and availability are an issue; see-through plastic storage bags like for book/cassette kits, wheeled cart or shelving unit, and tupperware containers are possibly choices
  
• Decor
• posters
  
• displays
  
• game
  
• sculptures
  
• toys
  
• game boards
  
• puzzles
  
• banners
  
• swag direct from companies
• web community
  
• calendar
• rss feed
• forum
• wiki
• game chooser
• personal pages with ratings, collections and game blogs
• Age focus or social group focus or game focus
• Traditiona; (board, card, dice, war & mini)
• Role playing (table top RPG, Live Action (Parlor LARPs, Live Scale RPGs, Live Action RPGs)
• Electronic (arcade, video, digital)
• Gamer Advisories
• Games by theme of mechanics
• books about games
• books and comics where characters play games
• game related websites
• audio/video podcasts
• movies like Cloak & Dagger, ET, War Games
• Session Reports
• Reviews
• Game of the Month
• Game Lists

Tips:
Have a bowl labelled missing pieces to collect stray parts
Cloth covered elastics make the best box bands

There are Game Companies that want to share promotional items! There are also organizations that support games.

Some great companies that support games in education
Looney Games
NorthStar Games
KnuckleBones

Librayr Game Nexus it going to be the go to resource by January!
posted at http://www.gamelab.syr.edu