Not to be a negative nancy (lolz) but there isn’t really much that can be talked about on Friday…until we have a venue, it’s just talk, and we can’t call around and get prices at night time…
I guess maybe we could solidify the games to be held?
Airthrow.
Your right. I hate you at the same time.
No homo.
There is tons that can be done on Friday. There is no reason that we have to wait until venue is chosen. We could have the whole thing perfectly planned and choose a venue within the last few months if we wanted. Everyone who has been looking at Venue’s and checking out prices can come with the information that they have and we could all compare it for best prices, location and types of facilities. If we still don’t have one that we like, we can decide to all go look at more places, or put someone specifically in charge of it if they are willing. We can discuss the possibility of opening up a UW club to get the funds, or other ways to raise money. Does anyone have a ballpark estimate of how much this will cost or a list of exactly the kinds of equipment that is needed? If we are going to use projectors (which we can check out for free in mass numbers from UW) instead of TV’s, do we have to worry about lag issues? It may not take very long at all to decide all this, but it is still important stuff. Even if we don’t have answers to any of these questions, we can start delegating jobs to people to find them out.
I have made a list of everything that can and should be talked about next Friday at the meeting. This list is not prioritized or neccesarily in the same order that we will discuss it at the meeting, but it covers most of the things that I think need to be discussed to really start getting planning underway. The majors are going to be held somewhere. That is a fact. Not knowing exactly where it will be held shouldn’t stop us from deciding all of the other important things about the event.
There will be discussion about the games that should be played, but that has been debated to death in this thread and no one has come up with a clear answer. It is incredibly important to the tournament which games are played, (games are the heart and the whole reason for the tournament) but unless we can quickly and cleanly decide which games we want, we would just be wasting time discussing or arguing when we should be moving onto bigger things.
Here is the list of things that I feel should be discussed at the meeting. Feel free to post up and add things to it. ** Again, this is not prioritized or in time order for what we will talk about at the meeting or how we will plan the tourney. It is just a list of topics I think should be discussed with a few of my ideas about them thrown in below them in bullet points.**
To anyone who shows up to the meeting, I will have printed copies of this list which will be prioritized by the most important things that need to get done and decided upon, and I will include any suggestions that anyone has for things we should talk about (except for game choices). Post up and I will put it in before Friday.
Not all of this will get decided upon or finished on Friday. Probably very little of it will. But it is still important that we list it out, and talk about it even for a second.
To do list for Northwest Majors
- Decide on a date
- Come up with a name
- Get a logo designed
- Set-up Website with Possible Pre-Registration
- Advertise
- Raise Funds
- Rent a Location
- Figure out what equipment is needed and figure out where we can get it
- Discussion to decide on games. (Consider Possibility of HD-Remix coming out by the time this happens)
- Come up with Prizes or just split the entry fee.
- Decide on Rules (Even if it is obvious we will follow Evo rules, still put it to a vote.)
Possible Advertising
- Ask to be mentioned in Penny Arcade Blog
- Advertise on Shoryuken
- Advertise at local Arcades
- Set up smaller prior tournaments around Seattle and other areas which will give us practice with setting up for a large tournament, build up hype and awareness of the bigger and final Northwest majors, and if done right, actually bring in funds to help pay for the big event.
Fundraising
- Asking for donations in public areas.
- Getting a sponsor who can help pay for it in exchange for selling goods at the event or getting recognition as the sponsor. This is just a possibility. (Game stores, energy drink, etc)
- Offer to donate a part of the total money earned to charity so that it becomes a community charity event which may help us with just pure money donations from larger businesses that could use it as a tax write off. (Unlikely but still worth considering)
- Ask for non-monetary donations from smaller business that could be sold or raffled off to help raise money.
- Form a club at UW and use the entire club budget to pay for as much of the event as possible. This would have to be researched to find out the way to get the most money possible, how we are allowed to use it, and what the requirement for starting and operating the club will be.
Equipment that we know is needed-
Much of this will depend on the games chosen, but that topic can wait. I have included only the games that we know will defininetly be played.
- TAS Disks- (Covers the need for Marvel, ST disks.)
- Dreamcasts
- 3S disks or ROMs
- PS2s
- TV?s
- Projectors
- Screens
- Cameras for recording matches/Tripods for Camera’s
- Extension Cords
- Sound System- Possibly Bullhorns, Room System, or Kareoke Machine. (possible need to project sound for Final matches to the audience)
- Converters for Sticks
- Sticks - Some people will not have their own
- Tables ?Possibly supplied by the venue depending on what place is chosen
- Chairs- Same as above
- Water- Things get hot and people get thirsty. Easy to overlook, but it is cheap and can really make a difference.
- Security- Not sure if this is neccesary, but listing it anyway, just so it can be discussed.
Things to consider/ask about when deciding on the venue
- Cost- Possibility of negotiation depending on what place we choose. Places like the Holiday Inn will have fixed prices, but privately owned places which may be just as good could be willing to negotiate.
- Location- Easy to Find, Parking, Surrounded by food places, Surrounded by places to stay if it ends up going on for two days. This would be good info to supply to attendees anyway in case they end up staying. People who come from Cali or Canada would be driving for long hours and would almost definitely want to stay instead of pulling two 24 hour driving trips back to back.
- Noise Requirements
- Space Needs
- Sound System- Not neccesary but still good to ask about.
Things to decide upon-
- Expected turn out and the turnout we would like to shoot for- Deciding what we want is just as important as what we expect. Pre-registration through a website could help with this if we give it enough time. There are issues with Pre-registration through websites, but they can be discussed later and are unimportant right now.
- Time Length- Time we have for each day to finish games or when to start and end if we do it all in one day. (This will also affect the cost of renting the venue.)
- The Event Date- Things to consider when deciding upon this. Dates that the most people will be able to attend (hard to forsee, but the general idea is don?t plan it for Easter or Christmas :P). Time we will need before the event to plan and get everything ready.
- Structure of the Tourney- This can probably wait until we have decided upon games, but is important to consider since it will affect time and equipment needs in a big way.
- Entry Fee- This can change as we go along, but setting a reasonable price to start with will give us something to work around and adjust later.
- Prize Payout- Can be decided later, but still needs to be mentioned.
- Volunteers- Decide how many we will probably need and who we can ask.
That is the list so far, so please, please add something to it before Friday if you feel it is important or just want to discuss it anyway.
That said, I’ll end with a qoute from Kuenai:
Of course it’s not Evo 2.0. Still, we wanna try and start big. Even if there isn’t an optimal turnout, a well-organized and impressive tourney will make those who went tell everyone how great it was, which piques interest and gives incentive to keep a scene going.** Optimism helps, people. I don’t want to hear any more cynicism; it’s detrimental to the goal we have set out- a NW Major.**
Good shit. This is a good start, IMO.
To tell you the truth im working on the whole venue thing. If anything pops up before Friday I’ll let yall know.
:nunchuck:
Edit: How many people do you guys think will show up? We kinda do need an estimate. Just to be sure…I guess.
Props on the quote, Brento :wonder:
First of all, I’d like to point out some things:
-3s won’t be covered by TAS discs, as 3s is terrible on DC. We need PS2 or PC emulated 3s (I have arcade-perfect 3s and a lagless PS2-PC converter, and know how to get more).
-We’ll more than likely have more TVs than we’d ever need if we ask everyone. Projectors, even if lagless, should still be used for audience viewing and filming.
-Major players should be picked out before the competition starts and games should be coordinated by location. Looking for sticks and finding an empty setup seemed like half the battle during Random Select.
-We should have some form of voice projection. A bullhorn or two would be good. P.A. system is great, and a karaeoke machine is good enough.
-Games should be decided upon by vote. Set up a new thread soon, and set the poll to be public and allow people to see who’s voted. We can then filter out those who definitely aren’t attending (random SRK lurkers, etc) from the votes and tally it up at the beginning of the thread.
I’ve got tons more to say, but I’ve got schoolwork to do >_<
If your wondering on the quote, I went back and read every post in this thread and made a collection of the helpful ones. Yours was probably one of the best, and says exactly how we should be thinking about this. I couldn’t have said it better if I tried. :tup:
I wasn’t sure about 3S on DC, but I included it anyway just because I am pretty sure after reading this thread that 3S is a given. If we need to get different equipment for it, then that is totally fine and we can figure out where all of that is coming from.
I know that we will have a lot of people who can lend TV’s and Dreamcasts, but I really want to avoid assuming that we will be able to get all of the stuff just because we know that there are plenty of people willing to help out who have it. A checklist of everything we need and exactly where it is coming from on the day of the event is something I feel is really important, even for the obvious things like TVs.
A PA system is really neccesary so thanks for bringing that up. That should be something that the location people should ask about when looking for a venue. Whether we want sound to go through a room sound system, or if we just want to use a bullhorn, that we will have to factored into the budget. Also, the need to project sound that everyone can hear across the room for the final matches may also be important.
Putting games to a vote is good idea. I was thinking that we should decide on a few core games at this first meeting just so we have something to plan around. I figure I am not overstepping my bounds to assume that Marvel, ST and 3S will be in the tournament, but putting it all to a vote is still a good thing to do.
I will go back and update that main list of things to talk about and edit this stuff into it, and have it on the schedule of things to discuss next Friday.
I also want to talk to FatBear and the Portland Crew about some of the facts about their Tournament. If they are coming up to Zach’s, then it would really help if they could bring up some of the planning stuff behind the Random Select Tourney and we could look at it. If it is still around.
Update:
I might have something with venue thing. if it even pulls through.
crosses fingers
Post up any information you have about it, and I will type it out onto a sheet of paper that can be passed around at the meeting so that everyone can look at it.
If this place doesn’t workout and we have to keep looking, I made a spreadsheet with all the questions to ask and places to put the information that people who are looking for a venue can use to keep track of info when calling around. Not sure if you want to use it, but I just can’t stop working on this, so I made one anyway just to have something to work on before Friday. :xeye:
So with that said you should hook with that spreadsheet.
It would help me out alot.
I will post it up or email it to you later on. It is at my house in Federal Way and I am in Seattle.
Does anyone know if you are planning on attending the meeting? Post if you think you will attend or even just drop in for a second. Everyone is welcome to come and give input. Their will be a sign up sheet where you can put your name, SRK name, and email (in case you want to really be involved in the planning and need to send files.)
When is a good time for everyone? I was thinking sometime around 10:00, 10:30 or 11 when pretty much everyone has shown up, but before ST or poker starts so people feel like they aren’t missing to much. It won’t be very long, but we will cruise through a lot of stuff pretty fast.
I’ll be there.
If Dave “Da wolf” goes.
I hope a few people who may just be at Zach’s will stop by and help out. I am really excited about making this happen and I think it can be great.
I wanted to say sorry to anyone if I was stepping on toes in starting to plan shit out of the blue. I didn’t mean to go over the heads of anyone who had already been working on this for awhile. I just want to help make this more organized so that we can figure out exactly what we need to do, and do it faster, and hopefully better and cheaper.
I have got a bunch of supplies for the meeting to try and make it easier for us to actually figure things out and make decisions. Paper and pens and stuff like that so that people can write ideas down and we don’t just sit around a table talking with no plan of action. I also got two portable file totes so that any paper work we have, or will have, like venue listings, room reservation contracts, braket and game decisions, equipment checklists, or just random ideas we write down won’t get lost or destroyed. I’ll post all the info up here online and make copies for anyone who wants them, and if someone wants to keep a seperate set of paper work in the second file tote (it was a two for one deal) they can have the second one and hold onto it.
Hellsap also gave me a bunch of great info on the Random Select Tournament that I will bring to Zach’s. Info like attendance, entry #'s for each game and other good stuff. :tup:
I’ll be at zach’s with nothing to contibute. :tup: UW peeps should see about space rental/clubs/whatever if they get a chance. There’s no way the college could be more expensive than renting a random hall… right?
It’s over $800 from 12pm-midnight plus $50 for tv’s, plus more money for outlets. It is absurd.
More money for outlets? Ridic’. I don’t think we’d need to rent/borrow that many TVs but then again relying on peeps saying “YA I’LL BRING A TV LOL” is a bad idea, too.
Haha, as someone who’s worked at UW and gone to school there…
They’re fucking money grubbing whores. I have no doubt in my mind that there are much cheaper solutsions
That sums it up completely. Just look how much they charge for parking. I don’t even want to think about how much of a bitch that would be to workout with even 100 people coming.
Sidenote- Since I work there, I am playing REZ HD on a big screen in an auditorium with surround sound this weekend. :razzy: