SpringLAN
SpringLAN
it was HUUUGEDates: 10am - 10pm 8th of September 2007
Venue: StMarys Community Centre
Attendance : 143 / 160
Photos
Overview
This was a huge event, we boosted available places from 120 to 160 in response to massive registrations.
Chris Write Up
SpringLAN saw the best attendance that we've seen since the olden days at PHS with 143 people showing up. While the day didn't actually go off quite without a hitch, the event was very successful. Following is a bit of a breakdown...Network:
The network, the stuff behind the scenes that makes the computers talk to each other is what I personally am mostly concerned about. Afterall, with out it, everything else is a bit irrelevant.
The network ran rock solid for the entire event. DNS and DHCP both behaved as we expected and as it has for many events so thats nothing surprising. The DCHUB received a long overdue server software upgrade on the morning of the event which was done without incident and ran well throughout the event. I looked at one point during the afternoon and it quoted a max of 86 users online at once. I've heard mention that there was a case of identity hijacking on the dchub. We have administrators on the Dchub with the ability to deal with this sort of tripe in future, please just report this to a staff member who will deal with it in an appropriate manner. The internet connection received a bit of a belting but still performed its primary intended function of allowing steam clients to start without having a heart attack! The only outages on the internet was caused by the power outages (more later) and the fact that the internet doesn't connect automatically.
Power:
Power was what was making all the admin team a tad nervous leading up to the event. The attendance that we were expecting near doubled what we were used to. During the event we suffered 2 overloads on the halls main breaker caused by the combination of 2 3-phase feeds plus the halls standard power outlets, lighting etc. After the 2nd incident and advice from an electrician amongst the crowd who kindly volunteered to assist (I believe his name was Chris... muchly appreciated) the decision was made to turn off some of the 'nice to haves' such as the projectors and the fans. That seemed to curb the issues and the rest of the day proceeded without incident. Obviously as we progress into summer, the fans wont be a 'nice to have' as much as an essential. We have a couple of options for making sure power is stable in the future of varying degrees of expense and plausibility and there is also the option of reuducing the number of attendees but this will be a last resort. The bottom line is though, we now know what the event capacity is and we will be working towards making the power stable for the next event.
Tournaments:
Huge amounts of kudos must go to Daniel and Ze German for managing the tournaments. They continue to get heavily involved in the CS tournament with the shoutcasting which can easily be likened to Football commentary and even MC'ing the Flatout tournament creating a lot of hype that certainly added to the atmosphere of the event. From what I hear these guys are starting to great things for the competitive gaming scene in Australia. Im not entirely sure who won what but I'm sure theses guys will announce the winners soon and the photos will be a dead giveaway.
Food and BBQ:
Again we had the BBQ lunch and dinner. Thanks goes to BenM for coordinating that, as usual it went smoothly. Also congratulations to the general population for the high levels of tidiness which may have a lot to do with the use of sliced bread as opposed to the rolls that tend to explode when you bite into them.
Multimedia:
Benzor with the help of a few but im not sure who (Benzor can post his acknowledgments) again provided the sound and video for the hall. Unfortunately, the call was made to turn most of it off to conserve power but we got a screen running to show the CS final after shutting all the staff machines down and the power held out. Overall though the multimedia was used to display game feeds from the tournaments which created good hype and interest and worked great combined with the MC'ing by Daniel in the Flatout tournament. Music was also much less intrusive this time and created good background sound and atmosphere. Hopefully power will be sorted to a level that allows better utilization of the projectors with the same attendance levels in future events.
Other noteworthy points:
One other thing that we noticed was a small but larger than usual population of female gamers. It was great to see that in the obviously male dominated area, the girls still came along and got involved. They also made themselves available for a group photo which we hope will promote female involvement and promote Fragfest as a female gamer friendly event.
Cleanliness was also of a high standard with the bins provided being well utilized by the vast majority. This made our cleanup and pack up after everyone had left much easier and we walked out at a little after 12:30. Much appreciated!
Thats about all I can think of now, hopefully the photos will be along shortly. I know I'm looking forward to seeing them cause I spent a lot of time taking them, but not with my camera so i have to wait to.
See you all at the next event in November!
Chris