NAF Championship LII - 25th & 26th May 2013 - Nottingham UK

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ManticoreRich
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Re: NAF Championship LII - 25th & 26th May 2013 - Nottingham

Post by ManticoreRich »

Great weekend, some feedback!

THUMBS UP!

The hotel was top notch for the discounted price, and having it next to the venue was very handy for building community between the attendees.

Quality of venue was awesome. Bright, climate controlled, well lit, plenty of space.

The outside garden was very civilised for a between game beer/lunch in the sun!

TO THINK ABOUT

The lunch bags were shocking, is that the best that could be provided at the price?

The dinner queue was so long and slow we diddent even stay to find out if it tasted any good.

Table allocation - It could have done with stand up signs on the inside isle noting the table range, i.e. 1-10, 11-20, 21-30 etc. Would make it much faster to find the correct table.

The Bar could have done with more staff on and adequate stock, by lunch Sunday they only had 1 draught left on tap!

The venue needed some more 'blood bowl hobby love', like the previously mentioned banners and such. (Nice high res NAF Logos, sponsorship banners like Bloodweiser, McMurtys etc.) (personal peve but having the NAF logos on the screens stretched out of aspect ratio made my eye twitch each time I went past.)

FINALLY

Bummer about the Block Dice situation, just wondered if there was a reason why the NAF Spiked Globe on the D6 in this years dice set was not centred?

CLOSING THOUGHTS


Overall I really enjoyed the weekend, hope to go again next year and look forward to hearing everyone else's feedback and any changes the staff plan on making, as well as the organisers post mortem of the event!

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Re: NAF Championship LII - 25th & 26th May 2013 - Nottingham

Post by lunchmoney »

Joemanji wrote:I will start a feedback thread at some point soon.
I think that's what this is.... Plus the one MrHannah started on the NAF.

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Re: NAF Championship LII - 25th & 26th May 2013 - Nottingham

Post by Indigo »

TalonBay wrote:The venue was spacious and airy
:|

Imagine what WW would have been like with that sunshine on Saturday and Sunday. It'd have been unbearably hot and fcking REEKED of nerd a couple of hours in.
A rubbish packed lunch and an average curry on the Saturday night compared to what previous years has offered?
Agreed, things were not deep fried enough for my tastes. Where were the chips at lunch, and the chips at dinner? CHIPS!

:|
The dice
In fairness to the organisers, the dice and the tournament are separate. The tournament has been used as a launchpad for historic reasons but associating the tournament and the dice isn't exactly fair. Lycos also explained the dice situation on the NAF forum ahead of time.

FWIW I am a bit meh about the d6 but the d8 and d16 are nice.
I'll be returning, but it's despite the venue rather than because of it. In my car travelling home I was the only one of four to be so sure, the others were in various stages from doubtful to certainly not.
It's truly a shame if you are your guys won't be returning to the premier UK tournament because you didn't like an average pack lunch and a spacious, airy room :( Maybe look back in a few months and reconsider? I thought the venue was perfect, bar prices reasonable (6 pints for £20 isn't THAT bad these days), and orders of magnitude better than the recent WW offerings.

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Re: NAF Championship LII - 25th & 26th May 2013 - Nottingham

Post by pressie »

Loved the venue and the fact it was linked to the hotel. Breakfast was great and didn't mind the sandwich as that's all I would eat between games anyway.

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Re: NAF Championship LII - 25th & 26th May 2013 - Nottingham

Post by Joemanji »

Thanks for the feedback, keep it coming.

Please bear in mind we can solve every minor suggestion with ease, but it would mean charging £100 for tickets! We ran a corporate event on a community budget and hope that people can understand that.

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Re: NAF Championship LII - 25th & 26th May 2013 - Nottingham

Post by Loki »

I am interested in the banner idea; would it not be possible (assuming the idea in general went forward) for clubs to make and bring their own club banner. In a similar fanshion to clubs wearing ther own tops.

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Re: NAF Championship LII - 25th & 26th May 2013 - Nottingham

Post by lunchmoney »

Loki wrote:I am interested in the banner idea; would it not be possible (assuming the idea in general went forward) for clubs to make and bring their own club banner. In a similar fanshion to clubs wearing ther own tops.
Ohhh I like that. Do you have a flag? I know a few leagues/clubs that do :lol:

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Re: NAF Championship LII - 25th & 26th May 2013 - Nottingham

Post by spubbbba »

lunchmoney wrote:
Loki wrote:I am interested in the banner idea; would it not be possible (assuming the idea in general went forward) for clubs to make and bring their own club banner. In a similar fanshion to clubs wearing ther own tops.
Ohhh I like that. Do you have a flag? I know a few leagues/clubs that do :lol:
They do something similar to that at Gamesday. Each GW store brings a banner, not only does it help people find where to go for the coach trip back but it looks cool too.

I think they have prizes for the best one as well.

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Re: NAF Championship LII - 25th & 26th May 2013 - Nottingham

Post by Darkson »

People have asked about getting traders in for future events. Would that change the cost of the venue (as in, does the venue charge more if people are selling stuff vs a event)?

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Re: NAF Championship LII - 25th & 26th May 2013 - Nottingham

Post by axiom »

As an overview, I thought it was an excellently run event

Organisation
Spot on - everything seemed to run smoothly and to time. Registration was easy, the best painted organisation was a significant improvement from last year. Displaying the draws on tables was a bit of a pain - perhaps consider putting them up on a board/wall next year?

Venue
Clean, spacious with accomodating staff and no worry that we were imposing on others or had to worry about other people imposing on us. Massive thumbs up. My minor niggle was the width of the tables - can we get away with slimmer tables next year?

Food/Drinks
I personally was a big fan of the lunch bags - I don't really like over-eating with two large meals. It was perfect for me. Drinks were the top end of reasonable in terms of pricing - I'd prefer cheaper, but I can live with it! Free water was a big bonus however.

Add Ons
It was good to see Dreadball being demo'd, nice to see all the Thrudball auction items. Like others have said, if this could be expanded next year, that would have been good. It also would have been good if there had been something organised for Saturday night - multi-player Dungeon Bowl, a pub quiz or whatever. Finally, I recognise that the block dice issue was out of NAF's hands. As only a recent attendee of NAFC (this year and last), I appreciated (and took) the opportunity to forego the black dice for previous years' block dice.

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Re: NAF Championship LII - 25th & 26th May 2013 - Nottingham

Post by Geggster »

Great feedback, guys.

Really glad that people enjoyed themselves and airy room, space to move, proximity to hotel - all very deliberate in the planning. So good that come through.

Responding to comments:
Lunch - mobile lunch worked well for the timing of the event and kept the price down. Some liked it, most saw room for improvement. That will be fed back to the venue. Options for next year are to possibly upgrade to hot lunch with extra lunchtime needed or upgrade the cold lunch (both may need ticket increment) or keep it as is. We can use the “drink the bar dry” card, as someone suggested.

Nibbles - I'm sure the bar can stock snacks - that will be fed back. There is a strict policy on bringing own food in and we should, and did, respect that.

Table width - I drew up the floor plan and, using information provided about table-width, deemed the tables a touch too narrow for single width. This can be reviewed, of course. I specifically planned for the tables (180cm wide) to host two games each, so that people didn’t have to contend with table legs (a problem at “previous venues”).

Registration and pre-registration – it may have seemed smooth enough but we can make that smoother, for sure. Will do so next time.

Projector/rounds announcements – we can use the projector in there (although costly) or we can post rounds on the walls. Good comments.

Bar queue/running dry on beer – the venue were aware of this at the time. I shall feed this back but rest assured, as a business, I doubt they will make the same mistake again, feedback or not. Dinner queue also.

Drinks were at the high end, sure. No more than Bugman’s in my book and certainly not outlandish if you look at Conference Centres in other major locations (London, Birmingham, Manchester). Nothing we can do about that, other than go somewhere a bit more basic next year. I hope that the venue/hotel combination sold most attendees but prices noted. Water was supplied and people were advised to bring their own water too.

Stands – this weekend, being a bank holiday/half-term, was a good weekend for this event as the centre plans corporate events (and corporate events don’t like BH weekends) It unfortunately meant that this time the BB distributors were elsewhere. Dreadball being demoed was supposedly appreciated although I didn’t see THAT many at the chap’s table. We aren’t prevented from having trade stands under our agreement.

Saturday night did double up as the Champions League final – it was assumed that many would be watching that and it was only quite late on that we knew that the venue would be useable on the Sat night. That would be place for some entertainment, although I heard that those that weren’t interested in the football were very happy playing other board games quietly in there, with a bar spitting distance away.

The room can be decked out in banners and national flags. We had looked into banners specifically, but they aren’t as cheap as you may think (good to know we have some insiders though for next time) and it does require more prep time than we had. You may have noticed that the venue had a big do on the Friday night. Well we would either need to hire the room for the previous evening to prep it ourselves (expensive) or get the venue crew working on it overnight (I can’t imagine that would be cheap either). Something to think about next time but rest assured, we had thought about it this time too.

As far as location is concerned, we didn’t feel beholden to Nottingham at all (sure it helped getting Jervis there). The organising committee were open-minded about other venues/locations but the fact remains that 80% plus of the 160 attendees came from Britain and Nottingham IS central and we got a good deal there (hotel discount, anyone?). Nottingham also has many links with major European cities for the 20% odd that came/come from Western Europe. Yes – there are venues in Birmingham, Manchester and London that have much better flight connections, and we looked at venues in or around two of those cities, but being conference-capitals, prices for venue, hotel (and beer?) made Nottingham look very reasonable.

As final comments for now, nearly everyone seems to have more positives than negatives – and many thoroughly enjoyed themselves, so that’s terrific. We’ve got some comments for the venue, I’m sure they have some for us. Once we’ve had that conversation, we can see what is doable next time and whether we stay at this location or move to another. Rest assured, keeping the price down and putting on a great weekend is what we strive for.

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Re: NAF Championship LII - 25th & 26th May 2013 - Nottingham

Post by axiom »

...just on the Jervis attendence - it was great to have him there and hand out the trophies. It may be that it was discussed and he didn't want to, but it would have been nice to have him say a few words.

Oh, and please keep it in Nottingham - the fact it was 2 miles away from my house really helped ;)

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Re: NAF Championship LII - 25th & 26th May 2013 - Nottingham

Post by Darkson »

Geggster wrote:We aren’t prevented from having trade stands under our agreement.
That's cool. I only asked as when I was looking for an alternative location for the ARBBL, one of the places I contacted asked me this, as the price would have gone up by 50% if I'd had trade sellers. :o

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Re: NAF Championship LII - 25th & 26th May 2013 - Nottingham

Post by Geggster »

Funnily enough, the venue phoned me just after I posted (perhaps they are TFF users? :o )

More beer (and more staff to serve beer) is easily fixable. You should remember that this was just as much a learning experience for them as it was for us, and 150 odd Bloodbowlers clearly drink more than 150 regular folk.

Extra serving points for dinner also easily fixable. The bar can be stocked with snacks, yep.

I've reported back that some felt that their lunch was sub-par (since my earlier post I think I should correct that only some didn't think much of it - many actually thought a sandwich plus bits was perfectly fine and very nice to be enjoyed outside, thank you very much). There are options with lunch which can be investigated.

The venue also reminded me that the initial hotel booking system could be tightened up - as not everyone got the same story when phoning. Nothing a little training can't solve (of the venue staff, not us).

I must say that the overwhelming response we've had over the weekend and subsequent days has been glowing. So let's hope we can keep up with your expectations and make the next one even better.

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Re: NAF Championship LII - 25th & 26th May 2013 - Nottingham

Post by Darkson »

Can I please request it doesn't fall on the 25th in future? Much as I enjoyed Thruxton, I'd rather be playing BB. :wink:

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