Hello Lucifer - fire away!lucifer wrote:Hi OMM
Couple of points that I'd like to make:)
Let me start by stressing: this is OUR event - the NAF community's event. We are working in partnership with GW but we are paying for the facilities and resources we are using. With that in mind, we will contol ticket sales and access - we simply will require them to tell us how many are allowed. GW's generous donation of the main hall, renovated now I'm told to accomodate 300, and their willingness to accept our terms were factors in deciding to hold the first World Cup there.lucifer wrote:(1) DO NOT (and I can't stress this enough) DO NOT allow GW any say in ticket allocation. If that happens then I guarantee that the UK contingent will be disproportionately high. GW are the worst kind of partisan organisation I know.
I can surely appreciate the issue of getting to Nottingham (at least the exchange in your instance isn't so terrible...lucifer wrote:(2) I appreciate there is a kudos in holding the World Cup at GW's Headquarters, but to be frank it's a lot of hassle to reach for the rest of Europe. Amsterdam (or another central european captial with an excellent international airport), or London would have been better. The event will, ultimately, be judged a success or failure based on the coaches who attend and their experiences, not on whether the place was pretty or not. By all means the venue adds to the experience, but it does not define it. It's not like Warhammer where they need the special sculpted boards.
) and I'm sure we will solicit coaches following the event to get a sense of where might be a geographic center to those that are coming. I would dearly love to confront the issue in a couple of months where we've sold the ticket allotment, have 200 more coaches on a waiting list, and tell GW "solve this, or we find a banquet hall."lucifer wrote:(3) Consider the option of additional, on site, playing space for coaches (e.g. external marquee, portakabin, etc) to increase the number of players allowed). There will be a LOT of players who want to come, especially if this replaces the Eurobowl next year. This Eurobowl had 96 coaches and that was with a limit of only 8 per country. The GW hall has fire restriction limits.
What we have asked GW to cover are the food services at specific times and the staff to keep Bugman's and the retail shop open during our event. I have not ferociously guarded the NAF's money to now fritter it away to GW, or anyone else, for that matter.lucifer wrote:(4) Keep ticket prices reasonable. Not everyone can afford international flight plus travel from London/Manchester areas (where most cheap flights go to) to Nottingham.
The hotels we are negotiating with are within a short walk (by my standards of being nearly fifty, not Valen's!lucifer wrote:(5) Travel arrangements. Nottingham is, again, a bloomin' awful place to get to if you're travelling from abroad. The UK public transport system is slow and expensive, which is why most of us own cars. Provide foreign travellers with details of how to book trains (the trainline), cheap cars, national express coaches, etc.
... sorry, private joke there...) We will ask the NAF membership whether stay in hostel style accomodations is a viable option, and with the ability to negotiate for at least 200+ coaches, I am confident we will be able to bring the prices down significantly. The thing to stress here is that if we bargain as a group, we behave as a group - coaches will need to do their best to stay at the event hotel so we can fulfill our obligation as well.Two hours and fifteen minutes is precisely the working number at this point... as always, the staff will weigh playing time with the ability to enter and coordinate this number of matches. The NAF staff as a group has participated in hundreds of tournaments and has organized more than 150, as well as reading the thousands of posts and comments of the membership. I have absolutely no worries about the administration of the tournament - it is our collective strength as a community and one place where we can show ourselves superior to GW's efforts.lucifer wrote:(6) The time allowed for games should be 2.25 hours minimum. A game can be played in 2, but it's a push. This is a once in 4 years event, so please don't spoil it by making people rush through games.
We have not chosen which system to use - from everyone I personally have talked to, Yavatol's system is excellent. I know the NAF community in Spain have also developed an elegant XML based system, so I believe the community is ready to serve. I am a believer in backups and redundancy in critical cases so don't be surprised if we run more than one to insure there are no issues.lucifer wrote:(7) Use the community to provide the scoring system, not GW. Either Yavatol's "Score" system or the Eurobowl program (that has players enter results, not organisers). EVERY time GW do it their way they take 30 mins to enter between rounds and have numerous problems - regardless of whether it's BB, Warhammer or 40K. Next round for Score/Eurobowl is max 10 seconds after the previous round finishes.
"Are we clear?"lucifer wrote:(8) DO NOT (and I can't stress this enough) DO NOT allow GW any say in ticket allocation. (just thought I'd make this clear)
Crystal......
Thanks Lucifer - keep the comments and interest coming!
OMM
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