ATK lan

Right I have been thinking about this for a while and have a great amount of experience in setting up other peoples smaller lan's and general staffing.

It comes to thought that the little £80 lans in between the big summer i lans are a tad expensive so pushes away the majority of ATK members and so I wanted to try and gauge the amount of interest for a smaller lan in between for ATK members.

There is two options however, one if there’s not enough interest from ATK the members that do want to go and can attend a midlands lan somewhere, if there is however one I would look for a venue to start a lan maybe twice a year in-between ilans and rough guesstimates would be a £20/25 entry for the event (Fri-Sun) depending how many people we can rake in as well as ATK members.


Please post your general thoughts as it would be a good place to recruit new members as well as a fun lan for current members.

Sounds good, i'd probably turn up.

I made this post a year or so back.

I have a 16 port 100 meg hub and a 8 port 1gb switch here excluding my 4 port router.

I know (possibly) two people NOT from ATK who'd be interested, maybe even a third, though he's an x-box gamer...

I like the idea of it. 'Cos I love the whole LAN experience, but you're right, the i-series are damn expensive!

I don't mind helping set up/run/help in general! So yeah! :)

I'm up for it, specially if it's cheaper too! £20-£25 sound much more appealing than £80

EDIT: So, Piers's place it is? XD

I have the network sorted I have a decent 100mbps 24 port netgear switch with a very nice backbone (all ports are 100mbps on full load) and can get more if needed that stuff will help.

Looks like this will be an idea then I will look into it asap for a midlands area to be fair to mitch and general people up north.

The console market of gamers would also be catered for but the channels to advertise to them are very hard.

Just looked through hundreds of threads and im thinking my previous post may have been from C2G or even earlier lol.

I have a 16 port Gigabit switch 2 for heavy high speed file transfers and super-g compatible wifi router with 4 port 10/100 base switch built in for anyone willing to use wifi lol. (it does actually work @ 108 meg if you have super g and does transfer faster than 10/100 lan)

It does most of the time with inherent packet loss and resending it's about the same with slightly higher latency.

I might be interested - it would depend on timing, how many people would go, and how bothered I am.

When I started going to the i-series LANs back at i30, I always thought it would be awesome to run our own and even went as far as working out seating plans for local halls.

Obviously my local halls won't be close enough to the majority of us these days, but I think if we can narrow it down to about 3 venues then we can visit them and sort things out from there. Personally, I think anywhere between 20-50 people for a first LAN would be amazing if we advertised it enough. I'm also 95% sure I could sort out some awesome sponsors and prizes for a raffle :D.

I look forward to getting back from this course and thinking about possible plans!

With sponsors and raffles from the first event 20-50 people can be done otherwise that amount of people is hard to do :)

and of course the forum/sub domain could be used so lan attendee's accounts can be linked to the main ATK forums.

If needed I can setup a separate website for it though.

I'm ok with you making a website, but it definitely needs to be hosted on ATK with a sumdomain like:

http://lan.atkcommunity.com/ or maybe a new domain (on our reseller hosting account) like http://www.atklan.com/

Obviously all accounts would be linked to this site and forum whatever domain it was at. Also, for the first LAN we might need to either have a slightly higher ticket price or ask for donations to invest in hardware for future events, but I guess we need more research to really see what the costs would be.

I know the rough cost's of intial setup which I will front my self as raising the intial price of entry is just setting up for failure anything past £30 for smaller lans and people get twitchy.

Yeah true, we just need to remember that posters/signs will need to be made as well as tables rented and I expect we'll need a few microwaves and hot water machines too.

Obviously there's more than that, but I think an ATK lan is well worth doing.

er... we ARE surposed to advertise the falcons, right? wouldn't a lan of 20-50 PC gamers who might be interested in it be a good place to sponser it? Hell, judging from the response last time, they'd get massive interest at a smaller lan...

I'm up for it, sounds like a great idea.

Good idea guys, Mitch had suggested this a while back after we had been to a lan in Manchester as it seemed pretty easy to do. I think we should be able to get enough people easily if we can keep the price down, and also if we can get some sponsors to provide prizes maybe have tournaments instead of a raffle.
1. Because a raffle really need quite a few prizes to be worth doing.
2. It would bring some more competitive players or teams to the Lan.

The cost will be kept down anyway as I'm sure all the ATK members are willing to help set-up / run / tidy during and after the Lan and we can always stock up at the cash & carry to set up a small omm nom nom, if we have the numbers

If we see how much it'll cost for us to do anything, then divide the cost between the ATK members going, then the tickets should cost that much? (Just assuming it wont be tonnes), that way ATK pays for the whole thing. Just thinking aloud. (Aloud?)

Then it will be expensive and tbh we won't lots of other people to go so we can have lol lan games of things like css and tf2 and the more people that go the cheaper it becomes.

This is an epic idea, after all it's how the I-series started out :D.

Course I'll be part of it... if my PC works again by then :p posters, banners, etc shouldn't be too hard to get done... should be similar to the t-shirts.

So I'm guessing we'll find some venue in the midlands like a town hall or hotel conference room maybe?

I agree with Target that getting enough prizes for a raffle may be hard for a first lan, so yeah having 6 fancy mice or summat for a winning tourney team.

Maybe we could get other clans we know like SBC to come along?

This could actually help with the ATK band idea, make it the first lan party/music festival :D.

Good idea chazlene and yeh we should definately invite as many clans as possible as many members are put off by the price of a bigger Lan. The only thing that I think might be difficult is secruity to start with, actually finding a has decent not lol expensive outfit in the local area

The phoenic lans host their events in venues that have their own 24/7 security, school hall, TA Centres, etc

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Originally Posted by 7@rg37

The only thing that I think might be difficult is secruity to start with, actually finding a has decent not lol expensive outfit in the local area

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This.

Anyone got any contacts (e.g. family members) who are police? I'm sure a minor cut and the knowledge that their relative is safe would be enough to tempt them into helping.


Inviting other clans/communities (SBC, PR Community? etc) would increase the numbers and give larger scope for advertising, hell if we could get sponsorship then we would be set.

Nice idea, but a logistical nightmare, go for it if you think you can handle it

Maybe to begin with we should just test the water and try a lan without around 10 of us at someone's house or a small village hall which shouldn't be too expensive, so when we do go further we know how to cope better with all the networking, catering, etc...

mitch or EZ then?

You would need to divide the areas of the LAN into several areas and have one or two people managing each one, with an overall manager. For example, you would need Networking, Catering, Setup, Support, Sponsorship etc. And then, you would most likely need to do Health and Safety assessments and then you would have to fund some of it before you sold tickets.

Say you had a 50 person LAN with and entrance of £40 (assuming 50 people in the current climate would spend £40 on a new event, although tens of thousand just spend £170 on a new music festival). If you sold out, that is £2000 revenue. From that, you will have to fund all of the spending on the above, as well as funding prize, event hire, security, wages etc. You will also need a good bit of profit in order to re-invest into future events and expand it, as well as make it less reliant on personal funding or loaned funds, which the first few would be. Plus if you don't sell all the tickets, you will likely make a loss.

This assumes it will be a freely open commercial venture. If it was ATK-only, then costs would be estimated, and then all costs simply split among all members, with no profit made.

EDIT - If you were to do this as a commercial venture, I would be more than happy help run the business-side of the event, such as spreadsheets, cashflows and budgets, since that's the sort of thing I'm into and kind of the premise of my Uni course.

I can get 6/7 or more if this gets going, maybe pro-hl will be interested in going as a community too :)

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Originally Posted by Oricalcos

EDIT - If you were to do this as a commercial venture, I would be more than happy help run the business-side of the event, such as spreadsheets, cashflows and budgets, since that's the sort of thing I'm into and kind of the premise of my Uni course.

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Where all that time playing EVE comes in handy :D

I prefer to see it as me using EVE to hone my skills :D

Everyone's made very valid points, and you're totally right Oric about needing to think things through very carefully.

I was thinking that since Ez64 and Mitch know more about networks than most of the rest of us, that they could be the 2 main network staff. I'm going to have loads of time from Saturday onwards, so I will be very happy with sorting out the venue and sponsors and any other areas that need more staffing.

Profit is an interesting area, and obviously we need to have safe margins but I think for the first LAN at least we should only make enough to pay for the event etc and make a bit of spare cash for the next few events and improvements. I guess once we cost things out though that we will be able to go into greater detail there.

As to starting small in someone's house, I completely disagree. 10 people isn't worth it in my opinion, and since I've already been to many house LANs and held one myself, it isn't really worth it if we ever want to upscale.

Security will always be one of the most important areas, and Mitch's idea of getting a venue with 24/7 security anyway is a great idea. Having said that, in Wizzo's announcement to us all at i37, he did say that many events have no security at all, so we'd need to work something out there. I'm not sure that we'd have enough money to properly hire a few security guys at the first LAN.

Thanks Chazlene for being up for the photoshopping, that's very good of you. We'll need loads of stuff :D. Finally, the other jobs like catering organisation are key too, and although I think we should definitely have some kind of mini-tuck shop, we should also expect people to bring their own stuff.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Oricalcos

You would need to divide the areas of the LAN into several areas and have one or two people managing each one, with an overall manager. For example, you would need Networking, Catering, Setup, Support, Sponsorship etc. And then, you would most likely need to do Health and Safety assessments and then you would have to fund some of it before you sold tickets.

Say you had a 50 person LAN with and entrance of £40 (assuming 50 people in the current climate would spend £40 on a new event, although tens of thousand just spend £170 on a new music festival). If you sold out, that is £2000 revenue. From that, you will have to fund all of the spending on the above, as well as funding prize, event hire, security, wages etc. You will also need a good bit of profit in order to re-invest into future events and expand it, as well as make it less reliant on personal funding or loaned funds, which the first few would be. Plus if you don't sell all the tickets, you will likely make a loss.

This assumes it will be a freely open commercial venture. If it was ATK-only, then costs would be estimated, and then all costs simply split among all members, with no profit made.

EDIT - If you were to do this as a commercial venture, I would be more than happy help run the business-side of the event, such as spreadsheets, cashflows and budgets, since that's the sort of thing I'm into and kind of the premise of my Uni course.

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You know something Oric, I was wrong about slagging you off for taking business and economics classes at school. :D

However you're assuming that the only income would come from ticket sales, we would also gain from the catering, with food and drink being able to be sold at a slight premium like at the I-series, plus there's the extra income from raffle tickets, plus maybe we could rent out spare equipment like monitors or even tents if people need them.

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Originally Posted by Chalex4

As to starting small in someone's house, I completely disagree. 10 people isn't worth it in my opinion, and since I've already been to many house LANs and held one myself, it isn't really worth it if we ever want to upscale.

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I agree that a house lan wouldn't be particularly beneficial in terms of upscaling... but I'm just worried about diving into doing our own lan, inviting non-ATK people and then realising there's something massive we've forgotten about which messes everything up, or if something goes wrong and we don't know how to sort it out.

I have done plenty of those little house lans it's pointless, tbh as well security will be a big big waste of money and will cost more than £1000 for the weekend so it's just not viable or needed.


Everyone has seem to run away with ideas that are not scaled to the event, sponsorship/advertising is not a huge project for a 50 person lan.

I was just going to do this happily by myself and give a good amount of donation to ATK out of the very small amount of profit made from these events for the advertising/brand name/members attendance, the first event is normally a debt though due to cables/high initial event startup costs.

I'm off to france in the jag for a week this saturday, I will give it some serious startings when I get back but feel free to photoshop posters/ideal venue locations.

The biggest threat to these events I have ever seen though is chav's wandering into the event through the front doors which normally gets sorted by drunk chav haters very very quickly :D

Your right Chaz. All this would have to be worked out when we find out what we would need and how many we would be supplying.

One thing everyone seems to do is thinking of starting this as a mini i-series with tents and the like. It is very unlikely that we would find a hall for 50-60 people straight off the bat with an area for camping and the feasibility of a raffle, because if we fail to secure high ticket items at low prices or from sponsorship, we will have to buy them which will severely impact profit. Also, some 'profit' areas are so negligible, they can be ignored. For example, the profit on a 48-box of Mars bars is £10. And the most you'll get through with 50 people and with other products on sale is likely to be two. But combined with other products, you could make a reasonable sum of money.

Remember also, some of the people helping or working won't want to give up their time and effort for no recompense as well, so some form of wage would need to be added into the costs.

I think the main thing we need to do, is market research...actually go on some clan forums and see if anyone outside the community would be interested and maybe suggest a few venues and a possible price. If we get positive feed back from that then it will prob be viable. And i think mitches idea of using a TA centre is useful because it will provide 24/7 secruity and parking on the grounds and plenty of space. I can't see it being very expensive to hire out as the phoenix lans where held at one in Manchester and it was very secure.

I'm surprised no-one mentioned for Chalex to do the catering side :p.



I'm cool donating a bit of time towards general tech support, hell that can be down to me and Phantom, and providing I get some form of gratitude I'm cool.

I said midlands manchester is a bit too far 3.5 hours to drive to setup a lan is not fun, somewhere around coventry will be nicer.

Sounds epic, i would go, and i would help out as much as possible.

You could always just take shifts looking over the hall in the nights? It would be a sucky job but would save some money

Ok Chalex has just rung me about all this, to discuss a few peoples' ideas. Ez, Chalex and I agreed that if the lan's in the name of ATK, it should be run by ATK. Plus he made a 21 point list of the areas that need to be covered (how Chalexish) such as networking, catering, security... and tbh we'd need several people to be in charge of all these areas, just seems like it'd be impossible for one person to keep track of it all.

Oric, I did think about wages myself, but none of the staff at the I-series get paid (with the exception of security guards, waiters, etc, who aren't with Multiplay) since they are getting free entry to the event basically, with their accommodation and food and drink covered as well. The same would happen with staff members at an ATK lan, having everything paid for them with ATK funds.

If I was not sorting the money myself I would not be Managing an event and providing network equipment for free.

And as well fronting about £800 for renting the place and buying new network equipment would not be done by me, but I'm quite happy not using the ATK branding and inviting people along.

You hit the nail on the head Chazlene, if there's ever an ATK LAN it needs to be ATK run through and through and not just someone using the name and giving us a donation at the end of it. Ez64, by all means run a LAN but ATK is now planning for a LAN as well in this thread, whether they are seperate or not is up to you ;).

As Chaz also said, I don't think it's right that people should expect to get paid to help at these LANs (for now at least). Obviously attendance would be free and you'd get free stuff to keep you alive and happy over the weekend :).

Also, I know getting sponsors will be hard ez64 but if we can secure a few it will be well worth it! Not even trying to get any is complete madness.

My list of stuff to think about is now at 22, and the whole event will need a huge amount of reasearch. I will be thinking more about this over the next few weeks once this course is over.