ATK lan

[Chazlene]

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

[ez64]

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

[Isphera]

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.

[Target]

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.

[VoX]

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



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.

[ez64]

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.

[Darkeagle]

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

[Chazlene]

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.

[ez64]

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.

[Chalex4]

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.

[Paper Tiger]

My points:

Security - ATK manage security in the same manor Multiplay do, checks, roaming, tagged kit etc. But, to save on costs, we do it ourselves. Set up a rota of people do do different bits of it, like roam round, bag checks etc.

Financial side - We should look to just break even. For a first LAN, you can't expect to make a profit. We'll have an initial payout to cover. So for the first one, we may even lose money - but what you need to think is, it's start up capital. You need to invest to gain profit. Initial payouts are horrible, but once we've got most of the kit, we won't need to rebuy it, until something breaks or needs upgrading. So, initally, a loss is likely, but we will need to risk another LAN to maybe see a profit (as we won't have to purchase any equipment, but will have to pay hire etc.)

Sponsorship - Many of us probably have contacts, I know I do. So it'll be down to us getting in contact with them and seeing what they're willing to do, if anything. But what we need to think is, anything is better than nothing. Even if they just give you a PSU, or a mouse, it's better than nothing! I will try get in contact with people I know (Used to work for 'em). They do corporate AV installs and stuff. I can see if I can get then give us some network kit or maybe some screens or whatever. Either way, I'll get in contact with them as soon as I can and post results. Also, my dad knows someone who's VERY big in event stuff, I can talk to him about bits too.

That's all I have to say for now, but I will let you know how my talks with people go!

I'm really up for this now! XD XD

[VoX]

AV equipment?


I can haz ATK projector even bigger?!

[Colonel Mitch]

My points:

Security - ATK manage security in the same manor Multiplay do, checks, roaming, tagged kit etc. But, to save on costs, we do it ourselves. Set up a rota of people do do different bits of it, like roam round, bag checks etc.

Financial side - We should look to just break even. For a first LAN, you can't expect to make a profit. We'll have an initial payout to cover. So for the first one, we may even lose money - but what you need to think is, it's start up capital. You need to invest to gain profit. Initial payouts are horrible, but once we've got most of the kit, we won't need to rebuy it, until something breaks or needs upgrading. So, initally, a loss is likely, but we will need to risk another LAN to maybe see a profit (as we won't have to purchase any equipment, but will have to pay hire etc.)

Sponsorship - Many of us probably have contacts, I know I do. So it'll be down to us getting in contact with them and seeing what they're willing to do, if anything. But what we need to think is, anything is better than nothing. Even if they just give you a PSU, or a mouse, it's better than nothing! I will try get in contact with people I know (Used to work for 'em). They do corporate AV installs and stuff. I can see if I can get then give us some network kit or maybe some screens or whatever. Either way, I'll get in contact with them as soon as I can and post results. Also, my dad knows someone who's VERY big in event stuff, I can talk to him about bits too.

That's all I have to say for now, but I will let you know how my talks with people go!

I'm really up for this now! XD XD

In terms of the equipemt all the stuff we need to bring technically we already have for a 40ish person lan. The only things we need are tables and lan cables, the rest is up to the venu having enough power.

[Paper Tiger]

I'll explain it all later. =] Gotta go to Martial arts now

[Target]

Tbh chalex it will a lot easier to organsie this with ez as his networking and computer skills are some of the best in the community. Also as it was his initial idea I think he should lead the project along side you, with you maybe concentrating on sponsorship