Re: Long term strategy

More
17 years 6 months ago #12069 by torpedo
Long term strategy was created by torpedo
I can t imagine next year s Sensible Days in Pirmasens with 13 participants, like this year. As it has the potential to be the most important SWOS tournament in the whole f...ing world, it simply CAN T be the gathering of few, with over 4000 people in the community.
ok, i understand some of them are not active basically since the registration date, i understand some of them can have problem with getting visa or passport (blame the world), but simply can t believe we can t get 30-40 people there.

look at the serbian tournament.

look at KickOff 2 World Cups.

i hereby make my promise to help organizers to encourage people, or even force them, to join the party. the first contribution is setting up this topic :) !!!

the first and most important question is, are the organizers able to manage bigger tournament?
we have to remember that people will need slepping places, that playroom has to be big enough, that there are enough hygiene facilities, and of course there s a will and managing abilities of organizers. if i m right, the place of this year s tournament is acceptable for that, but we need a confirmation from Redhair/Playaveli/Elmichaj.
without positive answer to that question this topic can be easily deleted.

if yes, what we need is a some kind of long-term strategy to get things done right.
then we need some suggestions. has anybody got an experience in marketing? advertising? promoting? has anybody got that kind of experience in closed/limited/fanbased market area? are we able to accustom any known/working procedures? your experience would be gladly welcome.

and as a start, some suggestions and questions. but what i want to ask, is to calm down ;) and PLEASE, DO NOT ANSWER OR COMMENT THEM until, well, 15th of september. the only reason i m asking for that is that i would rather want to see some other suggestions, and not concentrating on the one, specific, at least for a moment.

remember - as i don t expect many people to post here, i ENCOURAGE others to post some, even silliest or most stupid suggestions. please don t be afraid of that.

so here are mine:

1] Is Pirmasens the right place for an event? maybe the bigger city would be better? is it encouraging to go to a small town by a border with  not very
sensible France? [just a note to organizers, who may find me ungrateful - i, personally, think the location was perfect, but am trying to think of somebody who s less fanatic then me]

2] Does the website announcement made its work? was there somebody convinced by this? or maybe discouraged?

3] i saw Redhair/Playa promoting the event on Codemasters message board. they even were able to get Codemasters to fund some prizes/souvenirs. but are there any other places you can promote such an event? remember of limited target!

4] do we consider an advance paying for participation? is there any chance somebody will pay for it few months/weeks before, and feel therefore forced to come, in case of loosing his money?

5] what about germans? if it s organized in your country, aren t you supposed to be represented by more than 6 players (well, seven in fact)? look at serbia, again.

6] what about players from France? do they not only have a diiferent tv system, but a different gaming system as well? or maybe they don t like to play an english game? nobody playing sensi there? or maybe we need a french language subversion of website? they are so close to Pirmasens, they should have been there!

7] the fact that the game is old, the fact that people are getting older, have to take care of children, wives/husbands isn t really helpful. or is it? people get their well paid jobs, start their profitable buissnesses, so they can spend more money for what is really only an unimportant, stupid hobby?

8] do organizers need a community to help them? do they have any weak points to be covered? maybe it s easier for 20 people to spend 3 hours each on working on tournament preparations, than for 2 people to spend 30?

once again, PLEASE, DO NOT ANSWER OR COMMENT THESE QUESTIONS BEFORE 15th OF SEPTEMBER

Instead, try posting some.
The topic has been locked.
More
17 years 6 months ago #12111 by Playaveli
Replied by Playaveli on topic Re: Long term strategy

the first and most important question is, are the organizers able to manage bigger tournament?
we have to remember that people will need slepping places, that playroom has to be big enough, that there are enough hygiene facilities, and of course there s a will and managing abilities of organizers. if i m right, the place of this year s tournament is acceptable for that, but we need a confirmation from Redhair/Playaveli/Elmichaj.
without positive answer to that question this topic can be easily deleted.


Positive!

PS: Applause for this great topic, Michal!
The topic has been locked.
More
17 years 6 months ago #12191 by torpedo
Replied by torpedo on topic Re: Long term strategy
Just to make you all bit more active in this topic.

Kick-off 2 World Cup in London. 28th-29th of October. they started registrations for participants yesterday (31st of August) at 10:39pm.

www.ko-gathering.com/wcadmin/participants.php

it s been a day since.
15 players confirmed. it s already 2 more then Sensible Days.

Now they have a problem with booking a venue. should they book a smaller place for 35-45 participants, or decide for a larger one, 45-65 participants.

COME ON GUYS!!! post your ideas and suggestions, how can WE achieve that???
The topic has been locked.
More
17 years 6 months ago #12234 by Emmeti
Replied by Emmeti on topic Re: Long term strategy
...and as a start, some suggestions and questions. but what i want to ask, is to calm down and PLEASE, DO NOT ANSWER OR COMMENT THEM until, well, 15th of september... .

COME ON GUYS!!! post your ideas and suggestions, how can WE achieve that???

Do you want people to post or not? I don t understand...
The topic has been locked.
More
17 years 6 months ago #12235 by Oli O.
Replied by Oli O. on topic Re: Long term strategy
Yepp, I don t understand, too.

And for Sensidays we had confirmations up to 30 players on the Website some weeks before tournament, so you can t compare the confirmations of one event to the attendance of another.

But you are right, 13 players are a shame.
The topic has been locked.
More
17 years 6 months ago #12237 by torpedo
Replied by torpedo on topic Re: Long term strategy
ouch!

what i wanted to say, is to not comment my questions and suggestions, not CONCENTRATE on them, just post some others. sorry for misleading qoutes then.

i want you to post other suggestions, that way we can avoid discussions no, you are not right etc. at the moment, just have more material to work later.

sorry.

and if it comes to kick off registration site, these are 100% confirmed attendances.
so it is in fact more than sensible days right now, unfortunately.


last years (2005) kick off world cup in Koeln, Germany, gathered 63 participants.

yes, SIXTY THREE .
The topic has been locked.
More
17 years 6 months ago #12669 by Oli O.
Replied by Oli O. on topic Re: Long term strategy
15th September.... :)
The topic has been locked.
More
17 years 6 months ago #12698 by HairFU
Replied by HairFU on topic Re: Long term strategy
Some other thing i wana say, if it is possible you should give the date of the Sensible Days at beginning of the yeahr. So it is not easy to get holliday 4 month before the tournament start. For example, look on Music Festivals like Hurricane they post theire new date just after the last Festival was ended.
The topic has been locked.
More
17 years 6 months ago - 17 years 6 months ago #12828 by Emmeti
Replied by Emmeti on topic Re: Long term strategy
hmmmm, 4000 people in the community... yes, they registered, but that doesn t make them active members.
Check the ranking and stay a week in the mirc channel to see the awful truth.
There are always the same people in the mirc channel. Hardly they re more than 20 at the same time (obviously not including jonhare and other bots or...how  they re called).
Sensible soccer is an old game and hardly will attract many people in the next years (that doesnt mean we don t have to try to find some more). There are thousands of online games, new releases every week or every month, it s hard to find time for swos too, unless you re an old time swoser or 1 in a million new swos lover.   Old swoser are getting older and many of them have a career, a family , or both, so swos is not in their priority list anymore.
Many ss.de  members are also students that will quit playing swos when just finish their studies.
The 80% , maybe more of the people that come here  for 1 week or a month play just  for curiosity or they are thirty-something looking for a quick retro experience (but they get bored after few games).


First of all i think we have to analyze the sensible soccer.de community to understand its future.
SS.DE is a centralized community,  not a gathering of smaller communities around Europe.
That means SS.DE is like champions League , but in this case...without national leagues.
I know there are serie A, DSL, UK premiership , but that s not the same thing.
There s no national movement and everything lives and dies here and nothing happen out of ss.de (or some very weak attempts to create alternative leagues,   born here, same members but developed elsewhere )
That means it all depends on few people; unfortunately (in my opinion) they cannot control every aspect of a multi language multi cultural crowd because of no time and maybe not enough money or sure many other reasons, with the risk of losing potential new swos lovers just because we ve not been able to answer their question or maybe because someone squeezed them in the ooo-machine without even say hi , welcome to ss.de or for a million other reasons.
We have to face the fact we re a small community and when i say small, that is not necessarily a bad thing, but we must be aware of that instead of being mislead by the 4000 registered members thing.
Serbian community is small , but it seems they can have a lot of fun playing swos! 
That means there s still a small but cool space for swos in the world, that we have to decide how to organize.
So if you ask me why only 13 participants, i answer : because this is the best we can get at the moment. How does a 30-35 max in the mirc channel community  think to organize something bigger?

I appreciate the awesome work redhair and elmichaj did and are doing for this website, but as long as they have all the control, ss.de community will run at their speed, if they have time, cool , otherwise, just wait for them to be around here.
That s ok, i like ss.de like it is now, just trying to make a point.


Here some ideas:  for example, A CLOSED COMMUNITY. Someone could create a smaller community of true swos lovers that give themselves an expiring date .  ok we re 30-40 members , nobody will join anymore, let s play for 1-2 years, let s meet 2-3 times a year at sensidays or something like that and then at 31-12-2008 our swos era is over thanks 4 being there. everyone committed , with his own role, everyone with the same goal. Would be very easy for people sharing same opinions and goals to create something that is built to last till expiring date
I know that many people wouldn t like it, but this is the difference between playing with people you just met at the airport terminal and playing with buddies at the hometown playgrounds.
Another idea (and sure easier thing to do)  could be EXTENDED ADMINS. Extend the admins rights in ss.de to other people of different nationality in order to have more events and  more ideas. More admins ready to create a cup or solve problems and  that will promote offline events too. They have to be in mirc necessarily, in order to answer questions, organize cups and keep #sensible a good place to stay. Of course requires committment even if we know some people just don t find the time or the will or the interest for cheching the forum, that almost gives an explanation to the whole problem we are talking right now.Another idea could be NATIONAL WEBSITES. This is very hard to do, but could give some results in the long run. This requires people that have to give a lot of their time to keep swos dream alive creating a national webpage like sensiblesoccer.it and .pl and. pt... (or something like that) always updated in order to attract as many people as we can. In national languages with own events but all related to ss.de.
Only for really  committed to swos.

Another change could be a CHANGE in the RANKING SYSTEM in order to keep players in ss.de. Looking at ranking especially at players below 60-70th place...there are a lot of players playing just few games and disappear, maybe that s because they got bored or were no longer interested, but i know that also too many newbies are crushed like bugs, too many robots playing, too many cheaters and all FOR A FISTFUL of SRNS.
We could change ranking system in order to prevent that to happen.
I am sure many people don t understand but not talking to players (be kind and supportive even if you win 10-0, saying don t give up and trying to suggest how to improve and giving your best to not make them lose interest) can be a problem, playing industrial way (with newbies and not) and also seeing people cheating in swos too (people like me used to think swos was cheaters-free) are reason that makes people quit playing. Let s give people more challenges, more cups, more quick leagues,events  to end in a couple of hours, spontaneous funcups easy to create and less silly complainings , less srn attitude (hi - ooo? - robot style- enter - bye)  to create a better place to spend some hours havin fun of our precious life.

About Sensidays:
designated members have to ask (insisting and doing that in a short time)  others when they have time for an offline cup how much can they spend, how far they can travel. They have to insist and make people understand that if they love swos there are not so many chances to experience an offline cup with people around europe, for just about 100-150 euros (you spent more for stupid things, i am sure) or not to go out with girlfriend for just a weekend... That s all about how you love swos, in my opinion. For students, a little harder to find time, but you just have to understand it would be a couple of days in your life, i think you can find time if you really want to.
Workers probably (not necessarily) will have to take a day off work to join a sensidays-like event,  not a great loss i think , i am sure some of you workers took a day off just because you did want to sleep a little more in the morning...
You have to lose something in order to obtain something else, that s a common rule in everyday life, i think.
After that cross checking of all answers of ALL ACTIVE MEMBERS and a final decision (date, place, other stuff) could be taken easily.
Another way could be promoting in every possible way (websites, forums, magazines) the event and maybe put a little extra like amiga.dk did.
Another way is increasing members number (creating national swos sites for example)  in a number so high, that it would be statistically impossible to have only 13 participants.  There must be updated websites and blogs in every language, they have to be updated, reliable and appealing.

I agree , first words must be from admins, otherwise this topic has no reason to exist.
The topic has been locked.
More
17 years 6 months ago #12832 by swoozh
Replied by swoozh on topic Re: Long term strategy
I like this thread.

I recommed that the admins (ElMichaJ, Redhair and Playa) discuss internal what to answer on this thread, because this is important for us all..

Maybe I will add some text (suggestions, ideas and stuff) later..
The topic has been locked.
Time to create page: 0.249 seconds
Powered by Kunena Forum