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| Home | Features | DMA® Info | About | Vol 28 Issue 5 October 2003 |
Initial Dayton LANfest Was A Success!by Jim Rowe, Dayton LANfest Coordinator As the coordinator of Dayton LANfest, I had the luxury to lead a great team of college age members of R.A.G.E. LAN and Dayton LAN in to creating the second largest LAN in southwest Ohio on our first attempt! My team included Warrick Mann from R.A.G.E. LAN (Webmaster and Tournament Coordinator), Dayton LAN members Kevin Carter (Networking), Samantha Combs (Registration), Travis Waddle (Publicity) and Richard Davis (Security), and Jim Horton and Dan Chapman from the Cisco Academy of Sinclair Community College. While the R.A.G.E. LAN and Dayton LAN teammates worked on setting the groundwork for creating an awesome LAN party, Jim and Dan, along with Kevin Carter, set out to create a bulletproof Cisco network backbone that was second to none. Jim and Dan encouraged Sinclair networking students in working the LAN party as part of their grade. Their task was to ensure that the network was set up correctly and ran efficiently and non‑stop over the 31 consecutive hours of gaming. Warrick, Samantha, and the rest of the team, with input from Computerfest® Exhibitors Coordinator Randy Young, embarked on the logistics of putting on a LAN party on a scale none of them had ever participated in creating. This included Travis, Randy, and Warrick contacting companies to garner interest in prize donations, Samantha learning the logistics of the day‑of‑show Registration process, including Volunteer coordination, and Richard meeting with a Computerfest® Ombudsman and Grey's Security on procedures to deal with issues out of his team's control, especially during the overnight session. One of the biggest issues was coming to grips with the scale of the project. We brought in Joshua Green from Wright‑Patt to take our hen scratching and create a dynamic Visio drawing of the LAN party layout. This crucial step enabled Randy Young to give Ham a precise drawing of our requirements, accurate to the inch. Other team members like Michael Mueller, Andrew Payne, and Tom Thorpe, provided valuable input and day‑of‑show assistance in supporting the network and maintaining security for the event. Oh, the event? We had 200 seats available for 31 consecutive hours of gaming. This is a first for Computerfest® ! Dayton LANfest brought in David Stellmack from Tom's Hardware Guide and David Makin from Team AMD to speak to our gamers, as well as to the entire Computerfest® show, as part of the Computerfest® Keynote speech. David and David brought with them Vivian Lien, Director of Marketing and PR for DFI, Jim Wong from Hitachi's Digital Media division, as well as members from All‑American Computer Systems to serve as a guest panel to both the Computerfest® Keynote speech and the Q&A session for the Dayton LANfest participants. Dayton LANfest provided attendees the ability to frag (in the gaming world, "to kill") 102 other attendees in a variety of tournaments. Some of the tournaments we ran during the LAN party included America's Army, Unreal Tournament 2003, Quake 3 Arena, Battlefield 1942 (in 2 different mods, or simulations), Unreal Tournament (in an unofficial tournament mode), and Warcraft. Prizes were given out to all winners of each tournament. The biggest highlight of the event was the ability to play David Makin and the rest of Team AMD in the America's Army tournament, their game of choice. Of the twelve participants, three teams were formed in a round robin format. Team AMD, as expected, won easily. For the first time, the popular gaming drink Bawls was served at the party. We do not have verifiable numbers, but the rumor is that Ham sold 25 cases of the drink and had to go get more! A special thanks goes to the entire Ham staff for working with us to make this event a success. Guess what? Dayton LANfest will be back at the March Computerfest®! You can check out our web site at http://www.daytonlanfest.com for all the latest news on our next big event. |
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