Green for Go!

So, I've had a real roller coaster ride emotionally over the last couple of weeks and it feels that last Friday was like the last big dip before it all ended.

Friday was a very exciting day. It started pretty innocently with a Maccy Ds breakfast and a meeting about future stuff on BXB with Ash. We discussed stuff like what the new features on the site would include like official boring stuff like affiliates and advertising as well as more important stuff like new Tournaments and better front page navigation.

Then my phone beeped and Chris Easton had been kind enough to text me that we had the go ahead for our "Join the Ghosts" event. if you don't know what that is and you're reading this blog then I'll say two things to you:

1) Get over to BXB now, it's all over the site.
2) Thanks for reading my blog, you non-BXBer!

Damn tangents. So, I literally leapt up from the sofa, jumped into my car and drove really fast back to my house to start getting things ready. We went live at around 1pm on Friday and the immediate response from BXB's visitors and other members of the press was brilliant. By the close on Friday we'd got at least ten members of the press attending plus plenty of people entering the draw.

But where did this idea come from? Well, it all started a long time ago. I'd just returned from Bawtry Paintball Fields after a Clan BXB meet up and had had a very good time. Once the hangover haze had vanished I had a great idea of trying to organise a "Real Life" clan match. Two BXB clans battle it out at Paintball. At that point I neither had the time or the backing to pull it off and hence it remained just an idea.

But it bubbled away in my mind. I ran it past a few people at the last LAN event. Namely Dan from Game Network who was incredibly excited about the whole idea and really spurred me onto to get it sorted.

So, I began looking for a potential partner in the idea and this is when I stumbled across the idea of it being a LAN event to promote a game as well as a paintball day. BXB's relationship with Ubisoft and it's Community Manager Chris Easton had been steadily improving with numerous competitions and support exchanged and with Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter out around the time I'd wanted to run the event - they seemed like a good choice.

I dropped Chris an e-mail, he responded that he'd be interested and I began the process of arranging it. Note, I had no idea how to go about doing this really and just started firing off e-mails to paintball companies in the UK.

With a matter of hours Skirmish Paintball High Wycombe got back to me, forwarding me onto Skirimish's Marketing guy, little did they know they'd be the hosts of the event. Over the next few weeks I went back and forth between the two companies. Writing out drafts, setting up meetings and discussing the potential of the event with both sides.

A site visit a few weeks ago at High Wycombe left me feeling a little overwhelmed as I met Chris who had the power of the second biggest publisher in the world behind him and was quite happy to use it.

I felt that with just BXB that I wasn't offering as much into the whole event but Chris was kindly reminded me that the event was my idea and that he considered BXB an equal partner. Elation is far from how I felt.

Another site visit was held later between Chris and the company Ubisoft was hiring the hardware from but I didn't attend this and sat there waiting for the go from Ubisoft. I sat and waited. And waited. And waited some more.

With the date fast closing on February 27th I began to feel increasingly worried that we wouldn't be giving people enough notice to go but Chris stayed confident and was helpful in keeping my frustration in control.

As my Dad always says: "It's never as bad as you think." With the press releases, news stories and artwork all prepared in advanced I played the waiting game until I finally got the ok. I was so relieved and incredibly excited.

Still, the event is now just over a week away and I'm getting nervous and apprehensive about it again. Meeting so many members of the gaming press (because we don't all see eye to eye) but one thing I'm pleased about is that I'll get to meet a whole bunch of BXBers and that fills me with confidence it'll be a great day!