Federation Meeting No 3 Update
Hi Guys, as usual, here’s a heads up after our recent meeting of the federation.
I think it’s best to start by first of all acknowledging there has been a great start to this season; it is in stark contrast to recent years and certainly is cause for some encouragement.
But .. there are some who would try to diminish what the federation is doing and what we set out to do; it may do us all a favour if we take a quick time out to look at the federation’s goals.
But before I do, I just wanna state the obvious; the UK tournament scene was dying on its feet, all of us know this to be true!!!
That’s why myself and all other board members got involved; it’s no accident we are all sitting around the same table at the same time with the same mindset.
Nobody else was doing a damn thing about anything, please remember that.
Never before has this many UK industry figures sat down together to solve one problem, 20 of us in fact.
The bottom line is quite simple, it’s now or never!
That said, we now need to understand why our tournament scene was dying on its feet; the reason is quite clear-cut but maybe unpalatable for some, the product we were offering the tournament player was nowhere near good enough, if it was, we wouldn’t have witnessed such a decline ... this is a no-brainer.
With that in the bag, we knew we had to change the face of UK Paintball from the bottom up and as part of that process, the tournaments themselves had to become better products for the customer, you mob out there.
The only way we could ensure that happening was by having some degree of control over how these events were organised and ran; and of course, what standards and protocols were being used.
And to that end, we needed to affiliate these events and assign them Federation status.
This would then give us the necessary infrastructure to begin the change in tournament quality.
We could only effect this strategy if we had promoters who were willing to work with us under the federation’s new banner and run 6 events south, and 6 in the midlands.
This was our basic strategy; nobody was forced or coerced into doing anything, with both Chris and Wendy willingly accepting our offers; either person could have declined but thankfully they didn’t and thus we all began the federation’s new initiative.
As to the degree of influence the new initiative has had on tournament entry lists already? Well, the board and believe it’s significant; other people, and there are several, will try to diminish the positive effect the federation has had, but these are political eruptions rather than anything to with what really goes on.
For most people though, the board’s new initiative is both significant and gaining momentum.
However, our new board has its opponents, some opponents are spouting off because I am the chairman and they disapprove of me personally, well, one in particular that is; other people because they weren’t invited on the board ..... either way, they will masquerade their concerns as legitimate but they have no standing in the game (and never had) and so, we can effectively ignore them.
Anyway, let’s get back to business; both Chris and Wendy have hit the ground running and the industry has been good to its word and turned out at these events giving them a much needed validation and atmosphere.
Some of the industry figures such as Jon Payne and Jimmy Frensham, bought their teams along and so we had comprehensive support from our board members which is exactly what we knew we would need, along with any new and disenchanted teams, taking a leap of faith, and going along to these first two events .. a massive well done to everybody concerned.
As to what happened at the meeting?
Well, it was interesting and emotional to say the least but I think these meetings are like a rites of passage we have to go through, much like giving birth ... sometimes it gets kinda painful .... not that I know what giving birth is like but I was once told (by a woman who had 5 kids) it was like passing a pot roast through one of your nasal passages ...at which point, I realised that if I had been born female, I would have forever remained a virgin.
We firmed up our end of year tournament which is going to be a two-day affair and probably in early October; Jon Payne will oversee its organising with Chris and Wendy promoting it.
We will be looking at venues in the midlands area to make it easier for all UK ballers to get to and will obviously look for sites that have the necessary resources to hold an event that’s planned for something like 70 teams.
There are gonna be huge prizes at this event and I ain’t talking about huge cups, I am talking about prizes that are actually worth something, and worth competing for.
We have an awful lot to do in getting this off the ground and some stunning offers from Barry Fuggle and the Millennium guys have made our job a lot easier; and I think the level of support we have already got from our board members in trying to give you guys an extraordinary UK event, is outstanding.
I might be sounding a bit too enthusiastic about all these guys, and maybe I am, but I grew tired of criticising them all the time and wanted soooo much for them to co-operate with each other and help us all out ..... and now they are actually doing it.
Now most of these guys are mates of mine anyway and I spose I might be over-reacting but hey! - WTF, I don’t care, but I finally see a light at the end of the tunnel and I’m optimistic for once.
I and other Federation members will now be regularly going to all these affiliated events under the Federation banner to see how well it's all going and hopefully we will be able to harvest some feedback from all you guys when we’re there.
By the way, when you guys are at these events, if you have any compliments, gifts and promises of money, then feel free to come up to me - but if you have any sort of grievance, moans, or feel violent in any way, then I suggest you immediately go and see Andy Piper; if you can't find him at the event, then DO NOT come up to me, just call me on '0800 FED' and I will be more than happy to grass his sorry ass up and tell you where he is hiding, probably in the food tent with Ledz, swallowing pizzas like Smarties.
The federation will also be running a competition on P8ntballer.com that has our members trying to design a new logo to be used as the federation’s brand logo.
It’s a real cheap ass way for us to get the job done but hey, all we are doing is keeping it in-house, well that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.
Anyway, there will be a pretty cool prize for this, and I ain’t talking about a personally signed old issue of PGi from yours truly, no, ...the federation couldn’t actually afford that but I know the guys on the board will get together and come up with some sort of prize that is well worth the work involved in designing this logo.
Come to think of it, we had been stalling and stumbling over several ‘name’ possibilities for our federation until Jim Frensham finally had a great idea, he’s not just a pretty face ya know ..... hold on a minute here, Jim Frensham pretty?
I think I better just put the bong to one side .....
Anyway, Jimbo thought the federation was sooo good, that we should call it the ............wait for it.............. ‘The Federation’.......... Yep, that’s it, that’s what we called it.
And that makes its members ‘Feds’.......woooo hooo, I’ve always wanted to be a Fed, I can see it now, F E D in 2 feet high white letters written across the back of my black t shirt (scaled down to 2 cm for Jimmy of course).
And so, the logo will be looking for designs around that idea; the winner will be the one chosen by a majority of the board members and their decision is final...all monetary bribes to be Paypal’d to robbo@Aceville.com
And just to finish off, for the very few people who think the federation guys are in this for their own ends, the members are now creating a fund whereby we (even my poor broke ass has to donate into it) will be putting in a considerable sum of money each month to fund our organisation and also to create a prize fund for our end of year event.
I think this last meeting was probably our best meeting so far because we seemed to have fleshed out what we needed to, come to decisions on what we needed to and made the preparation necessary for what we needed to.
UK paintball is gradually getting there guys.
Hi Guys, as usual, here’s a heads up after our recent meeting of the federation.
I think it’s best to start by first of all acknowledging there has been a great start to this season; it is in stark contrast to recent years and certainly is cause for some encouragement.
But .. there are some who would try to diminish what the federation is doing and what we set out to do; it may do us all a favour if we take a quick time out to look at the federation’s goals.
But before I do, I just wanna state the obvious; the UK tournament scene was dying on its feet, all of us know this to be true!!!
That’s why myself and all other board members got involved; it’s no accident we are all sitting around the same table at the same time with the same mindset.
Nobody else was doing a damn thing about anything, please remember that.
Never before has this many UK industry figures sat down together to solve one problem, 20 of us in fact.
The bottom line is quite simple, it’s now or never!
That said, we now need to understand why our tournament scene was dying on its feet; the reason is quite clear-cut but maybe unpalatable for some, the product we were offering the tournament player was nowhere near good enough, if it was, we wouldn’t have witnessed such a decline ... this is a no-brainer.
With that in the bag, we knew we had to change the face of UK Paintball from the bottom up and as part of that process, the tournaments themselves had to become better products for the customer, you mob out there.
The only way we could ensure that happening was by having some degree of control over how these events were organised and ran; and of course, what standards and protocols were being used.
And to that end, we needed to affiliate these events and assign them Federation status.
This would then give us the necessary infrastructure to begin the change in tournament quality.
We could only effect this strategy if we had promoters who were willing to work with us under the federation’s new banner and run 6 events south, and 6 in the midlands.
This was our basic strategy; nobody was forced or coerced into doing anything, with both Chris and Wendy willingly accepting our offers; either person could have declined but thankfully they didn’t and thus we all began the federation’s new initiative.
As to the degree of influence the new initiative has had on tournament entry lists already? Well, the board and believe it’s significant; other people, and there are several, will try to diminish the positive effect the federation has had, but these are political eruptions rather than anything to with what really goes on.
For most people though, the board’s new initiative is both significant and gaining momentum.
However, our new board has its opponents, some opponents are spouting off because I am the chairman and they disapprove of me personally, well, one in particular that is; other people because they weren’t invited on the board ..... either way, they will masquerade their concerns as legitimate but they have no standing in the game (and never had) and so, we can effectively ignore them.
Anyway, let’s get back to business; both Chris and Wendy have hit the ground running and the industry has been good to its word and turned out at these events giving them a much needed validation and atmosphere.
Some of the industry figures such as Jon Payne and Jimmy Frensham, bought their teams along and so we had comprehensive support from our board members which is exactly what we knew we would need, along with any new and disenchanted teams, taking a leap of faith, and going along to these first two events .. a massive well done to everybody concerned.
As to what happened at the meeting?
Well, it was interesting and emotional to say the least but I think these meetings are like a rites of passage we have to go through, much like giving birth ... sometimes it gets kinda painful .... not that I know what giving birth is like but I was once told (by a woman who had 5 kids) it was like passing a pot roast through one of your nasal passages ...at which point, I realised that if I had been born female, I would have forever remained a virgin.
We firmed up our end of year tournament which is going to be a two-day affair and probably in early October; Jon Payne will oversee its organising with Chris and Wendy promoting it.
We will be looking at venues in the midlands area to make it easier for all UK ballers to get to and will obviously look for sites that have the necessary resources to hold an event that’s planned for something like 70 teams.
There are gonna be huge prizes at this event and I ain’t talking about huge cups, I am talking about prizes that are actually worth something, and worth competing for.
We have an awful lot to do in getting this off the ground and some stunning offers from Barry Fuggle and the Millennium guys have made our job a lot easier; and I think the level of support we have already got from our board members in trying to give you guys an extraordinary UK event, is outstanding.
I might be sounding a bit too enthusiastic about all these guys, and maybe I am, but I grew tired of criticising them all the time and wanted soooo much for them to co-operate with each other and help us all out ..... and now they are actually doing it.
Now most of these guys are mates of mine anyway and I spose I might be over-reacting but hey! - WTF, I don’t care, but I finally see a light at the end of the tunnel and I’m optimistic for once.
I and other Federation members will now be regularly going to all these affiliated events under the Federation banner to see how well it's all going and hopefully we will be able to harvest some feedback from all you guys when we’re there.
By the way, when you guys are at these events, if you have any compliments, gifts and promises of money, then feel free to come up to me - but if you have any sort of grievance, moans, or feel violent in any way, then I suggest you immediately go and see Andy Piper; if you can't find him at the event, then DO NOT come up to me, just call me on '0800 FED' and I will be more than happy to grass his sorry ass up and tell you where he is hiding, probably in the food tent with Ledz, swallowing pizzas like Smarties.
The federation will also be running a competition on P8ntballer.com that has our members trying to design a new logo to be used as the federation’s brand logo.
It’s a real cheap ass way for us to get the job done but hey, all we are doing is keeping it in-house, well that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.
Anyway, there will be a pretty cool prize for this, and I ain’t talking about a personally signed old issue of PGi from yours truly, no, ...the federation couldn’t actually afford that but I know the guys on the board will get together and come up with some sort of prize that is well worth the work involved in designing this logo.
Come to think of it, we had been stalling and stumbling over several ‘name’ possibilities for our federation until Jim Frensham finally had a great idea, he’s not just a pretty face ya know ..... hold on a minute here, Jim Frensham pretty?
I think I better just put the bong to one side .....
Anyway, Jimbo thought the federation was sooo good, that we should call it the ............wait for it.............. ‘The Federation’.......... Yep, that’s it, that’s what we called it.
And that makes its members ‘Feds’.......woooo hooo, I’ve always wanted to be a Fed, I can see it now, F E D in 2 feet high white letters written across the back of my black t shirt (scaled down to 2 cm for Jimmy of course).
And so, the logo will be looking for designs around that idea; the winner will be the one chosen by a majority of the board members and their decision is final...all monetary bribes to be Paypal’d to robbo@Aceville.com
And just to finish off, for the very few people who think the federation guys are in this for their own ends, the members are now creating a fund whereby we (even my poor broke ass has to donate into it) will be putting in a considerable sum of money each month to fund our organisation and also to create a prize fund for our end of year event.
I think this last meeting was probably our best meeting so far because we seemed to have fleshed out what we needed to, come to decisions on what we needed to and made the preparation necessary for what we needed to.
UK paintball is gradually getting there guys.
