Campaign 09 Feedback (previously known as "Ulrich is a tw*t").

[Exile]

Negative much Jay ?? As I recall the new inflatable fields were well received and seen as a success. Also I heard a lot of glowing reports about them this weekend as well.

Not to get too off-topic, but the new fields have only performed well at Campaign. In Malaga, they were the first to drop due to the wind as anyone there can corroborate.

The only time I have seen the new netting well received was in the Malaga press release from the Millennium.

 

[Echowitch]

Very true Pete, having no competition does tend to make people go "LA LA LA I don't care what you're saying I have a monopoly." The oil companies, banks, and big IT companies are all prime examples of this mentality.

And my aim is not to ask them to take a cut in money, but perhaps look at how they can rework how they do things so as to maintain their current income (maybe even increase it) but maximise what they provide for their customers at an event. With regards to trade, if they charged less money but had more people then they'd maintain the same amount of cash coming in, but had a larger trade show and thus a happier client base.

Im probably going to concede the point on reffing though, as I don't think the vast majority of people will ever be happy about reffing.

 

[Robbo]

You can throw as much commonsense at those Millennium guys as you like, dollops and dollops of it .... but science has yet to develop a substance that exhibits the same frictional properties as a Millennium promoter.

They make Teflon look like Superglue .......

 

[Echowitch]

You realise this is just a warm up Pete. For my next trick I will turn Ulrich in to a fun, cuddly, people person I like a challenge

 

[Dark Warrior]

Couple of things worth looking at
We know there are issues with these single toilet units why not use toilet trailer units in a central location with the odd single unit dotted about. The fact that there were no designated female toilets was sadly an inexcusable oversight
Signage to the campsite was passable, if you arrived during the day, but nobody considered those of us who could not arrive until late evening. The signs were small and easily missed, I was one of many that drove part way down the drive and mistakenly turned back thinking it was the wrong entrance. Also meant if you needed to walk to the road to meet a taxi to take you into town you needed to be extra careful you went the right way
If same site used next year then a slight revamp of car park/camping procedures - which would need a little bit more preparation and enforcement (linked to suggestion below, if feasible), plus additional waste bins provided in camping area.

The layout of the main arena is determined by the available space, so the M5 field position is a consequence of trying to make do with what you have. Now if the main entrance to the arena was changed to bottom entrance that would change the whole dynamics

 

[Matski]

I remember Portugal, quite a few years ago when there was still a big US Pro turnout and most events were fairly good (so we're talking some time ago), and I opened a toilet to find a pile of crap towering several inches above the level of the toilet seat. A bit like that scene in Jurassic Park when they come across a dinosaur crap - but more steam.

Still wake up screaming about it to this day.

Robbo is so very right about complaints falling on deaf ears, this kind of thing has been going on for years and years and years. There needs to be a unified voice or ideally competition - competition being a non-starter for now (unless Sergey Leontiev starts a league).

 

[NSKlad]

Signage to the campsite was passable, if you arrived during the day, but nobody considered those of us who could not arrive until late evening. The signs were small and easily missed, I was one of many that drove part way down the drive and mistakenly turned back thinking it was the wrong entrance.

My friends and I arrived at about half eleven on the friday night, went and camped in the "Players and Vendors parking," and for half the tournament were worried we were camping in the wrong place...

 

[Robbo]

You realise this is just a warm up Pete. For my next trick I will turn Ulrich in to a fun, cuddly, people person I like a challenge

..As did Don Quixote .....

 

[Robbo]

Robbo is so very right about complaints falling on deaf ears, this kind of thing has been going on for years and years and years. There needs to be a unified voice or ideally competition - competition being a non-starter for now (unless Sergey Leontiev starts a league).

Sergey will not get involved at all, the time for his involvement has long since passed I'm afraid.

I think any competition will either come from some an unforeseen entrepreneur or an industry combine.
If it's the latter, then this causes a few problems in terms of Independence and accountability etc and so we are pretty much stuck with them for awhile.

Come to think of it, maybe there's third option ... and this would arise because of a similar situation that arose some years back.
I don't think I'm breaking any confidences here but the Millennium guys pis$ed off Dave Youngblood, and he was so angry, he was two cents away from financing his own European league over here.

I think in reality, it would have been the PSP moving eastwards but even so, it was a close run thing and the Millennium guys manages a soft-shoe shuffle and squirmed out of it.
Times have changed since then and the PSP are not really in any mood to look anywhere but to itself.
Shame really, I like the Millennium guys but they could sure do with a bit of competition if only to give them a different perspective.

 

[onasilverbike]

While Dan seems to have appointed himself a one man Anne Robinson of European Paintball and his aims I'm sure are to be commended its a bit like the old paradox of an unstoppable force and an immoveable object, I'm fairly sure that the former will run out of steam before the later budges.

All the flaws of the Millennium series have been highlighted on various occasions, the service the paying customer receives for his bucks being amongst the most objected to. It is fairly evident that the board, or some of its members have heavily invested in the infrastructure this year, amongst the most noticeable items for this season have been the 'concept' inflatable netting systems.

These have been somewhat flawed, firstly they collapsed when there was an unexpected power supply problem at the Fuengirola event, then the effect of the weather on them. While this was championed by some quarters as a safety feature, the truth is that when play did resume the wind was knocking them about so much that they buckled and bowed to half their design hight at times and the ground beams shifted around.

For the Bitburg event there were some improvements made to the set-up and securing of the inflatables, which improved things, but wasn't near perfect as there was still buckling and bowing under the force of the wind. Meanwhile I was told sepatley by two members of the board that they were all sold and that we would see a MkIII version in London, and within a few minutes of that statement that they were for sale at a knock-down price somewhere in the region of £9,000 each if memory serves me right.

As the same fields were used in Paris and Basildon, I can only assume that they remain unsold, unless the purchaser really wanted to wait 3 months plus before taking delivery.

In Paris they were OK as there was no real wind to affect them, and for Basildon they gained the wire cross braces, running the width and length of the field, this shored them up considerably but there was little actual wind during the hours of play to test them.

Somebody obviously invested a fair amount in these, and the fact that they weren't used for the CPL/SPL fields kinda indicates that the Millennium Series couldn't afford another Malaga debarcle, with postponed games for the top divisions, had the weather been 'typically English', or anything like it was at last year's CC.

To dismiss criticisms of this system in this thread based on observations made at the last event only seems to me to be a little short-sighted. Now I'm not saying that there is no future for an inflatable netting system, just that it needs a major rethink/redesign. As for the old steel post system, we all know that over the years it has suffered some damage and much of it was scrap, but mostly it did the job, however; it was heavy as well as bulky, therefore costly to ship and store.