Archive for February, 2008
I am so outta there
Last day in the office for a week. Three weeks until the MiniCon. Holy crud do we still have a lot to do.
- Started the day in the coffee shop, trying to power through the schedule a bit more. We’ve had to divide the busiest days into half-hour blocks because we’re trying to fit so much stuff in.
- Back to the office and straight in to trying to knock down my to-do list before I go.
- Chris/Aero finishes the final, final mix and cut of the first podcast episode; fingers crossed it’ll be live next week, while I’m away and can’t hear people laughing at my voice.
- We make it out to lunch and talk over what we still have to do; it’s a lot. I make calls on the way back to the office and apologise to answerphones that I sound like I’m in a wind tunnel.
- Get a nice sketch from Andrew Wildman for the sketchbook; he must have been picking up my mental projections… Chris reminds me that we still need plenty more, but we’ve got a month.
- Struggle to finish the official announcement story for the MiniCon. Four days of ‘stuff’ can be hard to shovel into one story.
- Have a quick phone chat with Andrew over secret stuff, where I use the phrase “I have a million things to do and have to go” twice before I get off the phone… I can feel panic rising.
- Catch up meeting with marketing and community at 3pm. I find out that several people are unaware of several big things, including the MiniCon, so fill them in. Grab the road atlas we bought from our store cupboard for use tomorrow.
- Have to leave the office for a doctor’s appointment, and lose all of my momentum; appointment’s at 4:20pm but I don’t see the doctor until 4:54. I’m out with prescription, I kid you not, at 4:57pm.
- Because of the delayed appointment and all I have left to do, I have to miss the grand opening of our new staff room, which is packed with goodies and gizmos and games galore. I’ll catch up with it when I get back.
- Blitz the last few things and put the official announcement live at just a shade before 6pm. Leave at 6:30 or so after a few hurried emails.
I’ll be sending a few more before sleep tonight, too.
So tomorrow the wife and I go to Devon for a week, where I expect I’ll be pretty much off the grid, while getting cosy in a cottage, and taking bracing walks around Exmoor.
Back around the 8th with full exciting commentary. Unless I find a wifi hotspot.
And breath…
Fast, fast day. For some reason listening to a 32-year old interview with Gene Roddenberry (I don’t even like Star Trek… but hey, I like my pop culture trivia) has made me slow down.
- Get another sketch in first thing… well, ‘sketch’ isn’t really fair, it’s more of a painting. Al Davison continues to impress!
- I joke with Andrew Wildman via email that he now needs to ‘raise his game’ – he hasn’t done a sketch for the sketchbook he’s really happy with, yet. A conspicuous silence.
- Straight into a meeting with my boss and our Biz-Dev manager at 10, in which I manage to get said Biz-Dev manager squirming when I suggest that we should do something for no money “because it’s good for the community”. I actually feel kind of sorry for him… but I also win the argument. Yaaay!
- Bounce emails back and forth with Andy at Omega Sektor, and chat on the phone with another Stephen, the ‘Omega Sektorian’ about his presence on our official Forums.
- Start working on the inevitably large announcement story about the MiniCon for our official sites…
- … half way through, get an email with Melissa Bianco’s flight details. She’s going to have some early mornings but I know she’s a trooper. At least… I hope she will be.
- Lunch is at our local coffee haunt, where Aero/Chris and I start hacking out the mammoth schedule for the entire weekend. We have something like 24 hours to fill and it’s not easy when we have multiple ‘tracks’ of activities, but we make progress. Somehow we decide having Hamidon raids on all four EU servers in the same night is a good idea.
- Back to desk. Expenses, really overdue. They expand into a massive pile of paper as they leave my wallet. As usual I wonder where these all came from. Worry about how I’m going to use the Excel sheet I have to use on my incoming iMac (Google Docs??).
- We get quotes for the two vans we’ll need for the MiniCon – one long wheelbase transit and the other a minibus for staff. Together they’re… very expensive. It’s the damn Bank Holiday weekend – we have to rent each for five days.
- At 5pm, sit down to re-record sections for the podcast, as we needed some extra bits and time has moved on, making some earlier takes irrelevant. I realise half-way through why professional voiceover types do their job in a sealed room without anyone else present. Somehow when you have to speak properly, and someone’s watching you, it gets harder than usual.
- Later, I listen to Chris laugh as he hacks my lengthy bloopers down into a usable form. It takes a while. We maybe use 20% of what we recorded.
- Amanda calls at 6pm to remind me I don’t have to leave until we have dinner later. Glad she called, I’d forgotten….
- Talk to Melissa at NCNorCal about the MiniCon, her flights, etc. She is, as I thought, a trooper about it. Phew.
Right. Plenty to do and miles from home….
Titan Gaming Radio chat
Posted by Rockjaw in Links of Others on February 27th, 2008
The folks over at Titan Gaming Radio, who came in to chat to us last week, have put the whole interview thing online.
Grab the MP3 here. I was still recovering from my cold, hence I sound bunged up (to me anyway). Also, if we sound far from the mic… it’s because we were.
So today was… kind of busy.
Fast, slow, fast. In that order.
- In early because I wanted to get some stuff done, knowing that I had to leave at 11:30 or so.
- I’m on the phone with Omega Sektor as I’m making toast and coffee, checking on Hero Pass sales. They’re still brisk, but both of us are getting confused by the passes we have on reserve – some for Omega Sektor regulars, some for our incoming European players.* We decide we have a few passes left.
- Welcome back Spaff, who’s been ill for the last couple of days. He starts to move his desk, which we’ve been waiting to do for several weeks. He’s only in for today though. With him at my back – literally – we start to feel like more of a cohesive team again.
- Do a last minute rehearsal of my presentation for Spaff, who approves. It’s 12 minutes long, with 70 slides.
- Leave the office and take the bus up to the Sussex University campus to do said presentation for an audience of (mostly) second years. It goes well, but I’ll post about that separately.
- Back on the bus, experience a moment’s panic when I’m sure we’re heading towards the countryside. Turns out there’s a really rural campus just over the road. We head back to Brighton soon after.
- Back in the office just after 4, and work flat out until 7:30, mostly dealing with the Forums, writing up our ‘official NC Crew Sidekick’ program, and listening to the near-final mix of the podcast.
- Oh, break at 5pm to chat to an enterprising Forum member who wants to work with us. We come to an arrangement that I hope will work out for all….
- Come home, re-check Forums a few times while watching TV. Eventually realise it’s kind of a waste of time, and write this instead.
Tomorrow: more busy-ness.
* For anyone thinking we’re screwing people over, consider the players (who might not speak English) and the staff of Omega Sektor (who might not speak anything except English). It’s easier all round, with phone booking.
You said what?