So the big tourney was last weekend. I've spent the last few months creating the graphics and format for it. I've learned how to make an event page on Liquipedia with help from MasterDalk. It was pretty exciting gathering the list of players. I had lots of help from IvD management along with other teams management (Complexity, ROOT, Solaris, Flipside) to recruit their players and I really appreciated it. I really didn't expect to have such well known players included. It was a great surprise. I also had lots of help from Kuren on how to host a tournament online in terms of the actual production and what's needed to keep a good flow going during the broadcast.

The tournament itself was a great success and so far (I'm still collecting offline donations) it has generated over $440 in donations, and I will announce a total very soon. Brayden (Jackpot) did such a great job, and stayed up way past his bedtime to entertain. I think next time though I will do it during the day (yes, I said NEXT TIME)...haha The only reason I hosted it at night was because my 3 year old was sleeping upstairs at the time, and I didn't have a sitter for him during the day. I had a lot of fun, and to be honest, I didn't really mind casting once I dug my heels in. I'm not saying it's something I want to pursue, but I didn't do as bad as I thought I would. Brayden also piped in with a few cute expressions, so I knew he was digging it too! The first day we had about 100 concurrent viewers for the night, and the second day we had 200 so I was pretty happy with that given everything else there was to watch.

As of right now, everything is wrapped up with a nice bow. The Liquipedia event page is complete, the VODS are uploaded, and the winners have been paid. It feels good to have no loose ends.

I will say, the one thing I learned in all of this is how damn hard it is to get players to play...haha Granted, there were a LOT of tournaments happening in and around the time I was asking the players to play. The tournament was live casted from replay by the way, for those that didn't know. I felt in an awkward position because here are all of these really great players, and I'm a nobody, so I didn't want to pressure to hard because they could have just turned around and said "who are you to pressure me" and walked away. So I was walking a fine line of urging them to play but at the same time try to be considerate of their schedule. I had some help from other managers to give them a little "push" as well. All of the players were really good at trying to get them played though. I've already praised them for playing, but they really did provide some great games and I appreciate them all taking time to play. I hope they would consider playing in the next one and I promise to budget more time for them to play.

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In terms of getting back to playing regularly...this summer was VERY busy for me! The month of August especially busy with lots of summer getaways and such. I think I only streamed once in August, and I really missed playing. Now that the kids are back in school and more of a routine is in place I'll be playing regularly again, with the same goal of masters league. I'll be playing in CW's with IvD's community team (which should be a riot) and look forward to having practice partners as well.

I also am beginning work on IvD's website relaunch this week so that will tie up a lot of time as well. Which is perfect because these Canadian winters are deadly, and it's always nice to have a project or two on the go. I'll write again in a few weeks and let you know of the progress on both hitting masters and the website.