What The Heck Is Up With The Low Attendance For The Megameet???!!!

[Potatoboy]

The point is that this event has been in planning for quite some time. A lot of people have made commited plans to attend, and can not back out of them.

This was all done under the pretense that everyone who said "Wow! This is such a great idea, I will sell my children to be there!" was actually going to show up.

This event has drained a lot of Airgun Design's time, and has them set to come out, all of which was at the sacrifice of other events.

Also, to quote wimag: "When Mr. Kaye replies to this your rant may mean something."

Jon is an official at AGD. Therefore when he speaks about something like this it is on behalf of the company. We all know that Tom is very active on the boards. He may not post all the time, but he reads. If this had been something he did not approve of I believe you can rest assured something would have been done about it.

I for one am attending the megameet.

I decided against going to the NJAO meet so that I could.

I know that with low attendance, next years megameet probably will not exist. AO members are and will continue to be the feul for these meets. Once you remove the fuel by not showing up they will cease to exist.

Airgun Designs took the initiative in organizing a meet of this caliber, because it would have been somewhat difficult for someone else to do like the smaller reigional meets. Without the smaller meets this would not have happened, but why is everyone favoring the smaller meets as opposed to this?

An AO meet is all about meeting the people you talk to every day.

An AO meet is all about having fun playing paintball.

An AO meet is all about showing up and being there for the experience.

The Mega Meet is a logical progression of all of these things. There are literally people flying/driving/bussing in from all parts of the country. This is going to be the one not to miss, and if many people do miss it, they may not have a second chance.

[Wc Keep]

Originally posted by Heat
though everyone a x-valve and ppl will be linnning up

who says that tom, and jon dont bring a box of goodies to ao meets??? and when i say a box of goodies i dont mean tootsie rolls..

[RusskiX]

I think Potatoboy summed it up completely!

I agree with you 100%

[Blaster]

I may be mistaken, but aren't all the larger AO events on or near the East Coast? Perhaps if you spread things out a bit you would have better attendance (not so many events to try to attend in the same area). I don't think AO has anything planned for the West Coast. We do play paintball and support AO in Oregon and Washington too...

[Dayspring]

This is the FIRST large AO event designed by AGD. Any other AO event on the east coast has been AO member run. SC AO Day and NJ AO Days I, II & III are all run by regular members.

If you want stuff on the west coast, start planning it. If you get enough attendance, then AGD staff may show.

See the difference?

And to the people saying that it's too close to IAO- it's 2 months away. 60 days, almost to the date. That reason is BS IMO.

Originally posted by Blaster
I may be mistaken, but aren't all the larger AO events on or near the East Coast? Perhaps if you spread things out a bit you would have better attendance (not so many events to try to attend in the same area). I don't think AO has anything planned for the West Coast. We do play paintball and support AO in Oregon and Washington too...

[Blaster]

My point was not necessarily in regards to it being an "AO sponsored" event but more to the fact that AGD is not showing any representation to any West Coast events. We do have tournaments and scenario games out here. If they are not seeing the kind of turnout they would like to see perhaps they should try another location.

[Thordic]

I said that two events in Pittsburgh in the same summer was too much, Dayspring. Not that they were too close together, necessarily.

But I never intended to attend from the start.

[Dayspring]

That's untrue... Tom was at a big game out there not too long ago. If you actually look at the list of events that AGD people are attending, you see that they go all over the US.

Originally posted by Blaster
My point was not necessarily in regards to it being an "AO sponsored" event but more to the fact that AGD is not showing any representation to any West Coast events. We do have tournaments and scenario games out here. If they are not seeing the kind of turnout they would like to see perhaps they should try another location.

[Wc Keep]

i dont think enough people look at the ao events day calendar. i believe one guy said make one closer to st louis, hello there is a st louis meet. if you expect tom, jon or anyone related to agd to come out to your ao day then you cant expect to have 15 people.

blaster im not trying to shout you out or anything, but why dont you try and start a really big ao day out on the west coast. ask the folks who started ao days what they did that was successful and what failed. take everything that some people say is messing up megameet and make them right. im sure if you got 100 or so people agd will show...

whats too much about 2 events in the same city??? your there for totally different reasons. and dont say its because theres a tourney coming up that people would probably go to, because the next big tourney is chicago nppl and thats not for a few weeks later.

[Star_Base_CGI]

And to those that say money is an issue, if a college student, who plays competitive paintball, pays for all his tourney fees and paint, pays for all his own equipment, is going to costa rica the week before he goes to iao, and has to buy his school books, im sure many of you can find the couple of bucks to go. oh yeah as of yesterday i had no plans on going so i didnt save any money to go. well ive decided im going to go and calculated that if i actually save my money and not spend it on useless stuff, how bout that i can go!!!!

oh and if your getting laid off and unemployed then you shouldnt even be thinking about paintball or going on the internet to talk about it, you should be out looking for another job.

Some people goto college rent equipment and they dont get vacations. Those are the college students that sell last years books to pay for this years books. These are the coloege students that actually know how to work for a living.

As for people who are unemployed. Looking for a job is different than working forty hours a week. Looking for a job is alot harder than working a job. If you dont have your daddys friend to higher you, than your going to have to work work work to find a job. Youll be tired from Searching at Monster.com or OPM.gov and youll want to play some paintball but obviously your not going to have the money to play alot.

My opinion that is you try to make the best of things. If you have a low turnout. You use that opportunity to build a 1 on 1 customer relationship. People will go out there and talk about it. Word gets around.

If you say stuff a sock in it and Im not playing. People will say your a poor sport. Youll come off looking like the bad guy. Thats why the call it work. If we could all just sit back and let money rain down from heaven none of us would have to work or look for a job.

Im not any kind of expert at this or anything. Im just saying sometimes things arent easy.

We should'nt expect life to be easy.

[madmatt151]

Originally posted by Thordic
I hope you guys get great turnout, but there hasn't been much hype about the megameet. SC and NJ2 had people talking constantly, I havn't seen much hype about the Megameet.

Also, at least for NJ2, it was in a pretty AO-heavy area. Most of the attendees were locals. If you held it somewhere where lots of travel was involved, attendance would have been way less. [/B]

Well I must agree with Thordic. Planning these events in a densely populated area is the reason there were large turnouts. Small events like these require no planning or pre arrangements on anyone's part. When you have an event that needs hotel reservations, flights etc. then turnout will be a bit low. I never said I was going, but was seriously interested in going. Something did come up and I am glad I never gave my word to go. If it was a local meet though, I probably could come to one of the days. I totally understand the frustrations of planning events. There is a reason why fields give free admission and free cases of paint to people who plan paintball trips. Planning a trip can be aggrivating. I hope you continue to organize and attend events because I have never been to one yet, and I am looking forward to meeting up with all of you and AGD people. Just my $.02

[Blaster]

Dayspring-

Perhaps your geography is better than mine? Maybe you can point out which one of these "AGD Events for 2003" is on or even near the West Coast?

AO Texas Dallas March 15th
Ultimate Maddness Virgnia April 5th (Tk for sure)
Torricelli scenario game Tenn. April 12th (Tk for sure)
AO Meet Indianapolis at Mannys field March 26th (TK for sure)
Sams Big Game Wis. May 3rd Tk
AO Megameet Pittsburg May 17th (Tk for sure)
Twin Towers Scenario EMR Penn. May 24th Tk
AO Sams WI May 31st Tk
D-Day Ok. June 7th Tk
Super7 Chicago June 7th (no TK)
PSP Chicago June 21st (tk hunting fossils)
IAO Pittsburg July (Tk for sure)
Ron Stern Camp Aug 2nd(Tk for sure)
Shatnerball II - EMR Penn. Aug 30th(Tk for sure)
World Cup or NPPL Finals florida (Tk for sure)
Paintball Sams fall Big Game WI Oct 4th(Tk for sure)

[Dayspring]

Tom was at the last blast with Ben Toricelli last year in December.

[Reo5th]

Originally posted by Mossman
Reo5th seems to have just become aware that there is an opposite sex called females, and he's a bit involved in that, i guess. I suggest everyone PM the hell out of him and make him come.

[Gadget]

If anyone has got some air miles going free that they'd like to donate, I'll head on over