A VERY IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT

[Megageth]

BC2 may not be out but I have a feeling that Axxess will be feeling a little left behind with WebAfrica's progress on the gaming front so we could try to get them involved as sponsors and get a server going as soon as BC2 is released, again, as mentioned with us offering to admin. These are ideas that I back.

[Phatso]

Have there been any updates on this matter?

Curious cos its been on muh mind

[J_Th4ng]

I haven't heard anything as yet since our meeting with them last week. I've just drafted the following follow up email to Martin and Joe:

Good afternoon Martin/Joe,

Firstly, let me say thank you for the opportunity to meet last week, I thought it was very productive, and certainly aided my understanding of your ambitions for a partnership between Digital Life and clan grrr. It’s now been a little over a week since our meeting, and I thought it would be a good time to send you a quick email, in order to find out how things were progressing on your end. You mentioned having meetings with potential partners and sponsors in the latter part of last week, and I was hoping to get back any feedback that you may have been given by these parties.

To give a short update from our side, I must say that clan enthusiasm has increased markedly over the last week. Having had a chance to meet and understand your thinking about how the relationship between the clan and Digital Life will work, I was able to articulate this to our members far more effectively and in considerably more detail than before, to the point that everyone is rather excited at the prospect of getting involved in the Digital Life world. Everyone is looking at ways that we can contribute content to the web presence, people have created blogging accounts with Google in order to familiarise themselves with the process, and we’ve had suggestions of activities that we might be able to perform that we hope will grow us as a brand within Digital Life, and also attract other gamers to Digital Life and partners.

On the gaming front, the clan has been getting ready for the release of the new Battlefield title, ‘Bad Company 2’ (BC2) on the 5th of March. A large proportion of our members have been involved in testing of the BETA release of the game (BETA testing finished today), and we’ve been putting a lot of thought into the roles and specialisations that we will be adopting when the game is released. A number of people have been looking into emergency hardware upgrades, as this title is considerably more demanding on PC resources than the games we have played in the past. At this point in time, it is likely that BC2 leagues will start up shortly after the game’s release, with AGASA (The Amateur Gamers Association of South Africa) looking to open registrations for the first league event during the month of March. There are some very exciting times ahead for the clan!!

How have you guys been getting on with the additional logistics and planning that you were looking into? With the upcoming release of BC2 and the league registrations, it would be really great if we could get to a point whereby we can do some kind of announcement in the coming weeks. We could use the new game’s launch to create a wave of content for the website, dealing with reviews of the game, in-depth looks at game modes, strategy and competitive requirements, as well as introducing clan members that will form part of our starting line-up. Also, if we were to apply Digital Life branding to the team itself (forum signatures, clan branding – in and out of game, team name and the like) we can hopefully draw some initial interest from the community, particularly whilst there will be a strong interest in the clans that will be registering for the upcoming league.

Another suggestion from the membership was that we might want to look into the possibility of hosting a LAN party for the new game sometime in the near future. Hosting it in JHB of CPT should make it possible to minimise costs for us to get a team involved, and obviously it would be great publicity if we could announce the “Digital Life Bad Company 2 LAN event – hosted by grrr” in the early days after the game’s release. Interest would most likely be considerable.

Anyway, as I’m sure you can see by the content of this email, we’re all rather excited at the prospect of what our partnership could bring!! Clearly, the first step in the process will be to get our web presence migrated onto the Digital Life servers and linked into the Digital Life presence. Hopefully this is something that we can get started in the very near future? Of course we still need to have sight of your code of conduct for web content and forum behaviour, just to ensure that no-one inadvertently crosses the line somewhere!

At this stage, I’d appreciate any progress information and feedback that you can provide so that I can feed it back to the guys and girls in the clan. Everyone wants to know when we can get started, and what plans we can be make now to ensure a speedy and smooth launch.

Regards,

Jarrod McElhinney

Let's see what they come back with.

[gr@v1ty]

Another well written mail from our leader

Thanks again for the efforts and keeping the ball rolling Drags.

Looking forward to their response!

[Onyx]

Impressive as always. Thanks Jarrod.

[Paul]

Yip you should be president or something (most like the or something)

[J_Th4ng]

Response from Martin is in:

Hello Jarrod

Great to have such a fastidious a person as yourself on the team (Mike vote him for chairman again), and I trust this will not only enhance the Clan Grrr’s representation but also the DL brand.

I am still currently discussing the finite details internally with the relevant strategic players and will hopefully have concluded within the first week of March, with April/May print deadline looming, but I can report that various potential sponsors presentations have been scheduled over the next 2/3 weeks to discuss the sponsorship opportunities with.

I am aware of the timing with regard to the Bad Company 2 release and foresee us not being in a position to fully strategise and provide the information by then unfortunately, but I do have the following schedule for us to work towards.

24th May – Big Bang launch (print and online)
16th April – Final material supply and layout (print and online)
1st April – All contracts and agreements to be signed
17th March – Conclude all sponsorship proposals together with Clan branding and marketing
15th March – Soft site integration
10th March – Provide Clan Grrr with working framework, requirements and roadmap

Joe is also currently on Leave until next Wednesday but we can conclude within the week starting the 8th of March by which time I would have formulated the various requirements and % of sponsorship feedback.

I have attached our standard online Terms of service which we may want to alter for our specific relationship going forward.

I trust that the above is of some use to you and the clan and hopefully you are all starting to familiarise yourself with the MYDL website and forward any ideas any of the Clan may have etc.

In the meantime let’s work towards the above schedule and hopefully we can celebrate our introduction to the world on the 24th of May.

Regards
Martin Green
Sales Manager
DigitalLife

Looking good guys. I think we're certainly on track nyx:

[gr@v1ty]

Response from Martin is in:

...
I trust that the above is of some use to you and the clan and hopefully you are all starting to familiarise yourself with the MYDL website and forward any ideas any of the Clan may have etc....

Oh dear! Where? What?

[flycatchr]

wooohooo
a time line is awesome

[Onyx]

After reading Jarrod's email and then their response.... nyx:

Thanks again, Jarrod.