Hi Attendees!

If you've any photo galleries from ESA 2017, please share them here. We all love checking them out.

If you don't know where to put your photos, Google Photos seems to be the most stable and reliable of the current sites available.

Sometimes we need press shots for ESA. If you're happy for us to use your photos for these purposes, please leave a note in your post too.

[centre]http://i.imgur.com/NneENhL.png[/centre]

**Announcing the ESA Volunteer Weekend at the Royal Corner Hotel, Vaxjo.**
Thursday 25 May - Sunday 28 May 2017

**TL;DR: If know you're coming book your travel and  [fill in this form](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScrRC5mVJC5JZvG1yjoVvL6ri6GNs2LJ1k3I-21FivJoYJRjg/viewform)**

As part of our feedback review process last year we decided we needed extra time before ESA 2017. Unfortunately, doing this at the beginning of the event itself would be prohibitively expensive in venue hire fees and put a strain on everyone’s already stretched annual leave allowances.

SO! 

I cordially invite everyone interested in volunteering for ESA this year in both technical and non-technical fields to attend this event. Anyone who has helped in the past or wants to become heavily involved in the future is welcome.

**What is happening?**
Thursday and Friday on the technical side will be training, testing and tweaking the streaming system for this year. This is your chance to learn how the capture equipment works in a low-pressure, hands on, ‘press it and see what happens’ environment.

We’re hoping to also organise sessions for hosts to discuss in a casual, in-person setting topics like how to structure an intermission, how to read donations, and what communications needs to happen between tech and hosts.

On Saturday afternoon and night we will be putting on a stream with the full setup, so bring your speedrun games, consoles and PCs! I’ll be taking a backseat and this will be fully ran by people who have acquired the new skills over the weekend.

**How much will it cost?**
The Royal Corner have given us a great deal and the conference room hire is being covered out of the ESA event budget as part of our programme to improve. We will also be providing some snacks and meals on the day. We’ll be block-booking hotel rooms to get the best rate for everyone  (see below)

**How do I book?**
The conference rooms are confirmed and you are free to book your travel now. If you plan on coming please sign up with [this google form](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScrRC5mVJC5JZvG1yjoVvL6ri6GNs2LJ1k3I-21FivJoYJRjg/viewform) and indicate if you want to be included in the hotel block. Our target price is around 250SEK per person per night but this might go up or down depending on numbers. If you’re planning on booking your own hotel room (for example one to yourself) please still fill in the form to let us know you’re coming

**It must be stressed** that you are under no obligation to attend if you want to volunteer at ESA 2017. Those that do come, however, will be much more prepared and able to lead everyone else!

The order is away to the printers... here's the final design by the super lovely http://jazaaboo.com/

https://i.imgur.com/CzKn4he.png

There is one ordered for everyone who signed up before the early payment deadline on 23 June :)

There will be no further opportunity to purchase this limited edition shirt so they are quite the collector's item.

http://i.imgur.com/zZLjY9C.png

**[center]Welcome to ESA![/center]**
For many of you this is your first time travelling to Copenhagen. Here is a quick guide!

When you arrive you must collect your bags. There are several routes, follow signs to 'arrivals'.

When you exit arrivals you will enter a crowd. If you have only a little time, you should head straight ahead to the train station. If you need to wait a while, please meet other runners at Starbucks! To do this you must turn a sharp right when you exit the baggage hall. Here is the location of Starbucks:

[http://i.imgur.com/RKODKpU.jpg](https://imgur.com/RKODKpU)

The circle is the location of the exit of the baggage hall.

Please sit under the painting and put on display something obvious on show that you are going to ESA, like a sheet of paper with the ESA logo or a game controller.

[http://i.imgur.com/uuuB4vb.jpg](https://imgur.com/uuuB4vb)

When you are ready to head to the train station, head in this direction towards the clock.

[http://imgur.com/BRMbS6G.jpg](http://imgur.com/BRMbS6G)

If you need to buy a train ticket, you need to use the red machines 'Tickets to Sweden'. They are located behind the elevators, underneath the clock in the previous photo. They are in many languages.

As your destination you must select 'Växjö' - you type the letter 'V' and then a list appears. Due to the way sorting works, Vä is after Vz so you must pass several pages of stops. You must select 'by bridge' when asked what route you wish to take.
[http://imgur.com/eklb6Vz.jpg](http://imgur.com/eklb6Vz)

Head down the ramp or elevator to track 1. You will need to show your passport to a security guard. The correct Oresundstag is direction Vaxjo or Kalmar.

You should head to track 1 ten minutes before your train is due to depart. It is only 200 metres from Starbucks to the station.
 
[http://imgur.com/uoOthK4.jpg](http://imgur.com/uoOthK4)

On arrival in Vaxjo, your Oresundstag ticket includes one bus journey to the venue or your hotel! 

For **SCANDIC VAXJO** take route 4 to stop Växjö Samarkand norra (direction Smaland Airport)
For **FORTNOX ARENA** take route 4 to stop Växjö Arenastaden norra (direction Smaland Airport)
For **ROYAL CORNER** you should walk, as it is only 800m from the train station. Perhaps use your ticket for the first ride to the arena.

That is all!

I have one further tip. If you have a long wait in the airport going home, use the 'transfer centre' after security to wait! It is quiet and has a lot of natural light.

[http://imgur.com/0bZxeXh.jpg](http://imgur.com/0bZxeXh)

**[center]We look forward to welcoming you at the Fortnox Arena![/center]**

ESA Marathon is a one off special event, an online marathon raising money for The Movember Foundation. It will be ran by a full on site hosting and tech crew from the ESA warehouse in Vaxjo.

23 - 26 November 2018

The following threads contain all information regarding ESA Movember 18

[ESA Movember: Master information](https://www.esamarathon.com/news/1d138bcb-20f5-4366-a84c-3bba0fee11c2)

[ESA Movember: Submissions](https://www.esamarathon.com/news/225fc3cb-0c54-44f0-8112-8f5d37329a19)

[ESA Movember: Personal fundraising](https://www.esamarathon.com/news/e3f154af-6050-46ef-8d2d-5d65c527d0bd)

Please join us on the [ESA Discord](https://discord.gg/esamarathon)

[centre]http://i.imgur.com/NneENhL.png[/centre]

ESA 2017 is a speedrunning centred community meetup and marathon. The doors are open from **Friday the 21st of July until Sunday the 30th of July at 11:59pm** The stream is planned to run from the evening of the 22nd of July the evening of the 29th of July. Mass Housing with cover this entire period and close on Monday the 31st at 10am. There will be a setup day on Thursday 20th, and if you are signed up to the tech or setup crew, you are welcome to stay in a sleeping hall that night as well.

**The deadline for volunteer signups is June 25**

As you know, we always rely on volunteers to help run ESA and this year we'll need more than ever! To make things a bit easier and efficient, we have divided volunteers up into several groups:

**Running stream** (Leaders: Planks/Oasiz)
**Setup and caretaking** (Leader: KrazyRasmus)
**Reading donations** (Leader: Maral/Ladaur)
**Coordinating prizes** (Leader: Edenal)
**Cleaning the venue** (Leaders: Magnus/Aengeln (Northern Sky))
**Runner Coordination** (Leaders: flicky/bangerra)

There's a detailed description of each job and the chance to sign up for one (or several!) in the below Google Form..

>>> [**JOB DESCRIPTIONS**](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Db4d7NP89TUx123L3XsmX4995ns-MTHtfeXIAkWx7P0/pub)
>>> [**SIGNUP FORM**](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSc3bO16CPNJMz-qbu8Mg76ArvbrXIbR7KxfEe6ZPxXov6KwMA/viewform)

**The deadline for volunteer signups is June 25**

At any given time, we are aiming for 2 tech and 2 host crew members, but there’s no hard limit. Other roles will be broadly be daytime only. Full details are in the descriptions.

This is slightly separate, but worth mentioning here. Chat mod signups are live. Donation readers will automatically become mods, but otherwise chat modding will all be done from home, so please don't apply if you're coming to ESA.

>>> [**CHAT MOD SIGNUP FORM**](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSc7EgWLRBDv_E0tJeX9-mItOTjXJbOmd1LY_STOdLkFUTWhEQ/viewform?c=0&w=1
)

Discussions surrounding volunteering are currently happening on our Discord and we'll be opening a private 2017 Volunteer room shortly! If you have not joined the server yet, feel free to log on and bond with your future fellow best friend/partner in crime. 

>>> [**ESA DISCORD SERVER**](https://t.co/DdSkppXByJ)

If you have any more questions about what you'll be doing please send a message to the named group leaders!

Here it is, drawn live on stream, the ESA2016 tech rota!

First of all thanks for so many of you for volunteering. It means that we have been able to allocate everyone a fraction of the time of last year, 12 hours total with only one 'night' shift each. For the purpose of the rota, a nightshift is either 0000-0400 or 0400-0800. We realise these are not very fun times to work, which is why I did the draw live to make sure it was fair.

There is no rota given for the first day or final night as it is expected that almost all of the tech crew will be hanging around.

During your shifts you will work with your buddy, and there'll always be another senior tech person available. They might not be at tech the whole time, but they should only be a few minutes away. There will be a phone left at tech for calling them and they should be around for every set-up.

You will be expected to decide between you what role each of you fits better. If you choose a role early it means you can learn it well and develop your own routine.

One of you will be the 'stream pc' person, managing xsplit and audio. You'll need to make sure the correct scene is selected in xsplit, the right mics are live and the run is active in our overlay web app 'speedcontrol'. This is a better job for those who've helped before, either at ESA or one of our other events.

The other job is managing the runners. This means plugging consoles in, handing out mics and selecting the right inputs on the video racks. There will be a guide provided for each different console on how to set up the racks, there should be no guessing. During the runs your job is to keep a check on Discord for feedback from chat moderators of problems in the stream. 

While runs are in progress, one of you will need to upload the previous run to youtube. The person doing this should be comfortable with linux and command line, but the process is quite straightforwardly running a shell script.

Without further ado, here are your times

https://i.imgur.com/xsDxXrg.png

If you want to do individual swaps during the event, please feel free. Make sure you tell a senior tech person who can update the spreadsheet. During runs, we'll have some fun stuff to do like consoles. 

Any more questions please ask below!

Hey!

We were quite happy that bringing back the old style feedback post last time resulted in useful feedback, so we’re doing it again!

Basic ground rules
- Please keep discussion of an individual's points out of this thread and create a separate thread if something needs detailed discussion.
- Please be civil - no curses or personal attacks
- Format your post so it's not a wall of text
- If you've already posted a pastebin somewhere, we're happy if you copy/paste it here.

This thread will be open until 8 March

[centre]http://i.imgur.com/NneENhL.png[/centre]

ESA 2017 is a speedrunning centred community meetup and marathon. The doors are open from **Friday the 21st of July until Sunday the 30th of July at 11:59pm** The stream is planned to run from the evening of the 22nd of July the evening of the 29th of July. Mass Housing with cover this entire period and close on Monday the 31st at 10am.

TICKETS ARE NOW ON SALE! You can buy them at **[http://www.esamarathon.com/tickets](http://www.esamarathon.com/tickets)**

The new pricing structure will allow us a good early working fund to make capital purchases like a projector and screen, and to grow our off stream activity areas

**TICKET BREAKDOWN**

__FULL WEEK WRISTBAND__
This is what most people will buy, admission to Fortnox Arena from Fri 21 July to Sun 30 July

First 150 - 600 SEK **now sold out**
Thereafter, until 22 June (1 month before ESA) - 800SEK
Last minute / at event - 1000SEK

Up until 1 month before the event, if you buy a wristband you will get a custom-printed lanyard with your name on it. Please write your name in the box on the ticket page before adding to basket. If you’re buying for two people, change the name in the box and click ‘add to basket’ a second time.

Those who buy a ‘last minute’ ticket will be given the option at check-in of a blank lanyard that can be written on with a sharpie.

__FINAL WEEKEND WRISTBAND__
Valid from Fri 28 July to Sun 30 July, for people who only want to come for a few days

ALWAYS 350 SEK, purchase in advance or at the venue from Fri 28 July onwards.

Up until 1 month before the event, just like the full week, we will print your name on a lanyard (see above)

__MASS HOUSING__
Open from Fri 21 July to Monday the 31st at 10am. This is an unheated gym hall in the building opposite Fortnox Arena. You should bring an air mat, camping mattress or camping bed. You should also bring a sleeping bag suitable for indoor camping.

First 150 - 400SEK
Thereafter - 650SEK

__AIRBED__
Like before, we can buy an air bed for you for collection at ESA. This is yours to keep if you would like.

ALWAYS 150SEK - available until 1 month before the event.

__2017 EVENT TEE__
This year the teeshirt has been designed by Dr Miawoo and will be unbranded (no sponsors) on the rear

[https://i.imgur.com/7S3qwXxm.png](http://www.esamarathon.com/images/esa/shirt.png)

ALWAYS 100SEK - available until end of day, June 11

__THE HOODIE__
The one, the only, we’re doing a reprint of the deluxe limited edition hoodie from last year

[https://i.imgur.com/LXQfDzBm.jpg](http://www.esamarathon.com/images/esa/hoodie.jpg)

ALWAYS 500SEK - available until end of day, June 11

**FAQ**

__How will I check in?__
Bring your paypal payment receipt(s) to the event. These are your proof of purchase that we will cross-check against a list.

__Is my ticket refundable? __
No, please don’t book a ticket until you know you can come

__Can I still get mass housing if I've already purchased a ticket? __
Yes. Just add mass housing and/or an airbed to the paypal basket and complete the checkout again. Please remember to bring all receipts with you!

__Can I get still a T-shirt if I miss the deadline?__
Unfortunately not, we will not be ordering extra hoodies or teeshirts for sale during the event.

__What's on a personalised lanyard? __
This year we will have an exclusive art piece and your name on the lanyard.

__Can I get still a personalised lanyard if I miss the deadline?__ 
No, but we’ll have blanks that you can write your name on at check in

__What is a personalised lanyard?__ 
It’s an A6 custom made identification tag to wear during the event

__Can I still get an air mattress for mass housing if I miss the deadline?__ 
Unfortunately, no. We need at least one week to order all the air mattresses from our supplier. However, we can point you to a store within walking distance where you can purchase one if you miss the deadline.

[centre]http://i.imgur.com/NneENhL.png[/centre]

ESA 2017 is a speedrunning centred community meetup and marathon. The doors are open from **Friday the 21st of July until Sunday the 30th of July at 11:59pm** The stream is planned to run from the evening of the 22nd of July the evening of the 29th of July. ([Master Thread](http://www.speedrun.com/esa2017/thread/zockn))

This year we have 50 hire bicycles available for the full duration of the event. This scheme is directly as a result of feedback from last year for people who want to get out and explore Växjö, eat or drink downtown, or go for a swim in one of the many lakes. 

In advance of the public announcement we offered volunteer crew an advance sign up period to make sure hosts and tech are suitably covered for transport

**Price**: 230SEK

**Location**: Collection and drop off will be at the Royal Corner hotel. The bike is yours to keep at whatever accommodation you are staying at

**Duration**: Personal hire lasting the full event from Friday 21 July to Monday 31 July

**Signup link**: http://www.esamarathon.com/tickets

**Conditions**: There'll be a short contract to sign on collection, your liability if you lose or trash the bike will be an additional 50€. A lock is included.

Please use this thread to ask any questions

[centre]
http://www.speedrun.com/themes/dreamhack/cover-128.png
https://i.imgur.com/vFcduPX.png[/centre]

Announcing the details of *ESA Winter Highlights*!

After some time confirming details, we're now able to reveal the details of the ESA marathon happening at Dreamhack Winter. We're changing some things around this time, to make the marathon more fun for everyone.

**Winter Highlights**
This new sub-title is going to be our theme for *Dreamhack Winter*. This name captures everything that’s different about Dreamhack, it’s a shorter marathon but with the same great runners. Future ESA side events will all be similarly themed.

Casually it's still just 'the dreamhack marathon' but we feel it's important to develop the event 'brand' as unique and different the week long main event.

**Daily Blocks**
Each day is going to be presented as a themed block, running from 2pm to approximately 5am. These themes are 

Thursday: Modern Games
Friday: Nintendo Games
Saturday: Retro Games

From 5am to 2pm the live stream will stop and show a time-shifted re-run of the previous day’s runs, without the setup time. This is primarily to make sure everyone is well rested and fresh, but it also means our friends in Eastern timezones can see as much of the the same content ‘as live’ as possible.

**Location**
This time we are going to be in the rear of hall B, beside the smash. This will be a louder room than before, but measures should be in place to make it as much ‘business as normal’ as possible.

https://i.imgur.com/cgnpO1e.png

**Charity**
We’ve gone back and forth on this decision a couple of times, and can finally announce ESA Winter Highlights is not going to be following the conventional model of fundraising for charity though incentives. This fits in with keeping the event a low-key community meetup without the pressure of having to stay on message and drive donations.

We’ll have a small conventional tip box below the stream to encourage donations that allow us continue to run side events like going to Dreamhack. They cost quite a bit to put on (compared to what they bring in!) and every little helps. We continue to do these events for the community that comes to them and to help us revise and prepare the technical side for the main event in summer.

**Attendees**
We’re having to cut back our list to runners only this time - there were a substantial number of people who signed up without runs and under the hospitality of Dreamhack we can’t allow this sort of growth. If you’re not in the list below and want to come (or have not made prior arrangement with Edenal), you’ll need to buy your own ticket for Dreamhack. In the future we’ll be announcing daily themes in advance so that people can submit with these ideas in mind.

**The game list**

The **schedule itself is not confirmed** however these are the runs you need to be practising!

**Modern Games - Thursday**
360Chrism - Portal - Any% No OoB
angelaachan - Rhythm Heaven - Any%
Firepaw - The Elder Scroll V: Skyrim - any%
Firepaw - Undertale - TPE (True Pacifist Ending)
Fuzzyness - Sega Bass Fishing - Any%
Hoyo - Return to Castle Wolfenstein - Any% I am Death incarnate!
Irregularjinny - Azure Striker Gunvolt 2 - Any% Copen
JangBang - Timesplitters 2 - Any% easy
JangBang - Eggomania - Hard boiled hard
Los & ellaapiie - LEGO Harry Potter - Year 1 - Co-op
MartinForSlund - Rayman - any%
Nord - Country Justice: Revenge of the Rednecks - Any%
Nord - Warden: Melody of the Undergrowth - Any%
Nord - Rise of the Tomb Raider - Any%
thiefbug - Mirror's Edge - any%

**Nintendo Games - Friday**
360Chrism - Pikmin 3 - All Fruits
druvan7 - Mario kart: double dash!! - 150cc All cup tour
Flippy_o / Taggo3435 - Super Mario 64 - 120 Star and 16 star
jelluh24 - Super Mario Galaxy - Any% Luigi
Linkus7 - Luigi's Mansion - Any%
Linkus7 - The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD - Master Sword
ParadoxKarl - super mario 64 ds - 50 Star
thiefbug - The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time - All Medallions

**Retro Games - Saturday**
COOLKID - Strider - any%
COOLKID vs Dxtr - Mega Man - any%
dxtr - Batman: The Video Game - Any%
dxtr - Ninja Gaiden - Any%
Edenal - Mega Man - Any%
Edenal - Chakan - Any%
Edenal & Grukk - World of Illusion - co-op
Fuzzyness - Pokemon Red - Any% Glitchless
joka - Mega Man 1-10 - 86 robot masters
joka - Little Nemo: The Dream Master - Any%
MaxieTheHatter - Wacky Races - Any%
MeridianPrime - Dr. Mario - Any%
Pro_JN - Magic Sword - Normal Beginning
Svenne - Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels - Any% Luigi
Svenne - Super Mario Bros. 3 - Any% No Wrong Warp
Svenne - Super Mario Bros. 2 - All Levels

With the current popularity of pastebins, we thought we'd try the old style of feedback thread again. There's something nice about reading other people's feedback alongside your own, so let's get started :)

We'll be reviewing the thread and our own internal feedback in the coming month and will get a review out as soon as it's ready.

[centre]https://imgur.com/ZgRQ1zQ.png[/centre]

ESA invites you to return to Växjö, Sweden for our first winter event! Taking place from 17 Feb to 25 Feb entirely within the Royal Corner, this will be a small event with a ‘second stream’ / old ESA feel.

**This post was significantly revised on 12/10/2017**

#TLDR
Run submissions -> http://esa.lordmau5.com/
Tickets -> https://esamarathon.eventbrite.com/
Hotels -> See below

#Why ESA Winter?

For the past 3 years we’ve hosted a 2-3 day marathon at each Dreamhack and have realized that it’s just as much work as running an event ourselves. We feel Dreamhack just wasn’t long enough to present our best work and the loud halls of Dreamhack don’t provide a pleasant venue to practice, speedrun, or hang out.

After the success of “ESA Winter Highlights” at Dreamhack Winter 2016 we believe it’s time to run a fully independent winter event. We want the schedule at ESA Winter to be as diverse and varied as the ESA second stream this year, and to carry a similar positive vibe. If you’ve ever considered that you want to do a marathon run but have never attended a marathon before, we think this is going to be the ideal place.

We will try our hardest to make sure everyone submitting has at least one game in the marathon. Like old times! There are going to be no limits to tickets even if you are not running. In the event the first hotel allocation sells out we will explore further options, like during ESA.

#When?

The marathon will run for 24 hours a day from approximately late afternoon Tuesday 20th to late evening Saturday 24th. It will be streamed on www.twitch.tv/esamarathon 

Hotel check in will be available from 4pm Friday 16th, and the event space will open later on Saturday 17th when ready. Anyone who wants to help setup and tear down the practice rooms will need to arrive on Saturday and in return we can offer a [200SEK] ticket. Hotel check out will be on Sunday 25th or Monday 26th at 10am and we hope to have completed teardown by Sunday night.

There is no need to stay the full duration, but no discounts are available for short trips.

#Submissions

The game selection and schedule group will this year be lead by Fatzke in cooperation with eTholon and IrregularJinny. For full details see the submissions forum post.

#Volunteers

Attendees who are selected to help on tech, hosting or setup, and who are willing to volunteer 16 hours to their task, will be offered a half price [200SEK] ticket. For tech/hosting this is 4x4h shifts, for setup this is making yourself throughout all of the setup/teardown times.

#Accommodation

Accommodation is in the hotel itself, and you can book single, twin, triple and quad rooms. The price list is attached below. There will be no mass housing available at ESA Winter.

Solo rooms: 600SEK per person per night
Double rooms: 400SEK per person per night
Triple rooms: 333SEK per person per night 
Quad rooms: 300SEK per person per night (limited number)

To reserve a, contact the hotel directly. The reservation code is “ESAW”.

Email: q.royalcorner@choice.se
Tel: +46 470 70 10 00

#Charity

ESA Winter will be once again fundraising for Save the Children. Please consider in your submissions any incentives that you would find acceptable for your event!

#Ticket Price

The normal price ticket for attendees will be 400SEK. This will be used to pay the conference space for the week.

Volunteers will be offered a discount (see above). If you’re intending to volunteer, please wait until the end of volunteer registration before buying a ticket and we will send you a special discount code. If you apply you are guaranteed a ticket no matter what.

Regular tickets can be bought here: http://esamarathon.eventbrite.com/

During the booking process you will be offered the chance to buy the signature (grey) hoodie, a new lightweight (purple) hoodie and an event tee.

The grey hoodie has the shiny embroidered logo as before

The tee and the light hoodie will have this year’s new screen print design

#Timeline

##Game Submissions and Volunteer Applications
Open October 2nd through October 22nd (extended by another week)

##First cuts
November 5th (if necessary)

##Full game list, schedule and game incentive submissions
December 1

##Open Registration
NOW and onwards

##Off-site Volunteer Submissions
Open January 14 thru 28

#ESA Winter 2018 Organisers
* Edenal - Lead org - Finance / Tech - Discord Edenal#2460
* Planks - Asst org - Finance / Tech - Discord Planks#3102
* Fatzke - Asst org - Game Selection and Scheduling - Discord Fatzke#4192
* KrazyRasmus - Asst org - On site activities - Discord KrazyRasmus#0431

Please in the first instance direct event questions to one of us on Discord, and commercial/sponsor opportunities to info@europeanspeedsterassembly.com

Hi Everyone

Thanks for your feedback about this year’s event. We’d like to talk a little about some of these points and ask for further feedback on our proposed changes.

**Setup times**
We didn’t have a very good year keeping to schedule on stream 1, and there’s a range of plans we are already setting up to try and reset on this next year. There was no one big thing that caused us to go long vs schedule, just lots of little things that were a mixture of technical and human.

**Code of Conduct**
This will be significantly revised for 2020 with more explicit rules put in place for some areas.

**PCs**
This event always was going to have growing pains. This is the first Summer event for five years where we have been wholly self sufficient in PC stock. We think this is the correct long term move, the loaners we have had in the past were growing old beyond the point they could be reasonably presented as gaming PCs. This year we bought and built 20 brand new systems, however unfortunately this was not enough. 

The plan going forward is to continue to buy five to ten new systems for every event, so that we have a rolling replacement program of strong gaming PCs. Unfortunately, this is a significant expense, and one that we can’t afford without increasing the price of attending ESA. Each PC is 500 to 800 euros, this renewal program may constitute 20% of the event budget for Winter. Further on in the post we will talk about this a little more.

**Stream room layout**
Your feedback has been heard loud and clear and in the future there will be two changes made to the stream room. Next Summer, all practice and casual gaming setups will be moved out of Oresundshallen into other spaces in the hotel. Secondly, we will use the dividing wall to provide partial or full isolation of one stream room from the other, depending on how flexible the arrangement is.

**Quiet Practice and PC room misuse**
In the future all side rooms will have a named contact person to address issues of misuse with.

**Fundraising**
An incremental improvement action plan has been developed to build upon the success of this event in the future.

**Arcade**
Next year there’ll be big changes to the arcade. We need to travel smarter, about two thirds of our transport to ESA this summer was taken up by arcade cabinets, particularly the racing games. 

ESA’s current stock is made up of cabinets we’ve been able to pick up at relatively low cost within Sweden. We have investigated the pricing of further imports, and importing machines 1 by 1 is neither cost nor time effective. The upfront spend to bring about six more high quality machines (we’re talking SDVX, Bishi Bashi, Scotto, Pop’n, maybe DDR HD) is about €20,000.

We are therefore considering if the arcade should either
1) Stay with the current selection of games, minus the driving cabinets which we can not afford the space to bring.
2) Buy a container of the above games from Japan, with a heavy focus on bringing modern and music games to ESA.

We would prefer to go for option 2, however for this to be at all possible we will need to develop a business plan where the arcade becomes closer to self sufficient. A part of this would be charging for credits. In this arrangement, we would still bring the pandora’s box multicabs and they would remain free to play in a different area from music games.

**Bar**
The hotel has a licence until 1 am, and we will talk with them to try and secure later opening hours next year. This will be on a “use it or lose it” basis, so long as people are drinking this should be no problem.

**Volunteer compensation**
We’ll be moving back to more of a ticket based system in 2020. More details will be announced in due course. 

**Hotel AC**
Main room - We know it’s colder than the rest of the space, but it’s pre-set by the hotel and can’t be changed. 
Hotel rooms - Again, unfortunately a fundamental design issue with the hotel that is outweighed by the positives of being there.

**Sponsor plugs vs donations**
We have a balance to strike. If runners shout for donations and there are none, something will be said. We are looking to build next year on the indicator LED we trialled so the runner can be kept silently informed.

**Next steps - Ticket pricing**
As may be clear from this post, there are a couple of areas we want to improve upon that have direct and significant cost to the event. As a result, we would like to bring in the concept of a supporter ticket. This can be viewed as a donation to event finances with a few perks. Long term we would anticipate three tiers, however for winter we will be selling just one. The perks will be a t shirt, a special supporter name badge, and a bundle of arcade credits if we go pay to play.

The ESA Winter pricing for general admission will be as follows
40 tickets at 80 euros
40 tickets at 90 euros
Thereafter at 100 euros

The supporter ticket will be an additional 30 euros

Tickets go on sale from 1 Sep @ 3pm CEST from https://www.ticketfairy.com/event/esa-winter-2020/

**Final words**
ESA continues to punch above it's weight in production quality. We are a bootstrapped event (no investors) and know from the positive feedback that you wrote that what we offer is phenomenal value, and phenomenally valuable to the speedrunning community in Europe.

We're in this for the long term, and we hope you are too.

Not much to say from my point of view

We had a really successful and fun event!

Let me know your thoughts on....

IRL:
Donation reading
Intermission hosting
Runner experience
Venue quality

At home:
Stream layouts
Sound and video quality
Games played

And anything else you an think of?

This post is a duplication of the main post on our website 
https://esamarathon.com/news/ac0e260c-4b8f-4208-9e6c-7cd755a6076b

## Intro

It’s time to open the recruitment for tech this year. Tech’s responsibility is to run the stream that everyone at home watches.

This year tech is going to be a smaller, tighter team. Our goal is to recruit **12** volunteers in total. These volunteers will be working alongside six senior tech in teams of two. These senior tech are trusted, returning volunteers who this year have taken on the extra responsibility of being leaders.


## Structure of tech this year

These senior tech this year are **Tyr**, **Gael**, **Linkboss**, **JohnUK89**, **Milk** and **Popeter**. These guys will be doing about 24 hours each through the week, supported by **Edenal**, **Planks**, and the software team **Zephyyrr**, **Zoton2** and **Oromit**

The goal is that during the daytime, while the two scheduled people will be there, there will always be additional knowledgeable people around to help. During the night time, of which there will be one or two “antisocial shifts” each, only straightforward single player runs will be scheduled to keep stress to a minimum!

In the future, when we need senior tech, we’ll be looking to past returning tech volunteers who want to continue to support ESA with their time.


## What you’ll be doing

As a volunteer, you’ll be working with one of these senior techs for about 12 hours. In this time we you’ll learn how to operate our stream overlay software, mixer, and how to connect consoles. In addition, like all other ESA volunteers, you’ll be required to spend a couple of hours helping out at the registration/infodesk.

For a full rundown in more detail, the YouTube intro videos from last year are still the best place to go. Nothing in our setup has changed since then <https://goo.gl/yE5rg5>


## Our offer to you

In return for helping, we are offering a ticket for 400SEK and some sort of daily catering while on shift. The exact nature isn’t confirmed, but it’ll probably be pizza take out!

We will show preference to those who are able to stay the full day on Sunday 29th, leaving on the 30th. This is to assist with packing away the streaming area.


## Applications

**Signup here!** <https://goo.gl/kPJ5MK>

If you’ve helped in the past, please write in the notes who you worked with. This will help us make an informed decision.

This form will be open until 1 month before the event, or until a suitable number of volunteers are selected. You may be contacted via discord at any point up to or after the submission deadline for a chat or to let you know you’ve been selected.

If you have any questions, please @Planks in #tech-chat on discord

[centre]http://i.imgur.com/NneENhL.png[/centre]

As usual we'd like to offer you the chance to give your feedback on ESA. Without pre-empting feedback too much, it is the feeling of the organisers that this year's event ran well. We started and finished on time using only two setup blocks and had no major technical issues on the streaming side. 

When you write your post, please consider if you want to comment on any of the following areas:

Experience as a runner (selection process, experience at the streaming area, satisfaction with tech during setup, and standard of hosting during your run)
Experience as an attendee (finding Fortnox, checking in, venue, cleanliness, etc), 
Experience volunteering at tech or hosting,
Experience of side events (arcades, board games, community run tournaments)
Experience of accommodation and distance to/from Fortnox Arena (be it a hotel or mass housing). 
Ability to find suitable practice equipment for your game(s)

If you watched at home,

Your experience of the stream,
Your experience of the donation tracker,
Your thoughts on the overall standard of runs on display, any major highlights and any genre or era of runs you thought were underrepresented 

And of course any other area you can think of!

If you've already written an event pastebin (rather than a shoutouts to friends pastebin) please just copy it over.

In the coming weeks we'll be reviewing the event and your feedback will help shape next year's ESA.

If there's anything you're unhappy posting here under your name, please contact us privately using our anonymous Google Form. We'll read everything submitted and hold it in equal stature to public posts here.

[**Private or anonymous feedback option**](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScD9XA8CBgj8mIlvkUPz-Y_QtO7PcTIpzOPxmRP8jtSfG8llg/viewform)

Regards

Planks

PS. Here's our Discord reaction wall from the night of the event
[centre]https://i.imgur.com/XIw7cFD.png[/centre]

[centre]http://i.imgur.com/NneENhL.png[/centre]

Hi! :)

As usual we'd like to offer you the chance to give your feedback on ESA. I'd like to pre-empt before we begin about the first couple of days of streaming. We know it was a rough start and there'll be a separate statement published shortly. 

When you write your post, it would be an aid if you can consider the following areas specifically:

Experience as a runner (selection process and actual run time)
Experience as an attendee (arriving, checking in, venue, cleanliness, etc), 
Experience volunteering at tech or hosting,
Experience of accomodation (be it your hotel or mass housing). 

If you watched at home,

Your experience of the stream (see note above ^_^)
Your experience of the donation tracker,
Your experience as a chat mod
Your thoughts on the overall standard of runs on display, any major highlights and anything you thought was underrepresented 

And of course any other area you can think of!

In the coming weeks we'll be reviewing the event and your feedback will help shape next year's ESA.

Regards

Planks

**ESA Winter 2020**
Dates: 15 to 22 Feb 2020
Venue: Quality Hotel View, Malmö

The purpose of this thread is to consolodate all information

**General Info**
* [Master News Post](https://esamarathon.com/news/e7a9a8a5-658a-4eea-a2f9-5b178a812be4)
* [Registration](https://www.ticketfairy.com/event/esa-winter-2020/)
* [Hotel Booking](https://www.nordicchoicehotels.com/hotels/sweden/malmo/quality-hotel-view/special-offers/esa-2020-februari/)  (Scroll to the BOTTOM of the page!)
* [Prize Submission](https://forms.gle/6goXFQEqsN9xY8d8A) for personal prizes - open until 20 January 2020
* For corporate prizes please contact [orgs@esamarathon.com](mailto:orgs@esamarathon.com)

**Game Selection**
[Announcement](https://esamarathon.com/news/fb5612b7-0021-4ac3-8fa3-afa717c85fb2) - LIVE
[Submissions open](https://esamarathon.com/news/fb5612b7-0021-4ac3-8fa3-afa717c85fb2) - 2019-10-20
Submissions close - 2019-11-03
[First cuts](https://esamarathon.com/news/e006ed3e-7ca3-4a2a-bbb0-93202346cca5) - 2019-11-17
Chase game submissions - 2019-12-12
Schedule announcement - 2019-12-15
[Charity announcement - Save the Children](https://esamarathon.com/news/d29f031b-b718-45a4-90df-c93941799981) - 2020-01-14 

**Volunteering Applications**
[Announcement](https://esamarathon.com/news/01c93c07-26a6-46ab-b14f-4b5f97b301b6) - 2019-11-16
Submissions open - 2019-12-15
Submissions close - 2020-01-15
Acceptance notifications - TBC
Provisional schedules published - TBC

[centre]http://i.imgur.com/NneENhL.png[/centre]

Hopefully you are home and beginning the process of rest and recuperation from ESA. Packing up this weekend was far easier than last year, thanks to so many of you hanging back to help pack up on Sunday, so we thank you enormously.

As an organising team we have many thoughts (almost all good!) on ESA this year, but before we share them, we need as usual to listen. Please use this thread to post your thoughts on any part of ESA, whether you watched at home or were an attendee. It is important you are critical if needs be, so we can effectively plan for next year.

We will be feeding summarised feedback to the hotel, and they will be providing a group response in due course. If you have specific complaints hotel service that require a personal response, please email them **directly** as we can not handle individual points.

All on site attendees will shortly also receive a short multiple choice survey by email with a comments box. Comments made here will remain private to the organising committee.

If you have already written a pastebin, please copy/paste it here. It helps us out a lot to have all comments in one place

See you next time! 

Planks