Bay Area Meetup: Operation Success!

When I was working in Washington D.C. I was lucky enough to go to quite a few cool player meet ups. The first of which was the BoB BBQ, which was tons of fun and had amazing food. Then, a year later I was back again and invited to join the VA/MD Meetup group for two of their meet ups (although I only was able to make one). It was super fun, and I really, really enjoyed hanging out with other EVE players. I was also able to go to Fanfest in 2014 which is, I suppose, the creme de la creme of player gatherings. I would love to go back.

But I never thought I'd try and organize my own until I got out here to San Francisco and didn't see anything happening near me. I found another meet up in Millbrae, but it's much too far for me to get there easily. The next closest one was in Los Angeles. So the only thing to do was to try and organize my own.

I spent a lot of time speaking with Bam Stoker, picking his brain since he's put on a decent gathering or two in his time. He gave me some good advice regarding timing and logistics and hooked me up with some really great prizes to give away.

So, armed as best I could with what I expected to be a fun, but haphazard meetup, I set a date, picked a location and started putting the word out. I put up a post on EVEMeet, created a Google Form for people to RSVP with, spammed #meetup in TweetSlack and Twitter. And then I waited.

About 6 people signed up which was more than I was expecting, so I was quite happy! When I originally picked the date, I wasn't thinking about it, but it happened to coincide with TwitchCon. Happily, CCP Manifest and CCP Logibro were in San Francisco for TwitchCon and asked if anyone else was around. I reached out and invited them, but wasn't sure if they would come or not.

But, sure enough, they did! Despite being 15 minutes late to my own event, it turned out to be really fun and pretty crowded since we couldn't rearrange our tables (although we did anyway).

Top Left: Reginald Sakakibara, Bottom Left: CCP Logibro, Top Right: Calmatt, Mid Right: Xian Dahr, Bottom Right: Mykol Ansii

Most of us were fairly veteran, but we did have two players who had only been in the game for a month! Everyone hung out for about five hours, had a lot of beers, had some good food, and left with wishes for the next meetup!

Top Left: Girlfriend, Bottom Left: Coworker, Top Right: Alekseyev Karrde, Bottom Right: Coworker

I gave away a PLEX to Reginald for the most embarrasing lossmail (CCP Logibro had the most embarrasing one, but wasn't eligible of course. Anytime you lose a Cockroach, it's pretty embarrasing, but he lost this one to an Imicus. Yikes). Reginald lost a Navy Apocalypse to a Tornado who alphaed him before he could dock. What a ballsy Tornado pilot.

Top Left: CCP Manifest, Bottom Left: Peltar Omari, Top Right: Lomax Aurellius, Bottom Right: Cleototh Shouna

 I'm not sure when the next one will be, but I really look forward to doing this again. And, if you're going to be visiting the Bay Area, drop by the in game channel Bay Area Meetup and we'll grab a drink!