Philip Wride’s Blog

I think this is becoming a bit of a habit; only updating with recap posts of what has been going on in the past month or so. I really should look at breaking this cycle but for now it will have to do. Perhaps my New Years Resolution should be to write more frequently?

Anyway, on to what has been happening in December:

Guinness World Records - Following on from the Party in November Elysium has finally received the finished (printed) version of the Gamer’s Edition 2009. This won’t be released until February 4th 09 but we now have our hands on a copy showcasing the section written by Elysium titled “Pro-Gaming”.

Media Camp London 2 - December saw Elysium attend its first “Social Media” unconference hosted at the SAE Institude in London. A really useful experience and a good networking session that has allowed us to re-evaluate some of the processes we utilise.

Be* Broadband - As with all things Christmas it is a time for parties and Elysium was fortunate to be invited to the Be* Broadband Christmas party. A good time was had by all and Elysium will be looking to maintain the relationship into 2009.

BeGamer.co.uk - Be* Broadband’s official gaming portal had a number of updates released during December with more in the pipeline including exclusive offers, a live games arena and links into the Be* Second Life Island.

I think that is about it for this month although there may be a few things I have missed. The only other thing is to wish everyone a good Christmas (if you celebrate it) and a positive look forward to 2009.

I have to say I am still really bad at updating this blog with everything that is going on so it is time for another “update” post giving a brief summary of everything that has happened recently.

WCG Cologne - At the beginning of November Elysium travelled to Cologne with a number of the Be* Unlimited staff to experience the thrills and spills of one of the world’s leading competitive events, the World Cyber Games Grand Finals.

Guinness World Records Day Party - We also attended a party hosted by Guinness World Records to celebrate their GWR Day. Elysium managed to bag an invite having written the section on “Pro-Gaming and eSports” for the 2009 Gaming Edition which will be released in February 2009.

More ELSPA / Byron - More sessions for the Byron Action Plan will also be taking place during November at the ELSPA offices.

I am sure there are some other things that should go on here as well and when I think of them I will try and do another post, no guarantees though!

Another long gap in between posts so here is another catch up on what has been happening recently.

Be Gamer Launch - The Be* Broadband sponsored gaming portal has finally launched (although in early Beta) and is now open to the wider gaming community. It launched with a competition to predict the winner of the EuroKrieg CS:Source tournament which had been sponsored by Be*.

UKeSA Launch - An organisation that is looking to elevate eSports into the mainstream. Elysium has been involved in a number of steering panel meetings for senior community figures and will look to continue being involved to help drive it forward.

GamesAid Charity Poker - This time as part of the EuroGamer Expo and London Games Week, this poker event didn’t go quite so well as I found myself playing fast and loose due to receiving a call that the Be Gamer portal had launched and that my services were required.

Sony PSP in Education - Elysium also attended a breakfast session hosted by FutureLab that showcased how Sony had been introducing their PSP handheld devices into education and some thoughts from educators about how successful it had been.

Whats coming up? - Elysium will be taking a short trip to Cologne for the World Cyber Games Grand Finals at the beginning of November and will continue working with the ELSPA Working Groups. It will also be heavily involved in the continued development of the Be Gamer portal for Be* Broadband.

Well what can I say other than whoops, I have completely neglected this blog after starting to write it and planning to use it instead of the news part of the site. However now that things have started to settle down a bit I am in the process of moving it across, changing the links and will “hopefully” now write on a more regular basis about all the things happening at Elysium.

As a quick recap of some of the major talking points here we go:

Stuff Awards; I was fortunate enough to be invited to the Stuff Magazine Gadget Awards at the Dorchester Hotel in the middle of September by BE* Broadband and it was a pretty good night with some nice food, nice atmosphere and a pretty reasonable American comedian.

ELSPA Working Groups; Having consulted on the original Byron Review last year Elysium is now supporting ELSPA by being involved in the Online Security and Education Working Groups they have established.

BE* Contract Extended; A good piece of news here, Elysium has managed to negotiate a contract extension with BE* Broadband until the end of the year to help them create the initial phase of development for the projects we had been consulting on.

DEVELOP, EIF and GameHorizon; Elysium attending both the DEVELOP Conference in Brighton and the EIF Conference in Edinburgh at the end of July / beginning of August. Both were very useful in terms of gaining information and networking. We also attended the GameHorizon Conference in Newcastle which was a major success for it’s first year of operation.

On a more personal note I have just started back at University to undertake an MSc in International Marketing which should hopefully prove useful to all my clients and colleagues.

Well last week (Thursday) I attended a conference at the University of Stafford focusing on MMO’s, some of the research into them and various other bits and pieces that related. Although I’d like to think I have a good understanding of MMO’s having played them for far too many years some of the information provided and certainly the “future vision” statement delivered by Prof. Richard Bartle gave me a greater insight.

The guys from Codemasters were on hand as well; Ed from the Marketing department who I have known for a few years and Sam, aka Satine, from the Codemasters Community management team. They talked about how to build and maintain online communities, about creating advocates for a product and how there are different stages in the life cycle of a community. All the information they presented was relevant to what I do and it was great to have other peoples take on the topic rather than just my own working from experience.

Overall a good day and some useful networking opportunties and some fantastic food provided by the University. One of the interesting things to look at following up will be a piece of research being conducted by a Masters student into the real / virtual work team roles adopted by different personality types with particular focus on FPS games.

The first weekend in May was a busy one with myself and my entourage jetting off to France to manage the Philips amBX presence at the LAN79 event in Bressuire. After a few hiccups on Friday (Sean missed his flight at the Stansted Express was cancelled) we got everything sorted, the stand set up and the games playing with the amBX kits.

Saturday and Sunday were days interacting with attendees and demonstrating the awesome power of the amBX kits with the lights, fans and rumble pads interacting with the games. Guitar Hero 3 was definitely the best game for showing off the lights whilst Assassin’s Creed utilised the fans and rumble pads along with the lights.

Overall a good event, and some good video footage shows people getting involved and testing the kits available on the different games. Hopefully this will be the first of many events Elysium will manage on behalf of Philips but we will wait and see what happens on that front.

So I said I should write a blog and then neglected it by not writing anything after doing an introduction post. Well now that I am back from a busy few weeks I thought sod it, might as well write it now and do a quick recap of what has been happening.

First there was the EZ Meet at Alton Towers in April, a good opportunity to meet some of the people from the guild who I play online with regularly. This was a pretty good day although the weather was a little cold and overcast but good fun was had by all (apart from those too scared to go on some of the rides!)

This was followed by a few days in London for the first session of the TIGA roadshow and another consultation session for Be Broadband. The week after I was back in London but this time for a different reason. On Friday 25th April I got a call from the BBC asking if I was available on Monday to do an interview about the release of GTA4 so off I trekked back down to the big smoke to get a hands-on with the game and do an interview. Snippets of this were aired on BBC 1 during the 6 O’clock and 10 O’clock news and were followed by another phonecall from the BBC asking if I was able to do a live interview for BBC Breakfast News the following day. A 5am start and a private car at 6am followed by makeup and a live interview on the news couch at 7:50am with Darren Waters, a BBC Technology correspondent, and then a second live interview at 8:45am before heading into London to relax for the rest of the day.

This was followed by the leaving party for Fred Hasson, the former CEO of TIGA, and a fantastic result for Man Utd in the Champions league against Barcelona. Some interesting conversations took place at the party and a few stories that are best left untold. Wednesday was another day session for BE Broadband before travelling home and preparing for a visit to France at the weekend.

All in all a very busy couple of weeks with more to come when I do a post about LAN79 in France on behalf of Philips amBX.

I know I know, I’m a bit behind the times with the whole blogging thing but better to start now I suppose than keep putting it off. Welcome to my personal blog where I will hopefully endeavour to keep you all updated about what is happening in my life and job.

For now though I need to keep having a play with how all this WordPress stuff works!