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Hi everyone!
Some of you may recognise me, my name is Mélanie Corolleur, I am the Guild Wars 2 European Community Manager.
Today, I am in Paris at the Milk cybercafé for the first edition of Foostival.
What is Foostival, you ask? It is a community event organised by 9 community sites and we are here to find out more about it.
Kira, who coordinated this event, has joined me to tell us all about Foostival.
Hello, Kira.
Hi.
How are you?
Very well, thanks.
So, can you tell the people who are going to watch this video a little about yourself?
I am Kira, one of the festival administrators; my job was to coordinate everyone involved so that we could launch the Foostival festival today.
How did you come up with the idea for Foostival and why? Was there a gap to fill in terms of events or another reason?
Foostival was created to address several issues.
First off, many of us fansite staff members were aware that there was... how should I put it... I wouldn't say a degree of competition or animosity among the fansites, but rather, that we didn't know each other that well.
Therefore, one of our goals was to lay to rest the rumour according to which we all hate each other, go around bashing others and simply cannot work together.
We also wanted to reach out to our colleagues from all the other French-speaking sites and tell them: "Hey, look at us, we're 9 and we managed this, maybe we can organise something even bigger!".
Our idea was also to bring the sites closer together so that... well... this event could become the first in a series of initiatives that would pool all the sites' resources.
You mentioned 9 community sites collaborated to organise this Foostival.
Can you name all 9 and tell us how you all managed to worked together? Perhaps you have some anecdotes to share with us?
Okay, in the right order, I'll try not to forget any: Esprit d'Orr, Luna Atra, Univers virtuels, Mondes persistants, Panthéon, GW2 RDV, GW2.FR, Fureur and War Legend.
To tell you the truth, everything went surprisingly well, given that none of us knew exactly what state of mind the others were in. Actually, things turned out even better than expected, as we thought the players would simply be polite,
but in the end, some of us made new friends and there was great mutual respect amongst the participants, which led to many jokes, a bit of shared craziness and yes, very strong bonds.
For example, our first TeamSpeak meeting to prepare the festival was supposed to last 10 minutes or so. In the end, it lasted 3 hours and we were laughing so hard we cried right until the end.
When did you think about contacting NCSOFT and ArenaNet, and SteelSeries for that matter, to support you for this event? And did our support meet your expectations?
Well, we thought about contacting the ArenaNet and NCSOFT teams very early on, because our ultimate goal was to reach out to the players and the community, and we really did need support.
So we discussed this from the very start, even before the Foostival became an actual project, to see what we could do, define our goals and determine what we could afford, because we are only players and we all have more or less limited budgets.
So on that end, there was no question, we really needed help, and the support we received from ArenaNet and NCSOFT was brilliant. We talked daily with our community managers, who were always present, we received prizes, support, answers.
So for us, it was awesome, everything was straightforward and effective. And I really want to thank you and Stéphane again for your patience, we sent you emails every single day!
So this first edition is going strong.
Do you have any plans for the future of Foostival?
Absolutely! Today's event wasn't even under way when we started talking about next year.
We're thinking of organising the Foostival at a European level, not by having several countries meet up in the same place, but rather by organising, say, 5 or 6 Foostivals at the same time, possibly even on the same day, in 5 European capitals.
So this first Foostival is a kind of message we are sending to our European colleagues: "Come and have fun with us, come and play and forget all the rest."
Here's hoping you'll receive enthusiastic feedback!
Well, thank you very much for your time, Kira, I hope to see you again soon.
Thanks a lot and have fun!
Thank you.
I just wanted to thank the 9 community sites who organised this Foostival.
We're having a great day all together with Guild Wars 2.
I hope this event will inspire you for your future community initiatives.
Do not hesitate to share your projects with us, by email at community@arena.net, on our Facebook page or on Twitter @GuildWars2.
I wish you all a great day! See you soon in-game!