My wife and I slept in a bit this morning after staying at the event until almost midnight last night. Sometimes you get so caught up in conversations or gaming sessions with friends that you completely lose track of time. We still arrived before the end of quiet time, which gave me a chance to relax before the day really began. 

Today is packed with tournaments and special events. At 1:00 PM, I’ll be hosting our Sapphire Breakout Group. My presentation style is simple: I introduce Sapphire and talk about our products, then move into a core topic for about 10 minutes before opening the session to an AMA. In my experience, the best presentations aren’t ones where the speaker talks at the audience, but where there’s a real conversation and the discussion goes where the audience wants it to go.

After the discussion, I always do some swag giveaways, along with a GPU, as a thank-you to everyone who attends the breakout group.

There are also plenty of other fun events happening today, including a Speed Build contest and the tabletop Puzzle Masters event. A great LAN party isn’t just about computer games — it’s about community interaction and shared experiences.

Tonight, the event culminates with Duct Tape Wars. Each LANWAR event introduces a new challenge that teams must solve using only duct tape. It’s always one of the most popular activities, with a lot of laughter and creativity on display. Often, the losing ideas are just as entertaining to watch as the winning ones.

The articles content, opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed in SAPPHIRE NATION are the authors’ own and do not necessarily represent official policy or position of SAPPHIRE Technology.

Edward Crisler
Edward is the definition of an “old school” gamer, playing computer games as far back at 1977. He hosted a tech talk show for 20 years and is now the North America PR Representative for SAPPHIRE as well as SAPPHIRE’s unofficial gaming evangelist. You can follow him on Twitter @EdCrisler.