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LAN Party at a High School?
Coolnat2004 asks: "I'm a high school student and a member of our technology group. Our school needs extra money for our technology, and I thought that a LAN party would be an effective, and exciting, solution. How can we make a great LAN party with the supplies at hand and make a profit while doing it? We have a network, but not a large enough room with enough ports. We're most likely going to create a detached network for the party, but don't know how to set it up because we have limited supplies. I guess we could seek a sponsorship from a local company, but that is unlikely to happen. Any suggestions on network layout, power layout, and general party to-do's?"
Dear Slashdot,
I am a 15 year old geek and I need a fundraiser. I thought that a LAN party would be an effective, and exciting, 'solution'.
Then I realized that we don't have the space, equipment, know-how, experience or startup funding. Please figure this out for me.
-Kid "the yellow dart" planner
P.S. Make it profitable! Even though most experienced LAN parties don't.
P.P.S. Oh, its due tomorrow too, so please hurry!
Some thoughts and suggestions in no particular order...
It sounds like you're a little hazy on some of the technical details. If I were you, I'd check around and find a LAN party in your town and check it out. See how it works. The second thing I'd do is try getting this setup with just your computer club. Try and get some of the kinks worked out BEFORE you charge people for the service you are providing. If you put on a good event people will come back for the next one. If you put on a bad show (can't get the network up, food sucks or is too expensive, etc.) then no one will come to the next one. Make it a good one and you might be able to do this once every couple of months or so.
Door prizes might be fun. Check with some local businesses and see if they'll donate cash or items for door prizes. They don't have to be big or even computer-related. Fun stuff that kids like.
I think the money to be made at a LAN party is in the food. Sure, you can charge everyone who comes $5 to get in the door or whatever, but then have all the eats and drinks you can think of ready to be purchased. Get it from Costco, and have folks lined up to work the food booth (cute chicks would probably work best). Plan a pizza run and charge everyone a fair markup for running for the pizza. See if you can get the pizza for free/cheap.
On the physical setup, you'll need a computer or router to act as the DHCP server. Then just get a mess of switches/hubs and hook all that up. DO NOT worry about cabling from the switches to the player's computers...make the players bring a cable.
Tables and chairs should be no problem at a school. Just make sure you give everyone plenty of space to spread out.
You will also need some extension cords for power. Again, I'd require everyone to bring their own power strip.
In general players should be required to supply: Computer with network card installed, monitor, power cables, power strip, network cable (15-25 feet should be plenty) and the games.
You might also think about setting some minimum requirements. Require Win98/ME/2K/XP, machine speeds, etc. You don't want someone showing up with their parents old Pentium 166 and wondering why they can't play.
Create a game list so people know what to bring and to make sure their systems can handle it. You might also specify patches that should be applied and possibly have a server or some CD's burned with all the relevant patches.
There are a lot of free demos out there for games. I'd make sure at least one of these was on the list. That way, anyone can come and take part even if they don't own any of the games.
Have some folks on-hand to do tech support. They should be familiar with setting up TCP/IP networking on the various Windows systems and configuring the games you will play. Depending on the size of the group, you might also want them well-marked (special hats or shirts).
Security is an issue. I'd make everyone aware that they are responsible for their own data security. If they have their computer open to the world and someone else sniffs into it and copies whatever, then it's the COMPUTER OWNER's fault.
Anti-Virus - REQUIRE everyone to have anti-virus software installed on their computer BEFORE they are allowed to connect to the network. Seems like every time I go to a private LAN party, there is always one idiot who doesn't have it, and of course is INFESTED. If they don't have one of the commercial packages they can get one of the free ones.
Physical security - tell all of your participants to mark their hardware and keep track of it. There are a lot of stories about folks going to some of the big public LAN parties around here where they get up for 5 minutes and come back to find their uber-cool headphones and joystick missing.
Allow a couple of hours for setup. It takes longer than you think.
Plan that you'll have at least one person who will need dedicated help fo