King 2021: An Exercise in Management
Anthony E. Mendez
Socials
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthony-mendez-0621/
Email: amendez0621@gmail.com
Twitter: @amendz0621
What is King?
King 2021 logo designed by Gregory Vertilus, member of Lions Gaming Production Committee.
Where’s IMM? What Did YOU Do?
As Executive Director at Lions Gaming, I was in charge of the organization of the event, as well as the delegation of tasks to the various Directors at Lions Gaming.
Organization included:
Scheduling of the event
Outreaching of professional players to attend the event
Outreaching of professional streamers and tournament organizers to broadcast and run the event
Preparing and presenting a budget of the event alongside the Head of Finance of Lions Gaming to the Student Finance Board
Preparing and presenting partnership decks to potential sponsors of the events
Delegation included:
Overseeing and giving final approval of the production of various assets for the event, ranging from the launch trailer above, to stream overlays, to the logo.
Reviewing social media posts meant to advertise the event
Assigning various miscellaneous tasks to the Lions Gaming team
Pandemic Problems, and Surprising Solutions
The decision to outsource streams and tournament organization was a fairly easy one to reach; it was done back when the event was offline, and helped alleviate the workload from Lions Gaming. The games themselves also had common ways to be played online, so that was another easy hurdle. The main issue was translating the extra activities present at King 2019 online.
Initially the process seemed imposing, but we gradually came across ways to shift the event online while maintaining the core King experience. While we had to sacrifice some aspects of the first King that provided entertainment for those who attended that weren’t competing in tournaments (aspects like an Artist Alley to support artists at the college, or guest speakers) this allowed us to streamline the experience for competitors as well as the companies we were outsourcing work to. The lack of a physical venue also meant we didn’t have to account for building safety and security. Combined with the fact that we no longer had to worry about renting individual setups for the event, and we found our budget for the event could afford to be less than half of what was asked back in 2019.