Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “No LTX 2024”.
Oh, oh well, I think we should probably do this topic. What the one I highlighted. Okay you’ll, find a photo whoop whomp, I’m sad, I’m genuinely sad. We have made the difficult decision to not move forward with LTX 2024. um. There are four key reasons: uh one. The vast majority of our company does not focus on events um and, while our core competencies, like technology, media production, do overlap somewhat with event running the vast majority of our time and effort is spent on other things, which means that we do not have well-established processes And workflows and running events at a large scale, um requires well-established processes and workflows, or you end up with a lot of inefficiency, and you end up with a lot of stress.
So that’s I I the biggest reason, but also very closely related to the next reason, which is also the biggest reason and that’s crunch. While there is a lot of work that can be done in advance of an event like LTX, there’s, also an enormous amount of work that has to be done in the days or even the hours immediately before the doors open. This puts a ton of strain on the entire team um. Another big reason is cost um.
You know I want to be transparent with you guys. That’S that’s that’s the way we run this company, that’s the way we run this channel uh LTX 2023 was profitable, which is good, but there’s also an enormous opportunity cost compared to focusing on our regular activities, meaning that prioritizing LTX doesn’t necessarily make the most sense and Remember part of that opportunity. Cost is not just money. Part of it is also process and and quality of life for the team and all those things I mean, I even said on-wan show at ltx23 when Luke asked me the hard question of. Is it coming back? I talked about this.
I talked about the crunch. I talked about how, even if it does make money that doesn’t mean it necessarily makes sense um. I asked him then, because I was trying to get him to commit to it before he thought about it.
Logically, no, I had already been thinking about it, a lot um number four. Is it’s not all about money? Of course, LTX was born out of a desire to serve the community and other creators, but again it’s clear that for the investment we made into LTX, which was very substantial, there are many other opportunities that we could pursue for collaborations and Community engagement. That might be more exciting and don’t cause the same degree of strain for the people that work on the event. So that’s what it pretty much comes down to. We do have some alternative things to be excited about. One of them is whale.
Then we are going to continue doing whale lens, aiming for anywhere from 200 to 300 attendees per one I’d like to do them more often than just once a year. Personally, I’d be down to do it once every couple months, once every few months, I’ve had some people approach me internally and say: hey, they think that’s too much and it won’t be special anymore or something like that. I I honestly think it’d be in some ways. More special, I think, it’d be just such a such a just, hang out, um, just kind of break the routine LTX was a really cool event for the fans as a whole, but whale land. I have more personal fun at so and I and if we could do more whale lands and if we could bring some elements of LTX to whale land like maybe at a whale in, we have a a a tech Midway like we had at LTX, or you Know some of the the con evil you know games or – or things like that, like I, I think, there’s ways for us to make whale land really amazing. You could still even potentially have like the the uh water, cooling educational Workshop thing totally like.
If someone like a rod came up um, you know, there’s no reason why we couldn’t you know, do something like that: okay, yeah at this whale land, uh we’re gon na be doing two bending 101. yeah, and maybe it doesn’t run the whole time because maybe rod Wants to play some games too yeah like, and maybe someone like Rod actually gets to play games for a change yeah, I’m not convinced he actually plays games. I think he just like builds cool computers. I thought he was really into it. Wasn’T it War Thunder or something I don’t know, I’ve never seen him actually play a game, but I’ve seen him build a lot of cool computers. I’Ve seen that’s all I’m saying. That’S all I’m saying I’ve seen it I’ve seen him do both I’ve seen him build far more cool computer. He says he says he says yes, yeah, I’m not sure what he’s responding to exactly because of the chat delay, but definitely yes, my dad says there should be quarterly whale lands. Okay, all right, all right! All right Rob I’m on it we’re working on it.
We need a facility first geez excitement is High, um, so yeah I um. This was uh. This was a super emotional decision, for I shouldn’t say decision for me because I didn’t make the decision I was involved in the decision. I I laid out my points. I ultimately did Advocate against future ltx’s. Just for look I mean okay, maybe I’m speaking at a turn here.
Um Colton basically said Point Blank. If we’re doing LTX again, I can’t do this um. I don’t blame him.
It like it’s. It’S it’s it’s brutal, um and, and – and so it’s like it’s not it’s not just like. I have, I have said the whole, so he he was against. I was four. I have said the whole time, though, that I’m happily voting for as someone who had nothing to do with any of the work that was involved in it. I think my vote was probably like the least valuable out of all of them um, because I was the least attached out of everyone, I think genuinely um. So it’s easy for me to say yeah we should keep doing it. I had some arguments which were like it was profitable and getting cons to a profitable point is very difficult and cons tend to have natural inherent growth and become very highly profitable on the high end, and I do think we were trending in that direction. Um – and there were a lot of like Financial efficiency – things that we, I think, did quite poorly with this time around.
We could have saved more money which could have made more money both at the same time, all this kind of stuff, but yeah all the work and stuff involved, and there is still the opportunity, cost and Min maxing. The work and profit was never what LTX was about yeah, and so I feel like you’re right. The con could have become a huge profit Center.
You are right, but it wouldn’t have been LTX anymore, and that was a big part of. I think it could still be. I think it would be a very, very difficult path to navigate yeah and potentially not worth it, and maybe whale land is how we can keep that fun small. I do I do like I.
I think it’s pretty cool that there’s a plan instead yeah. Oh, oh yeah, I think that’s pretty cool yeah because just dropping it and be like guess we’re never doing it again would kind of suck, which I also didn’t say. Yes, I said we are not doing 2024. yeah um uh, but like yeah whale land, the fact that we will have a facility that we like know the people who own it means that the rate we’ll be paying is, I don’t know nothing.
Uh means that we can just we can price the tickets at something that we feel is is is not very least reasonable, not what the market will bear yeah, but like reasonable, but also you know, we need to make sure the time makes sense for our our Team to put work into it and make it a really cool event: um, but not worry about pinching pennies. So we could just make it a really cool event and just make it fun right. Oh Sean! Sorry, I’m going to derail slightly! I just Sean lmg and Float plain chat. Just spoke uh.
I I wasn’t sure if I should or could name him yeah. It was like two weeks ago. I think yeah. So you told me that I can.
I also asked if I could give the background there, and he said yes, oh sure, so this is whaler99 from The Forum yeah uh who’s, our new I.T person at Linus Media Group um, not even not new anymore. I mean it hasn’t been here almost six months now or something somewhere around that yeah. I think he’s here for a bit yeah, it’s been hard to keep that in yeah yeah. They wanted to refer to him on the show as Whaler.
I don’t want to mention that, but yeah some people might actually know Sean if you’ve been around the Forum, especially in the earlier days of the Forum um. If you, if you’ve seen Whaler 99 around um, that’s him so yeah. I don’t remember what I was referencing, but I wasn’t sure if I could name him and now I do know – and that’s that’s John, so yeah yeah, so he actually like reports to Luke yeah um, so he’s sort of used to as a mod back in like 2012 or whatever he first started, working with the first mods. Yes like freaking, it’s like actually one of the ogeist yeah Forum, people ever yeah um, but yeah.
He just said: whalerland, yeah, yeah, so he’ll be he’ll, be uh, probably helping us out with getting that set up once he gets his poor like head out from under the water of like our I.T Tech, you’re gon na you’re gon na, like the new Disaster Recovery. Doc, oh yeah, it’s like Wicked how many? How many pages is it? 200. 200.
It’S more than 200 right, yep yeah. What yeah it’s for everything! Oh! Is there a disaster Solutions? What happens if uh it’s like very clickable, so you can have written that yeah. The different parts of it and all that kind of stuff – 210 yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, hell, yeah, heck, yeah, exciting yeah, it’s cool, it’s good, anyways yeah! So that’s sad! But there is the good news of uh whale lands more and more awesomer, but I’m sure there’ll be more details on that in the future. .