Many chapters of the larger Laclede’s LAN story took place at events other than ours. Had we been thinking about it more, we might have referred to these road trips and random party crashing as “active outreach”, but the truth is we just loved hanging out with gamers of all stripes and did it whenever we had the chance. Our philosophy was clear, though; when you’re trying to grow, nurture, and serve a community, you can never make too many friends. Our trips to local and nearby events helped us stay in touch with the people we were asking to come to our LANs, strengthened alliances and partnerships with other similar groups, and served as an influx of new ideas and differing perspectives on the best ways to bring gamers together.
One of the more well-funded and flashy events we had the privilege of attending was GameRIOT. GameRIOT was both a PC and a console event; by sending Lodsiek and ACE in as scouts, the LL staff was fortunate enough to secure a connection with the Adrenaline Gaming Zone, who would ultimately partner up with LL at several future events.