david foster wallace went to my school

get_fucked

no Atheist?

please never bring back warmfront

no ashville and no warmfront

what #2 said

people on music forums spend the same amt of time as tf2 nerds do on tf2 just finding new music, amassing their library, and cultivating their taste. MOST people here don't do that, I've found

h2k 5-0 normalcool

I've wanted to cast for a while but djc told me I had literally the worst voice of any player he's ever heard :>

I feel like you slightly misunderstood me. I recognize that, for the amount of labor and resources extv has, it's already vastly overworked. However, as long as extv signed off on an idea and promoted it from time to time, someone else could organize it, and any viewer of extv who hasn't yet expanded to really follow comp tf2 (and there are a lot of those guys) will check out the other content. cross-promotion is what's needed, not an increased burden of work on extv.

10.) a big, multi-platform tournament, for both 6s and hl. Otakuscott has the right idea- the problem is, his banlist has antagonized ugc, and the notoriously finicky admins don't like it. I say, try to cross promote between tf.tv, ugc, extv, vanillatv, etf2l, and maybe even esea. maybe a donation drive, or unusual hat/item raffles, to get decent prizes.

9.) this just came to me, but absorb as many other important channels as projects as possible. newbie mixes are a good start, that would be relatively simple. #tf2mix, #tf2.pug, #tf2.pug.na, #tf2scrim, tf2demos, and atf2.org would be another solid step forward. and, here's the whopper: tf2lobby. for all the unregulated behemoth tf2lobby has become, it still has a grand total of three (3) creators. in fact, one of them is a well-known member of the competitive community, and all of them can be reached. it really wouldn't be hard to advertise tf.tv on the main page of the site, or sponsor all the valve servers as tf.tv servers. even if like 10% of the lobby population stopped playing lobbies because of this advertising, you'd still have literally thousands of people to work with

8.) DREAM_HACK. I say that the teamfortress.tv guys try to find a team to get together with both the extv and the vanillatv guys, and maybe even more people (tfworld.ru, greavertv, whoever), and draft ONE solid UNIFIED manifesto for the dreamhack guys, and the valve guys, to work out arrangements. include the best examples of our game's growth (stream counts, esp at esea and i46, some really popular fragvids, the highlander scene, etc.), and make our case. I say we could also wait for the i46 documentary to drop, and include that as an example for our scene.

I've been thinking about ways to further tf2, and I've come to a conclusion.

The majority of the good content being created that revolves around the top level of tf2 comes in the form of written word. We have a lot of great articles written about invite, discussing the teams and their lan race. However, that stuff is boring, and will just appeal to people who already have a vested interest in high-level comp tf2. In light of that, I have some ideas about more interesting media content that could interest people in specifically the top echelons of tf2. I also think a lot of this should be done under the banner of teamfortress.tv, for the sake of unity.

1.) bring back an NA podcast! rechristen the "MGE podcast" the "teamfortress.tv podcast", and have such hosts as djc, Lange, cbear, Sigma, bloodsire, seanbud, basically any colorful personality, and bring back the guest teams, invite gossip, all that jazz. you could stream it live on lange or seanbud's stream, then put the vods up on here.

2.) if you've ever looked at esea's cs content, one thing you'll notice is how connected it is to http://www.youtube.com/user/goesea , the eseanews youtube channel. they have lan footage, top 10 plays/fails of the week, interviews, humorous content, all that jazz. I propose that something similar happens, but either as a teamfortress.tv youtube channel or a partnership with the commft/extv/whatever channel. I think a good starting point would be top 10 esea-i plays of the week. I'd love to work on those myself, but I also understand if, in the best interests of the community, someone like Sal should commentate.

3.) bring back the tutorials, demo review videos, etc., to the same extent that mygamingedge did. I can't stress enough how helpful it is that these things are in video form. videos will attract more people, plain and simple.

4.) work with the top public/highlander streamers more. get stabby stabby or someone to plug tf.tv, or make a 6s and a highlander stream section with equal promotion of the latter.

5.) I used to see a lot of tf2 frag videos on larger sites (big frag movie youtube channels and stuff like pldx), and they would get many more views that way. try to work on those partnerships.

POST-SCRIPT: these are unrelated to my ideas up there, but here's some more stuff:

1.) I suggest we focus on furthering our relationship with UGC, both in terms of convincing their highlander teams to also try 6v6 and in further solidifying the link between ugc 6s and esea 6s.

2.) I think more can be done to promote teamfortress.tv itself. People should literally go to pubs with [teamfortress.tv] in their name, or have a bind asking people to check it out.

3.) teamfortress.tv servers perhaps? maybe we could get a 16-man, nospread, nocrit, comp map rotation pub (like pro like chro!!!), or perhaps partner with jump iT and sponsor the jump/MGE servers, to increase the number of users, which will eventually help LG (and perhaps Mix^ can get in on that cash cow too)

4.) In that vein, why not have teamfortress.tv sponsor mix^? you can put team bios, mentoring content, a donation for lan, etc. on here

5.) revive the mentoring program, and better it. get more people to volunteer, make an application form, maybe even mentor evaluation forms too, and possibly try to get mentors or mentees to stream their mentoring sessions.

6.) Mr. pingu, tear down that natf2.com

7.) similar to what tyrone was saying about a "tf2 holiday"- make a big teamfortress.tv steam group, and make a big list of like 20 or 30 public servers eligible, from a variety of communities. announce every time a big pub event is going down, and get people to disperse to all those pubs and play with some sort of teamfortress.tv tag, advertising it and stuff.

(cont'd below)

the newbie mix is literally designed for you, lol

there are a lot of great books to recommend in this thread (Catch-22 for instance), but Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clark is possibly the least well known, and it's utterly fantastic, really embodies the true spirit of science fiction

I think it's fair too say that the tf2 community can be extremely selfish and short-sighted, if everyone took a second and just tried to do their part to grow tf2 I think it would be extremely possible

anyways, some great authors not mentioned in here:

Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Jorge Luis Borges
Nikolai Gogol
Franz Kafka
Saul Bellow
Flannery O'Connor
John Updike
Phillip Roth
Jonathan Franzen
Arthur C. Clark
James Baldwin
Ralph Ellison
Tim O'Brien
Junot Diaz
Erich Maria Remarque
Jean-Paul Sartre
etc.

Non-fiction:
Malcolm Gladwell
Manning Marable (read his biography of Malcolm X, it was great)
W.E.B. Dubois