The Story and Some Thanks
I’ve never been one for getting a lot of sleep, but gosh, staying up for 24 hours, sure makes you appreciate forty winks or so. Wait, wasn’t that a Playstation game?
Anyway, what a journey it has been. Last year I raised £764 for Special Effect, and I knew that I wanted to do it again, but on a bigger scale. I didn’t mean in terms of how I went about raising the donation money, but in terms of my total reach and spreading of the good word. I knew that if done properly, the sky was the limit, and I’d need a crack squad of talented, professional individuals to help me do so.
Richard Fitzjohn aka ‘Fitz’, a web developer with Red Ant, created for us a website that took the words ‘awesome’ and ‘excellent’ and told them they’d just been redefined. This very website, that you’re on now, was just the beginning, and it spawned various articles, videos and little features, that gave High Fives + Changing Lives, its very own identity, something that I felt was important. Fitz went on to give the site an upgrade the day before the event, which meant both the live streams ran from the site, and we even had our very own countdown clock.
I’ve already mentioned that identity was important, and what better way, to put an original stamp on proceedings, than with some outstanding artistic talent? Steven Hill was the guy for the job, lending us his talents not just for website designs but also for a webcomic that hosted on GamingLives. It adds a layer of personality, that puts a friendly face on our efforts and it was highly important to me, that we didn’t just appear to be ‘another set of people asking for money’. Steves work was instrumental in that process.
With Fitz and Steve working behind the scenes, I needed someone to run the social media side of things and invest some time in getting to learn how to get the best out of streaming the event, not to mention doing the odd article. The tenacious devil, known as Ian Cox, was on hand to get his hands dirty with all of the above, and I doubt that our streaming would have been such a success without his hard work and quirky personality.
So what did I do? Well, I dealt with being the point of contact for everyone who helped us, which in the end turned out to be a large number of people and groups, and dealt with ensuring everything ran as smoothly as it did. There were certainly a few bumps along the four month long road to get us to the event, but it was well worth the effort.
At the time of writing, the event finished around twelve hours ago, and currently our total donations sit at £1126. This is, quite frankly, a jaw dropping amount of money, and even though our target was set higher, we’re still extremely impressed with that figure. We couldn’t of done it without the help of a number of people though, so here’s a quick list of ‘Thank Yous’ to respective people.
It would only be right to thank Special Effect first off all, for the amazing work they do, for letting us visit them in the build up to all this and for their support through this whole process. They are the real heroes here, much like the people they aim to help.
Next, GamingLives, run by Mark and Lorna Reid, have given us guidance and support for this event, and also provided us with an outlet for one of webcomics, which Steve had plenty of fun drawing. (I’ll make it less complicated next time dude, I promise!) Thanks to them both for their help.
A huge thank you to the Brother In Arms clan, from Battlefield 3. These guys have been utterly outstanding, not only providing servers for us to play on and giving us priority access to those for the event but also helping us spread the word and sticking with us through the event. To them, we are very grateful.
A number of groups provided items for us to give away, so thanks to Insert Coin Tees, Brothers in Arms, and EA for their goodies that we threw out to the masses as we fought off the urge to faceplant the keyboards and fall asleep.
Another huge thank you to friend and photographer Ben Dempster, who gave us his time and considerable skill to photograph us in a professional style shoot earlier in the year, and also to attend twice over the actual marathon to take photos, for the purpose of providing more support. He’s a talented guy and great friend of the group, we appreciate his support in this and all future endeavours.
Thanks of course goes to our friends partners and families, for all the retweets, the shares, the donations, the ‘you can do it kiddo’ parental support, and the general awesomeness of those closest to us.
My penultimate thank you, personally, goes to the three chaps I’ve already mentioned, Fitz, Steve and Ian. You’ve all given up a lot of free time, plenty of money and shown a lot of dedication to get this all sorted. As much as people may think it’s just four guys sitting in a room playing games, we have to run the social media, make the contacts, form the relationships, get everything working probably and basically, not do a half arsed job, so we can say we raised as much as we could for Special Effect. Otherwise, what’s the point right? So to those dudes, thank you for helping me and us as a group to get to this point. You’ve all worked so hard and I’m as proud to have shared this experience with you, as I am to stand beside you on the virtual battlefield whenever we get a free night.
Finally to you, yes you, the reader. Thank you for all your help over the last four months and especially the last 48 hours. Thank you for all the donations, you’ve genuinely affected the lives of so many people, and we hope to show you just how in the coming weeks and months.
Even if this is the first time you’re reading about us, you didn’t donate, tweet, share or have any idea what a Battlefield 3 is, you’ve taken the time to read this. You represent one more reason to do this all over again, and continue to raise money for Special Effect in this or another format, because as long as people provide us an outlet, we will continue to help this amazing charity. This has been a challenging, memorable and fun adventure, and I can personally guarantee it isn’t the last you’ve heard of us.
Chris
