LooseLeafs - A place for Leafeator's words.

Jun 252013 Tagged with eSports, Red Bull, Starcraft

Red Bull Training Grounds Santa Monica 2013

Hey Now~

First a little bit of house keeping. Bringing the site out of “beta” today with some graphical and miscellaneous updates. No longer scared to link people here. Looking forward to the pointers I get on improving the place.

So I got a VIP invite from Rob Simpson and Sean Plott to attend the “Open House” final day of the Red Bull Training Grounds event. For the third of fourth time red bull opened the doors of their socal headquarters to the Day[9]tv squad to host a starcraft event. Two red bull sponsored startale Korean players, joined two Europeans, and four NA players for a three day production. Training grounds allowed these players a lot more than just the opportunity to play in an invite only tournament. These eight players were being put up for an entire week in Los Angeles and given the opportunity and tools to practice in preparation for MLG Anaheim next weekend. You can find the liquipedia recap of the event [here].

[If you are just interested in seeing my album from the event you can click on this big ‘ol link.]

This was my first time visiting a production at the red bull HQ. I have only ever seen pictures from their previous events, even though I live rather close to Santa Monica. I arrived at about 1pm and the show was scheduled to start at 2. When I got onto campus I was greeted by some nifty cubicles and a massive wooden ramp spanning the length of the warehouse. The party was going on towards the back of the complex. Security escorted me through the cubicles and to the set. Everyone was just hanging out and I learned that the show was going to be delayed until home story cup was over for the day. The interwebs gave them a lot of love for this decision, and I agree. At the end of the day it was far and away the best business decision they could do tho.
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Jun 112013 Tagged with First, Hello

Care to sit down and join me for some tea?

Hey Now, hello, sup, OHAI! First and foremost let me welcome you to MY new blog/website. It is affectionate called “LooseLeafs” and hopefully someone aside from myself likes the name. This is my little corner of the world to talk to you. Yeah, You! How are you? I hope you are having a nice day.

Who am I? You probably don’t know me, but if you do it is most likely because you have seen me on reddit. I have been posting under the alias ‘Leafeator.’ Well my real name is Joseph, but since we are friends now you can just call me Joey. I’m a C++ programmer college student with a fiery burning passion for eSports. That fire started burning when I was a wee little thirteen year old, playing CAL Company of Heroes and Day of Defeat Source. Then I randomly flicked past DirectTV channel 101 and saw [djWHEAT casting some CSS live on my tv]. I was mesmerized; I wanted to know more, I wanted in. Three years later I found myself doing intern work for Starcraft 2 leagues. Slowly I was able to network my way into meeting people who I have only previously spent hours watching from the comfort of my bed. It is an honor to get to meet those people. It is an honor to have this form to casually speak to you.

Heart of the Swarm Launch Party! My “VIP for a day” experience at Blizzard HQ.

Hey Now!

Don’t care about my story being a VIP on blizzard campus, USA launch, and mingling with the “big boys?” Would you rather just look at the pretty photos? Click here for my imgur album of the event. I don’t blame you.

So how do I get invited to the Blizzard campus to hang out in the midst of this day long live-streaming bonanza? Back in February I woke up and found an email in my inbox from one Sean Plott. I was instantly confused as I consider Sean a friend, but not someone who I am in regular correspondence with. When I opened up the email I saw a long description of what was to be the community stream for the launch event. All of these hush hush details were being shared with me. The most exciting part was reading that I was being asked by Day[9]tv to be the representative of /r/starcraft for the launch stream. They were having videos submitted by teams, players, websites, animators, and leagues to play on stream. But they did not have any video content from the (second most) popular Starcraft site on the net. I was ecstatic with the opportunity and honor to work on putting something together for the stream.
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Jun 112013 Tagged with eSports, IPL, NASL, Starcraft

IPL+NASL Double Header

Hey Now!

Guess who is back with another photoblog / story time post? This guy. I really do enjoy being able to put my thoughts here and share me event experiences with all of you. If this is your first time coming across my blog then I would love to welcome you. Sit down and join me for some tea.
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IPL5, Las Vegas Nov. 29 – Dec. 2

You can find all of my IPL5 photos on my imgur page, at this link!

IPL is a trip that almost did not happen for me. With my friends bailing on me I had no way to make my way from LA -> LV, and nowhere to stay. It is a good thing that everyone in Starcraft is awesome. After a few texts and tweets I made arrangements and found myself driving down to GHOSTCLAW’s house Thursday night. It sucked that we had to miss Thursday at IPL, but a 4 day event is silly long.

After meeting up with Robbie, our ride arrived. Gary, a CSL admin and all around cool kid, showed up in his mother’s lexus SUV. We packed out bags in the back and made out way from UCLA twords Vegas. However we decided that it would be a good idea, at 8pm, before our 4 hour drive to stop and get Ramen in downtown. Needless to say the noodles were gewd, but we did not leave downtown until 11pm. We were not going to get to Vegas for a looooong time.
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Jun 112013 Tagged with Blizzard, eSports, Starcraft, WCS

“The Reddit Guy” BWC Coverage / Trip to China

Hey Now!

Leafeator here back with another blog to chronicle his time spent at one of these little starcraft events. This time I was a lot out of my comfort zone traveling from California to Shanghai for the BWC grand finals. It was one hell of an adventure. This blog will follow the format of all of the others. It will accompany little personal stories from being at the event with pictures I took there. The positive feedback I received from the other blogs and joy that I get from writing these means that I will be doing this for every event I get to be a part of. Thanks for all of your kind words.

So how did I get to BWC? Who am I? Admittedly I do not post much around TL. I am a reddit guy through and through. I have been contributing to the /r/starcraft subreddit since the beta in numerous ways. Blizzard wanted to send a bunch of media out from their best news sites to cover the events. /r/starcraft made the cut and found out that Blizzard would be paying flight, hotel, and event costs to send one of its members all the way out to China. The mods of the subreddit decided to make a thread and take nominations for who would be the best fit represent them at BWC. A lot of names were thrown around, but when the dust settled they were tasked with choosing Krukar or… Me. Because of the overwhelming support Krukar got in the thread, he ended up being the first choice. However he decided to decline the offer. That left me, leafeator, the kid who has done a bunch of different jobs at a bunch of different events, and likes to post a lot.
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