Tuesday, February 17, 2009

The Return of the Blog: Why I gave up TEAM and where I'm going from here

Well, I said that there was always a chance that this blog could come back, and now here it is. Don't ever say I never gave you guys anything :)

So, in case you haven't noticed, I've decidedly ramped down my activity in eW over the last year. The blog was the first casuality for the simple reason that I couldn't keep my attention span at a full level with all the stuff going on around me. I started to prioritize my eW activities, and I figured that being an eW journalist was nice, but ultimately it wasn't needed.

Now though, things have slowed down, I figure I can bring the blog back, although with the caveat that it won't be as journalistically themed as it was before. I mean, that doesn't mean I won't spotlight different feds at different times, but I wouldn't expect full card reviews like I was doing.

*booing and hissing from Katz*

Now that that's out of the way, the meat of the post. Part of my eW ramp-down included me giving up the reins of TEAM. TEAM and this blog have almost been synonymous with each other, mainly because I drafted the original idea for it here and used this blog as a pimping tool for it. It was a happy marriage, and it worked out well for me. That's why it was so hard for me to give the pseudo-i-fed up. Still though, as I said on the boards, it was a combination of life and the cardwriting becoming much like a chore for me that I had to give it up.

But the question then becomes why I gave it up instead of closing it down. It can be told sort of anecdotally at first. I probably told this story before on here, but I'll tell it again. Back when I first got to FW, Andrew Medina had a fed open which for the life of me, I can't remember the name. Well, for whatever reason, he closed it down when life got to be too much for him or whatever reason. The problem was that the fed still had a lot of handlers who were willing to keep it going, guys who plans and wanted to RP in it.

That situation made me realize that feds didn't really belong to the fedhead, no matter what some people might think. Sure, some are more inexorably linked to fedheads than others. NFW is one such fed, probably the closest example I can think of to a fed being equal to the guy running it. But in reality, even in those feds, the fed belongs to the handlers.

Think about it. You can theoretically run a fed without a fedhead, or at least one singular fedhead. E-fed communism is possible in theory. Whether it works in practice is another thing, but that's not a conversation for this entry. However, if you don't have handlers, your fed is either a concept or it's just masturbation. Besides, who wants to do all the work by him/herself? Not me, says I.

So that's why I put TEAM up. I know that there are people out there that still want to participate in these events and that still want to defend their titles. Even though I set the entire infrastructure up, it's really nothing unique. Tournaments and one-off shows... nothing too revolutionary there.

Thankfully, Adam Shinder, a guy whom I think is a terriffic handler and an untapped resource as a fed-staffer, took the ball and will run with it. Hopefully he can do as good a job or better than I did with it.

So yeah, that's where things stand right now. Here's a toast to being back on the blog, and hopefully, I'll update this frequently enough for you guys to enjoy it.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

everytime someone says "Katz must die," a NFW kitten masturbates.

...wait...that didn't come out right.

Anonymous said...

Shinder's been on what passes for "staff" in EPW for a while, writing for almost every show.

So I'm glad to see him able to step out and take on a bigger responsibility like TEAM, and I'm eager to see how it turns out.

Anonymous said...

Medina's league was NWL >.>

Anonymous said...

What the fuck, Holz...you were on AIM at the same time as me and didn't even link me. I had to hear it second-hand from Craiggles Maloof!

Despite your egregious error, glad to see the blog is back. ;)

Anonymous said...

Glad to see all is right in the eW world again. Welcome back to the blogosphere.

Thomas Ford said...

The Asylum was run by Committee of handlers for about a year. I'd argue the FWO was run like that for a bit too.

Feds are certainly shaped by their handlers though, although the fed head can direct their choices.

Anonymous said...

In all seriousness, NFW will always be an extension of the chats/emails that JN and I have daily.

Alot of folks may think its just me writing crazy stuff while high, but if you read the WHOLE shows...JN's been writing alot the past two years as well as collaborating on the outline of the shows.

He just doesn't post on FWC as much as I do in an administrative sense.

When either one of us gets sick of chatting/emailing about the fed, we'll see it close.