rAge Expo rocket booster #1 is on the launchpad and getting ready for take-off to planet rAge 2022! Are you ready? You want boarding passes to the largest LAN in Africa?
Well…
Do you?
This is how you secure your spot at this year’s NAG LAN taking place from December 9th through 11th at Gallagher Estate, Midrand.
Pre-registration for the #NAGLAN opens at 12pm today on https://www.howler.co.za/
But first… Make sure you create @Howlertech account and verify your email address with them before 12pm.
The link to pre-register will be posted on our socials as well as the NAG and rAge websites.
If you have any questions, the underpaid rAge weekend staff will be ready to assist.
3…. 2…. 1…. YEAH BABY!!! Planet rAge #NAGLAN
For those of you that missed the titbit of news released last week, here is a rinse and repeat. Just so you totally understand how things are going to work this year, because, well, things are different. Different venue, different space. Different. But the same epic people running the same epic NAG LAN.
Saturday 20 August 2022 at 12pm via the Howler website, pre-registrations for the NAG LAN 2022 will be available to all.
The reason for pre-registering is simple.
On 1 September we will start at the top of the pre-registration list and work our way down until all the available tickets are allocated. A link will be sent via email, which will take you to a ticketing page where you will have 48 hours to complete your online ticket purchase. Pre-registration does not mean you will automatically get a ticket.
This pre-registration list will also serve as a waiting list. If you’re on the list and someone returns their ticket and you’re next in line, you will be able to buy that ticket. Each year we have many, many people calling us, messaging us, and emailing us about waiting lists. We don’t mind. But… When we’re hip deep in rAge planning it becomes a time problem.
We’re hoping that this process will minimise scalping, where some criminal scumbag buys more tickets than he/she needs, then sells them online later for profit.
Pre-registration also allows us to have a better understanding of numbers of people who are interested in attending the LAN.
Before you ask, tickets will be limited to two per person.
There will be two 2 different types of tickets available:
NAG BYOC LAN General Pass (Hall 1) – R1,050 per person
NAG BYOC LAN Super Pass (Hall 4) – R1,400 per person
NAG BYOC LAN General Pass in Hall 1 is the regular 3-day LAN ticket. You arrive on Friday and then we kick you out on Sunday. It’ll be everything you’ve ever experienced at the NAG LAN but in a different venue. Same people, same rAge, and same fun.
NAG BYOC LAN Super Pass in Hall 4 is the 4-day LAN ticket. This will get you into the LAN on Thursday at 18h00. It’s still the NAG LAN, but with earlier access. Same people, same rAge, and same fun.
Now about that pricing…
I know it’s more expensive, and I’ll list the reasons here so you can understand why.
Background. I’ve always disliked corporate entities that keep upping the price for everything each year. You can’t go a week without the price of butter jumping up a few Rand – it’s annoying and eats away at your happy place.
This is why we’ve always kept the LAN tickets at the same price for years, and when we had to increase them there was a lot of debate during our rAge status meetings. This ideology of mine is now hurting more because the ticket pricing was kept reasonably low. Now with these necessary increases it’s a big jump. You just can’t win it seems.
Reasons
Moving to a new venue has presented several challenges that we’ve had to solve (another reason for the delay in announcing the LAN). There is expensive infrastructure to install, new networks to design and many other critical components. We almost have to start from scratch with a number of elements. At the previous venue everything was setup and fine-tuned during our first few years there, so we essentially just had to plug in and go.
The new venue is also more expensive than our previous venue in some respects. For instance, one of the halls doesn’t have air conditioning, so we must supply our own.
Although the price of bandwidth has dropped, we still need to supply a lot of it for rAge. Many people have their own 200Mbps connections at home and that’s not something we can compete with. But the LAN isn’t really about downloading files. It’s about community. So, while we do need to supply enough Internet juice for everyone, we know it doesn’t need to be the same as at home. But it’s still expensive.
When you add all these things up you get to a rather high number which we then divide by the number of tickets to be sold.
I really am sorry that we have to increase the LAN ticket prices. I hope that the above brief and basic explanation helps you understand why.
We won’t increase the price of the LAN again for a few years, and if we do it’ll only be in very small increments.
What we’re doing
We are in talks with some of our exhibitors and we’re hoping to introduce various discounts and specials inside the expo to help make up for some of the increase.
Please feel free to give us feedback and let us know how we’re doing, or if there’s anything that you’d like to see. rAge, the LAN and everything we do has always been for you, so we want it to be as decent as we (and the whole industry involved) can make it.
On that point, please take note of our LAN partners – these companies have contributed significantly towards ensuring the success of the event by keeping their pricing to us as low as possible. So next time you’re looking for a quote for a product remember to add these brands to your search.
Hope we see you there, it’s been far too long!
Well, there you have it folks, all the mincemeat of news from the rAge team for now. NAG will be updating you throughout this journey with more news as it drops.
Cheers for now and good luck to all of you who pre-register today!