Going full speed

The plan is ready. You have competent people with you. Goals are set. Tasks are given and some of them are already done! Good job! 

At this point, you should have a functional working leadership (board or steering committee) – starting to gain members, volunteers, potentially even sponsors, and ideally, a lot of interested people (parents, schools) that wish to collaborate. Your initiative starts to provide activities (training, events, camps) for people – and you may find yourself revisiting the strategy to adjust your delivery, training and communication. This is a growing phase or to keep on the human analogy adolescence.    

What shall be your compass at this stage of the initiative

Takeaways – main lessons

🎮 Level up your game. Refreshing your grassroots esports initiative involves evaluating and updating processes for efficiency and engagement.

🎮 Recognize the difficulties! Start with a thorough review of current operations, gathering feedback from team members and participants and identifying pain points and areas, which need improvement.

🎮 Connect with people! Using a communication tool like “Discord” helps you expand your network, both players and stakeholders. In Discord, you can search for different channels to meet new people to discuss gaming and esports. Discord can be downloaded here: https://discord.com/  (A good place to start for information about esports is the “Esports Research Network”.)

🎮 Elevate your competency! Through esports courses, strengthen your own and your trainers’ esports-specific competency.

🎮 Adjust within your framework! You already know that there is no one fixed solution and answer for everything but you can approach grassroots esports from many perspectives.

🎮 Refresh your grassroots esports initiative. This involves evaluating and updating processes for efficiency and engagement. When we get to know a new area, it is usually worth moving on from preconceived plans. If you have the impression that something has to be corrected, do!

Ressources to go further and Topic material

Name of the material	Why it matters / What you will find
How to level up and blast through the top four barriers 🔗	WHY – To help you in your development phase WHAT – A list of tips and suggestion to help you overcome the most common barriers when developing a grassroots esports initiative
Case Study: How Gaming Can Translate into Solid Skills 🔗	WHY – for when you need to convince various stakeholders about the interest of esports and gaming and/or get inspired for new development
Research on “grassroots esports” 🔗	WHY – Go in-depth about about grassroots esports! Investigate for yourself to learn more. WHAT – Check out what the research say using this google scholar link to a general search term for “grassroots esports”