practice the poem, while waiting for your turn just recite it over in your head.when you present just focus on the poem and ignore all else. The trick is to just avoiding all thoughts about other people and what they think.

http://youtu.be/kJFurFRvs8A

vegetarians choose the best method, not eating hot dogs.

Thinks they're good-CHEATS

Honestly I think the top 4 teams and their players, in what ever configuration they are in get a little bit too much fan fare. I would like to learn more about the up and coming players whether they are in IM or low invite.

Nix the interviews, not to offend but competitive video gamers are just not the most interesting people to talk to.

Finally this is more of a wish than a real recommendation, but given your extensive knowledge of tf2 history, perhaps a series of articles on the evolution of the meta game.

Good ideas marxist I was thinking about the same things after watching fully charged as well.

However I think there is an even simpler way to go about growing the community and interest. What most people seem to think is that we need some sort of event or activity that is set up in a semi official way to generate greater interest. I say we invert that paradigm and utilize what we already have.

What I mean is rather than setting up some sort of daily event and try to incentivize players to play in it. We should instead make better use of the nearly daily invite pugs that take place every night. That content is free and it is engaging because its high level tf2 play that is semi casual/serious.

My idea is that we take these vods from the various players who stream their pugs and upload them to youtube say under a teamfortress tv account or commft or what ever. In these uploads are included links to teamfortress.tv and the streamer who streamed the original vod of the invite pug.

For as great as twitch tv is, it is the casual youtube audience that we need to tap into. Star, jerma and shibby all pull in massive amounts of views because the casual gamer isn't on teamfortress.tv or twitch tv looking up competitive tf2.

As for the content, I think it speaks for itself. The aim and skill that are seen in invite pugs far dwarf the skill seen in the videos produced by the pub stars (no offense). Additionally as twitch john was asking for, we get mumble comms that display the dynamic thought process that goes into playing competitive tf2.

My main point is to tap into the content that we already have and distribute it better. Invite pugs are going to take place regardless of whether people watch them or not, so why not put them to use beyond just practice for the players?

I know from my own experience I stumbled into competitive tf2 via the commft youtube channel, which featured pyyyour's pov vods and links to his stream. There are enough streams now that daily high level play can be uploaded straight to youtube.

And I completely agree with using surrogate streamers like mister slin and truk truk who have the technological capacity to stream these pugs.

very good slin, I was going to include an answer but my post was already pretty long. I cannot answer that question unfortunately. From what I can gather it looks like extine wants to professionalize tf2 and tf2 casting to the point where talented and committed people as yourself, lange, seanbud, sal, djc, cbear, and many others could break even or maybe even make a career out of what looks like a passion for something they truly enjoy. This specific issue with esea ornage is something of a baby step in the direction of compensation for casting. I can't answer your question in full because I honestly don't know what everyone has in mind for this "over-glorified hobby" and furthermore what we are witnessing (esports/livestreaming/shoutcasting) is unprecedented. Sorry for the long posts.

I think a lot of people are over simplifying the issue at hand. The issue at hand is not simply that extine is greedy and other people are not. The issue is that by having casters cast for free, extine is obsolved of any bargaining chips he may have held to strong arm esea into agreeing to pay for expenses. I believe the other casters didn't decide to cast for free to intentionally spite/undermine extine but due to a communication error, where extine believed he had solidarity in his cause. Where as the other casters were unaware of extine's plan to lobby esea. So no one is at fault the only fault lay in a communications error where extine believed one thing and the casters believed another.
My only criticism of extine is that he could have expressed himself after his frustration died down. If anything he should have made the vlog but never uploaded it.