Go for new records!

Computer gaming and organising LAN-parties became his business in January of 2002: "Since then we have only organised smaller or private LAN-parties," explains Grimm. In 2002 he drew the crowds for his very first public LAN-party in Maschen occupying 300 participants.

The event launched in September 2002 can be considered as his breakthrough. At the "Northern LAN Convention" taking place in Neumünster (between Hamburg and Kiel) Marco Grimm’s event had more than 1000 participants to count for the very first time. The innovaLAN Entertainment GmbH have become established as an organizer of LAN-parties. In 2003 Marco Grimm and his team worked out a number of concepts for further LAN-parties that were carried out later successfully: "The Summit" in Osnabrück with 1000 participants, "The Activation" in Hanover with 1300 participants. "The bigger the events became, the more important was fast hardware," remembers Marco Grimm. This is how the cooperation between Shuttle as the active sponsor and innovaLAN Entertainment GmbH was achieved. A number between 40 and 85 Shuttle XPCs are in use on each event - whether as gaming rigs or as PCs for presenting the latest hard- and software.

"Shuttle XPCs are the ideal solution for our business," explains Marco Grimm happily and adds: "Small dimensions are essential when it comes to mobility and setting the PCs up. Shuttle XPCs simply ideally meet our needs!" But Grimm also realizes that a large number of high-end PCs in such crowded rooms can cause high temperatures on the inside. They sometimes do, as Marco Grimm points out: "The Shuttle units do very well in this environment. Despite the temperatures given, Shuttle XPCs run stable and reliable."

So Shuttle was right on the scene of action when a new record of attending participants was set up in 2004 at the "Northern LAN Convention Winter 2004." It was 3150 gaming fans in those days - a new nationwide record! Just one year later the number of gamers joining the "Northern LAN Convention Winter 2005" was with 3450 even higher than in the previous year. Some facts of this tremendous event in 2005 give evidence about the high importance of using light devices. The organizers had to face 13 tons of technical equipment and to route nine kilometers of copper wires, one kilometer of glass fiber wires and 4.8 tons of power lines. Any employee was happy to carry the SFF PCs from Shuttle right under the arm, instead of having to drag heavy boxes around. For the winter 2006 Marco Grimm has similar plans, since he is well-prepared to break any records of previous years and Shuttle is ready to join him.

http://www.innovalan.de/