PowerPlay Журнал

Here in Canada we recently had our second PPM meeting, with 12 attendees. This article is an English version of an article written on just such a topic: PPM Meetings.

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As we all know, PPM is a virtual game and hence a PC, laptop or smartphone is enough for us to interact with this world that brings up emotions, excitement and joy.

However, there are managers that for diverse reasons encourage face-to-face meetings, ranging from small groups to up to 50 people. After consulting several of the organisers of these events, we can establish some common themes.

The first reason for these encounters is to increase the existing virtual links and establish new friendships; a majority of organisers prioritised personal contact to stenghten relationships between managers of different experience levels or leagues. Nevertheless, the second main reason was to promote the exchange of information about different managing styles and techniques.

Other goals included promoting the game and recruiting new managers, improving the quality and efficiency of the teams through simple methods and finally, to improve the player quality as this is a major determinant of the National Team results.

Country size, infrastructure and development levels are major factors related to the quantity of attendees of these events, but the organisers' passion and enthusiasm also play a major role. In some cases, people travelled up to 500 km to take part in the meetings. These mostly took place on Fridays and Saturdays, mainly during the night for small groups, or starting around noon if there were many people involved. The typical issues discussed were different aspects around team management and how to make the most efficient decisions, both in Football and Hockey; buying players, building facilities, team ratios... the list is long and many managers have a 'method', including a report, chart or spreadsheet that justifies their approach to the game. The exchange of information about the various methods can explain a lot about why some groups of managers have done much better than others.

Outside PPM, the main conversation items included (real) football and hockey as well as remarks on the opposite sex. The meetings did include a small quantity of ladies, mainly spouses or daughters of the participants. According to the organisers, many people have joined these events to learn more about the game and to establish friendly ties with other team managers, which has resulted in stronger national associations driven by some nationalistic fervour. Widespread fun -and some episodes of merry drinking- have also been reported about the events. Almost all say that the goal long term is to win the world cups, but short term to just have fun and drinks.

The countries that have arranged the most events are:

Country # Events # Participants
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Czech Republic # 31 # 760
Slovakia # 24 # 409
Poland # 10 # 140
followed by Hungary, Croatia and Romania with 5 events each.

A final point to mention about these events is the general feeling of gratitude towards the game and its creators for establishing a place for friendship beyond distances and personalities of the players.