The event is over — a challenging, adrenaline-filled weekend has come to a close. Never imagined I'd start my August like this. Over these two days I met so many people, learned so many things, and typed more command lines than I can count. Some of the lessons I'm taking away from this tournament, not an exhaustive list: 1️⃣ The format needs work. All three Day 1 rounds were planned as BO3, but venue time constraints forced the final round down to BO1. Not the ideal solution. 2️⃣ Servers only run on machines with a local disk from now on, not a netboot environment. Long term I need a more stable OS setup to chase the most reliable competitive environment. 3️⃣ Being the sole admin left me stretched thin, and there are still plenty of commands I'm not fluent in yet. There's plenty more I won't go into here. Running a flawless event is genuinely hard, and I don't want anyone leaving my LAN unhappy. Still a lot of work ahead to get there — but I'll keep pushing. None of this would have come together without a lot of people's support. @CoachParnell came by the venue before the event and walked me through so much — event structure, community building, how to keep long-term relationships with teams. I learned a ton about how esports actually operates, and I'm genuinely grateful you shared that so generously. @wanderkoi — thank you for answering literally every question I threw at you, always with lightning-fast replies. A true legend. No one else out there knows CS2 servers the way you do — if Valve had someone like you, the CS2 server experience would be so much better for everyone. @flamboyant__cs — you've been backing me since my very first experiment, the 2026 Cologne Major watching party, and this time you stepped up as our caster and made the whole event so much more vibrant. Niko took home the Cologne Major trophy, and I came away with something just as good — meeting you. Thanks for the support the whole way, already looking forward to working with you again. Huge thanks as well to every team that came out to compete, and especially every team captain — for patiently answering every single Discord message while we sorted logistics together. Getting to meet and talk with you all in person at the LAN was genuinely an honor. @harpertabb @Hackett_17 @rodizzleau ChoXCC @Syed05M @ngsabyts maybeBZRK @BirchReal — hope to see every one of you and your team back on LAN again soon. And finally, thank you to Gala BoxHill for hosting the event, and to every single staff member who worked the tournament days — you all put in serious work, and I appreciate every bit of it. As always, if anyone has any complaints, feedback, or suggestions about this event, feel free to DM me directly here, or find me on Discord at djhebei. Thank you to everyone who took part — it's genuinely an honor to be able to give back to this community. See you at the next one.