This will be the last update to our Kickstarter backers via Kickstarter and this one’s all about the future. If you want to continue to receive NGN updates make sure to like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter.

2012 NGN broadcast schedule

We always promised there would be more and here it is. We released our full 2012 broadcast schedule last week and it features the biggest ultimate tournaments in the world.

• USAU D-I College Championships  (May 25-27)
• WFDF World Ultimate & Guts Championships (July 7-14)
• NexGen Ultimate Tour (July 20-August 24)
• Labor Day Ultimate Championships (September 1-2)
• USAU Club Championships (October 25-28)

For more information see the announcement on www.ngnultimate.com.

USAU D-I College Championships

This Friday marks the beginning of NGN’s coverage of the USAU D-I College Championships. We’ll be live-streaming a total of 8 games over the weekend and if you act in the next 12 hours you have a chance to provide input on which pool play games we’ll be streaming.

To vote log into Facebook and click on the links below:

• https://www.facebook.com/questions/393253334046025/
• https://www.facebook.com/questions/393253770712648/
• https://www.facebook.com/questions/393254647379227/
• https://www.facebook.com/questions/393254917379200/

Coverage continues on NGN through Sunday. Full dates and times will be available Tuesday morning at www.ngnultimate.com/schedule.

George Stubbs reward posters

Sorry for the significant delay. George now has the posters and will be working on signing them all this week. We’ll get them out ASAP.

In closing

A huge thank you to all our backers for making NGN possible! We would not be here without your generous help and support. We’re excited about the future and hope you will continue to follow along and witness your contribution growing into something special for the ultimate community.

Easterns 

The college regular season comes to a close this weekend with the last major regular season tournament in Wilmington, NC. We're happy to announce that we'll be renting out a stadium with a hardwired Internet connection. Combined with our 4G backup (speeds at the Portland airport are killing it right now) we're feeling pretty good about getting all of our Tournament Pass holders an HQ stream.

Rounds run 11:00, 1:00 & 3:00 EST and we've got some great match-ups Saturday with Tufts vs. North Carolina, Central Florida vs. UNCW and Georgia vs. Stanford. Vassar, the Easterns TD, has also set us up with a schedule that gets us both semis and the finals on Sunday. The games are going to be great!

Centex Codes

If you already used your redemption codes for Centex don't worry. You should be receiving an e-mail tomorrow with a replacement code. If you do not receive this by end of day Thursday please e-mail kevin@nexgenultimate and we'll get you taken care of.

Rewards

We'll be a tad later than the posted March delivery deadline. Still a few people left who need to fill out the survey. We'll finalize our orders after Easterns and get everything shipping out by mid-April.

Looking forward

By no means does NGN end this weekend and we've got at least one exciting announcement coming in April and you'll be the first ones to hear about it. 

Best,

NGN

Dear NGN Supporters,

The nature of start-ups is that there will be bumps along the road and this past weekend showed that NGN is no exception.

STANFORD INVITE

We sincerely apologize for not communicating well the problems we encountered this weekend. We simply did not have sufficient staff to maintain a full broadcast, attempt to solve our major technical issue and respond to customer service. We ultimately chose to focus our efforts on making our on-demand video the best product we could. We hope you understand this decision.

The main problem this weekend was that despite being thoroughly tested our 4G Internet connection could not maintain a signal on the Stanford campus. Why this is we still do not know. While attempting to solve our modem problem at halftime we accidently wrote over saved archives of the first half of Carleton vs. Whitman and possibly the first half of Pittsburgh vs Colorado (won't know until we fix this game.)

Additionally, we corrupted games from Round 4 – Quarterfinals and must have them professionally salvaged before they can be added as on-demand video. In the meantime the Finals and Semis will be available starting Wednesday, March 7.

THE TOURNAMENT PASS

Due to the Internet issue of last week the Tournament Pass will no longer include an HQ stream and will consist entirely of on-demand video. We’ll continue to offer a free SQ stream and when tournaments can provide us with a rock-solid hardwired connection we’ll resume offering HQ to Tournament Pass viewers.

When we’re not interrupting/corrupting/stressing out about non-existent 4G Internet connections our workflow should allow us to get game archives up in the evenings after games. Officially, we’ll stick to the 2 days out policy, but we will always try to get games up as early as possible.

CENTEX GOES DARK

When it rains it pours. I was woken up this morning at 7:30 by a phone call from the University of Texas. The President’s office has decided to shut down the filming of Centex. To make a long and complicated story short we had already been prohibited from filming Centex on campus because of a contract with ESPN’s Longhorn Network. Our understanding from communicating with University officials was that if we moved the games off-campus there would not be a problem.

Sharief Moghazy, the Centex tournament director, and I have worked every angle within our power to get approval for this. We’ve gone up the administrative ladder, contacted the student government, reserved outside fields and have come up empty handed.

We apologize to our Kickstarter backers who had their hearts set on Centex and anyone else who has already purchased a Centex Tournament Pass. We will be reissuing codes to all account holders who have already elected for Centex as a Kickstarter Reward and refunds/codes for anyone who has already purchased the Centex Tournament Pass. For backers who received three codes, your remaining code will be usable for on future events.

In Conclusion

It’s been a long, frustrating and often disappointing week for us at NGN, but we remain cheerful and optimistic. We’re still excited as ever about broadcasting ultimate and we’ve got some great events In the works for the future. Please stay with us during this trough and we’ll be back up on top in no time. Thank you all.

Kevin Minderhout

NGN

Several mornings of going to bed to the rising sun and a million gchats later and our fantastic web team has given us www.ngnultimate.com. All our main functionality is complete and we'll be adding video in the next few days and other goodies as time, money and our imagination allows.

Stanford is this weekend March 3 & 4 and our Saturday schedule will feature Pittsburgh, Oregon, Florida, Minnesota, Carleton and Whitman. Games at 10:00, 2:00 and 4:00 PM PST.

If you're wondering "How am I going to watch all 6 games in HQ?!" Don't worry. Jed is writing up a script as we speak that will send each of you a unique redemption code(s) to unlock Kickstarter Tournament Pass rewards. You can get a jump on the process by registering an account now.

We'd love your help getting the word out, so if you know any bloggers, media folk, interesting people, etc. drop them a line about NGN or simply share us on Facebook.

And if you like the website and need some work done the design was by Rob Whitehouse at hoorayokay.com and the backend was done by Jed Clinger at jed.clinger@gmail.com.