View source for Addybook 15 The Party 93

<pre>   report from THE PARTY'93        
       --------------------------       
                                        
by PRI/TIA/OXYRON.                      
                                        
hello  and  welcome  to another, already
almost traditional party report of mine.
as usual, it contains:                  
                                        
    1. the party and its events         
    2. competition results              
    3. a list of the groups present     
    4. a personal comment               
                                        
                                        
the party was organized by camelot (64),
and silents,lemon and spaceballs (amiga/
pc). it took  place in  a big exhibition
centre at herning,denmark, starting mon-
day, december 27th,at 9.00 hours (or was
it 10.00 ?) and ending wednesday, decem-
ber 29th, at 15.00 hours. the exhibition
centre really was a huge place, twice or
even three times  as big as on any party
i've ever been to - aars'91,'92 and tcc.
five (!) of the  nine  halls  were used,
the biggest one as main party hall, two 
smaller ones  in  addition  for the same
purpose, as  well as  two for  sleeping.
the entrance hall had a very representa-
tive  design, and institutions such as a
a bank, a kiosk , a cafeteria , a large 
bistro, an ice-cream stand, and of cour-
se  the  information counter  were to be
found there. furthermore, there were se-
veral exhibition  and  selling stands of
well-known  computer firms in one of the
smaller party-halls.                    
the facilities  in  the sleeping-halls  
were  very  good. many  separating walls
had been  put  all around there, so  you
had many little  corners  you  could lay
down  in. also  special  corridors  were
marked, so you didn't  have to walk over
people. best, however, were the large a-
reas of  isolation mat  laid  out every-
where! the  only  disturbing  thing were
the loudspeakers which  never were swit-
ched  off in  these  halls, so every few
minutes you were woken up by the organi-
zers' calls!                            
talking about loudspeakers, there  did  
not seem  to  be any electronical signal
or  jingle to  introduce  the  calls, so
they kept making "ding-dong"-like noises
with their own  voices  which really got
on your nerves later on. but on the who-
le, the  technical  equipment was rather
good and also well-positioned: there we-
re two big  screens, one  quite  big one
in  one  of the smaller party-halls, and
one  very big  one in the main hall. the
projectors were fixed  high above on wi-
res hanging down from the ceiling, which
saved a lot of space. the  speakers were
not that big, but  of good  quality. for
my taste they only could have been a bit
louder during the competitions, in order
to draw  more  attention  to them and to
carry the sound also to the further cor-
ners of  the  hall. furthermore, the big
screen was positioned  not on the short,
but on the long  side  of the rectangle-
formed  hall, which made it possible for
more people to watch it.                
at last - the showers, as  well as the  
toilets, were  very  clean, so the clea-
ning staff did a really good job!       
like at aars'92, the  party's  own tv-  
channels  were  broadcast. inbetween  e-
vents  the screens  were used  in a very
informative way, showing info such as a-
bout upcoming competitions and deadlines
which also  were announced via loudspea-
ker. furthermore, the whole pogramme and
time-table  printed  on  paper was to be
found in  several  corners of the halls.
quite  a  bit  of  surprise-competitions
such  as  tug of war, karaoke  and body-
crashing  (1,5 l coke ex! )  were  being
held, which was  real fun. for the first
time ever, programming seminars were of-
fered; there also was  the  new category
"dealer demo" in the amiga competitions,
which, however, only  had  two  entries.
another new event was  the c64 cult-demo
show, in which important highlights from
the old times were shown.               
in the  competition shows  one  got to  
see some rather nice stuff  on  all sys-
tems. it  was, however, striking that a-
bout  half  of  the  pc demoes  crashed.
therefore  we  saw an  excellent 64 demo
show with lots of quality stuff - all in
all 10 demoes. also in  the graphics and
the  music  show there were  some rather
nice contributions to be found.         
regrettably, the  time limits for  the  
music  and  the  demo contributions  had
been reduced  from  5 minutes  for music
and  20 minutes  for demo (according  to
camelot's invitation file) to 4 minutes/
15 minutes (paper invitation). but  most
of the participating  tunes were already
faded out after 2 minutes  or even 1.30,
for no obvious reason -there mostly even
were long breaks in between. during  the
demoshow, however, the  total  limit  of
2 hours and  also  the 15 minutes' limit
for each  demo  even were exceeded: many
demo groups, especially  those whose de-
moes were of  a longer  duration than 15
minutes, had criticized  the lowering of
the limit, so  after  long  negotiations
with the organizers a jury was formed by
one coder each  participating group. out
of a total number of 18 this jury selec-
ted the best 10 demoes to be on the com-
petition show, which  finally lasted for
over two and a half hours.              
                                        
                                     >>>
just like last  x-mas, votes had to be  
delivered on  a specially formatted disk
which in the end  were to be read out by
the organizers' computers. this was dis-
played on the big screen  and was called
"live  counting". the  display, however,
was quite confusing for many paople, and
even the  organizers  themselves  didn't
always seem to be sure about the results
when handing out the prizes: the guy who
did the talking during the amiga ceremo-
ny seemed quite  uncertain and sometimes
wasn't even able  to  read  the winners'
names from the screen. while  the 64 re-
sults concerning  demo and  music seemed
to match with  the  screen  display, the
graphics results  even differed totally,
which was supposed to  be due to (quote)
"some amiga guy" who had  "fucked up the
system".                                
before i come over to  the results i'd  
like to say that we in oxyron do not ta-
ke them fully  seriously  as we strongly
believe the competitions have been mani-
pulated! (see my comment)               
                                        
but now here are the full results.      
+--------------> demo <----------------+
                                        
           place points group           
      ----------------------------      
        1.   (1640) CAMELOT             
        2.   (1328) CENSOR DESIGN       
        3.   (1044) FOCUS               
        4.   ( 704) fairlight           
        5.   ( 400) oxyron              
        6.   ( 224) dual crew           
+---------------- demo ----------------+
                                        
              place point               
        -----------------------         
          7.   ( 168) silicon           
          8.   (  96) antic             
               (  96) spirit            
         10.   (  48) w.o.w.            
                                        
                                        
+------------> graphics <--------------+
                                        
          place points artist           
    -------------------------------     
      1.   (740)  OXIDY/FAIRLIGHT       
      2.   (604)  DANE/TRIAD            
      3.   (364)  DEEKAY/CREST          
      4.   (288)  mad/padua             
      5.   (224)  creeper/antic         
      6.   (220)  stasi/noice           
      7.   (204)  ivan/smash des.       
           (204)  joe/antic             
      9.   (196)  scat/red sector       
     10.   (188)  floris/chromance      
     11.   (160)  felidae/reflex        
     12.   (140)  mirage/focus          
     13.   ( 76)  electric/extend       
     14.   ( 72)  syndrom/crest         
     15.   ( 64)  mystic/crossline      
     16.   ( 56)  ?/?                   
     17.   ( 52)  hein holt/focus       
           ( 52)  shadowolf/paralyze    
     19.   ( 48)  hi-lite/success       
     20.   ( 40)  sander/focus          
           ( 40)  rob/camelot           
     22.   ( 32)  sdi/alpha flight      
     23.   ( 24)  p.s./eastgang         
           ( 24)  drunken man/?         
     25.   ( 20)  avalanche/atlantis    
           ( 20)  sundancer/regina      
     27.   ( 12)  the leader/bsab       
           ( 12)  awa/tsr/wow           
           ( 12)  pollux/equinoxe       
           ( 12)  aeg/smash des.        
     31.   (  8)  mike/?                
     32.   (  4)  alcohol/bronx         
           (  4)  panic/earthquake      
     34.   (  0)  yoga/wow              
                                        
                                        
+--------------> music <---------------+
                                        
          place points artist           
   -----------------------------------  
     1.   (1000) RED DEVIL/FAIRLIGHT    
     2.   ( 488) BLUES/LIGHT            
     3.   ( 384) ZYRON/ANTIC            
     4.   ( 320) ody/eastgang           
     5.   ( 308) amadeus/meka design    
     6.   ( 176) doh/cryptoburners      
     7.   ( 160) erik af ekhage/indy    
     8.   ( 152) licket/noice           
     9.   ( 148) echo/comic pirates     
    10.   ( 140) m.harestad/moz(ic)art  
    11.   ( 124) emax/trsi              
    12.   ( 100) yoko/fiction           
    13.   (  92) shark/regina           
    14.   (  80) tango/triad            
    15.   (  56) trident&dane/triad     
          (  56) danko/censor design    
    17.   (  20) syndrom/tia/crest      
    18.   (  16) morbid/shazam          
    19.   (  12) thor/extend            
          (  12) b.i.o./creatures       
    21.   (   0) pri/tia/oxyron         
          (   0) herr tie/mtv           
          (   0) the alien/b.c.d.       
                                        
                                        
                +-----+                 
now for a  (probably incomplete) list of
the groups present at the party:        
                                        
alpha flight, amnesia, antic,  atlantis,
black code,bronx, bsab, camelot, censor,
chromance,comic pirates,crest,creatures,
crossline, dual crew,eastgang, equinoxe,
excess,extend, fairlight, fiction,focus,
genesis, jam, light, lore of arts, meka,
noice, oxyron, padua,  paralyze, reflex,
regina, silicon, smash, spirit, success,
tia, topaz, trc, triad, trsi, wow.      
                                        
                                        
well, now i will  come  over to the last
part of  this report: the  personal com-
ment!                                   
first off- in my opinion, on the whole  
this party was the  most  well organized
one so far, except for one important as-
pect: the competitions, that is, the mu-
sic show, the confusing mode of counting
and announcing the winners, and of cour-
se the results.                         
while in camelot's file-invitation the  
time limit for each tune had been set to
5 minutes, it had been reduced to 4 when
the paper-invitation  came out. but none
of the tunes was  actually played longer
than two or even only one and a half mi-
nutes! a lot of people -including myself
- were  quite  pissed  about  this. many
composers had done  tunes  which were a-
bout  three  or  four minutes  long  and
which they had spent quite a bit of work
in. it seems many  people do not realize
that it is very  important  to listen to
the whole  tune, not  only to  its first
one or two  minutes. when  you look at a
picture, you don't  only watch the lower
or the upper part, either - you look  at
the whole one! and that's what it should
be  like  concerning  music. some  tunes
need a longer  time  to build up, others
have major changes only after some minu-
tes, and so on. so  if  you don't listen
long enough, you  might estimate the tu-
ne's  character and  quality wrongly! so
to all future party organizers: make su-
re to play all tunes  fully, and if this
is not possible, form  a  jury to select
the best ones. better disadvantage  only
some competitors than all of them!      
  over to the  next point - the counting
of the votes. while  at aars'92 the pro-
mised "live counting" had not taken pla-
ce, it was realized  this time, but in a
quite confusing way. without  any intro-
duction, they  started  to display info-
screens containing data about the parti-
cipants and their  current  positions in
each   competition.  regrettably   these
screens were flipped  quite fast, and so
it wasn't really  possible  to gain much
information  from  them, which  lead  to
confusion  among  people. finally,  when
all votes had been counted and the win- 
ners were to be announced,the organizers
did not even seem to be able to stop the
required display for each competition as
it kept switching over all the time.    
furthermore there didn't seem to be a-  
ny monitor or not  even any written form
which told the  organizers  the results,
so they always had to  twist their heads
to read from  the  big  screen, in which
one of the amiga  organizers even failed
as he wasn't able to read the names! ri-
diculous really...                      
now some words on the disk-voting sys-  
tem, which in my opinion perhaps is easy
to handle by the organizers, but defina-
tely inconvenient for the voters: as on-
ly the competitor's  number, but not his
name is counted, it is  hard to memorize
all numbers you want  to vote for, espe-
cially  if  there is a greater amount of
competitors and  if  you  perhaps change
your  mind  during a compo show. to help
the people out  who  had  forgotten  the
numbers, only  one  or  two  small lists
were  laid  out at the information coun-
ter, however, the 64 demo-compo was left
out there! the voting system at tcc  had
been much better - you had all the names
and numbers displayed  on one screen and
could enter your votes directly into the
computer. i do hope people stick to this
system in the future!                   
but now let me finally lose some words  
about the competition results. what fol-
lows now does not only represent my per-
sonal  opinion, but  also  those  of  my
groupmates, furthermore  those  of  many
other people i spoke to at the party.   
if you take a  closer look  at the re-  
sults, you  surely  will  agree  with my
claim that there  has  been  some  VOTE-
CHEATING going on, or  the  results have
been FAKED, or even both.               
  look at  the  demo-results. camelot at
#1 is absolutely justified, censor at #2
is ok, too. but focus at #3, in front of
fairlight and oxyron? very strange. dual
crew and silicon in front of  spirit and
antic? weird. (already  when the coders'
jury selected  the  10 best demoes, e.g.
ours was ranked top 3 or higher, so... )
there also was  a  rumour circulating,  
saying fairlight-members  were  supposed
to have delivered a lot of disks contai-
ning  votes for  themselves. this  would
explain why on  both  music and graphics
compo there are fairlight-members at #1.
another fact which adds to this supposi-
tion is red devil  getting  the exact a-
munt of 1000 points, while the differen-
ce to #2 is over 500 points. now if this
is not cheated  you  can call me moskva-
tv! not to mention  my  own place at #21
with 0 (in  words: zero) points. absolu-
tely ridiculous... without any arrogance
- i was one of the  most well-known com-
posers there, and i  dare to say my tune
wasn't bad either, furthermore there we-
re quite some  people  who  told me they
had voted me top 5  or  higher, so don't
try to tell me anything...              
there are some  more curiosities to be  
found in both the music and graphics re-
sults, e.g hein holt  only  at #17, even
lower than the  FAKE  picture "crossfire
sucks" at #16, and so on...  furthermore
the rather doubtful excuse that "some a-
miga guy" was supposed  to  have "fucked
up the system"  when  the organizers did
the announcement of the 64 graphics win-
ners, which  was  absolutely incongruent
to the display on the big screen.       
to put it in a nutshell - i do not ha-  
ve any proofs  for  my claim, but it all
seems very suspicious, doesn't it? so in
my and also many other  people's opinion
either  the  organizers  must  have  had
their hands in there somewhere, or there
must have been some  voters who cheated,
or even both.                           
anyway, as the whole party was so much  
fun it is really a pity that these inci-
dents occured at the  end, so  the great
atmosphere suddenly  was  destroyed. but
i still think  on  the  whole  it  was a
great event and a milestone  in the his-
tory of parties. - now  my  wish for the
next party is: general organization like
herning, voting  system  like  tcc, fair
competitions and decent results like tcc
or aars! let's see if it comes true...  
                                        
                +-----+                 
at last i  would  like  to  make clear  
that my  comment is  ment to be taken as
serious  matter-of-fact  criticism,  but
definately not as  any personal offence.
so i hope there won't  occur any hostile
feelings!                               
                                        
                                        
                                        
                                        
if anybody would like to comment on this
feel free to contact me under:          
                                        
                                        
              xxxxxx xxxxx              
              xxxxxx xxxx               
            xxxxx xxxxxxxxx             
                germany                 
                                        
            +49(0)xxxxxxxxxx            
i'm off the keys...                     
                                        
                   yours,               
                                        
                         PRI/TIA/OXYRON 
                        +--------------+
</pre>