dialogos'99 analysis

this time not the usual partyreport ...

the facts: at 10.45 pm we (kb, codey and me) were arriving at the partyplace, an ex power house with much of it's original equipment located in jena/germany. there was a separate dance/musichall available. the party was massive sponsored by the town jena and the program 'european cultural capital weimar', so there was a huge amount of money available for a party with about 220 attenders. in the weeks before the party the organizers from suburban creations done everything possible to interest the people for their party. as result several people from foreign countries like vipa/purple, litewerx or quad showed up. but there was also no space for more people, so the organizers had luck in this point. there was a party network without internet access available. several camera teams were filming and making interviews (also with me) at the partyplace.

positive things: the party location was really cool with a very special atmosphere. inside the compohall there was a real bar where you could purchase a variety of alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks, fruits and small snacks. on friday and saturday afternoon/early evening there was free food available (choice between two soups). the quality was ok and it was enough for all interested people - a very nice idea! the sleeping hall was in another part of the building and really quiet. the music hall was located in another building, so in *theory* no sceners should be disturbed by loud techno music. there were two big screens in the compohall and the quality was ok. there was a professional looking color booklet available in that you could find information about the compos, an interview with digisnap and even a coding corner.

the bad stuff: the music wasn't stereo or at least not sounding stereo, official reason was the acoustics of the building. between the compos or other official events (like the second part of my demoshow that was running very well) the dj's of a local discothec was playing loud and annoying music. besides the bad quality this wasn't very helpful for the people that had to work on their releases. was it a must because the disco was also one of the sponsors? in the mp3 compo the organizers used an echo plugin in the player so that the quality of the music wasn't very good, in general there was always to much bass. at first the organizers lost also some cd's with entries for the compo. the democompo was a complete mess. several demos were running without sound on the first try. but one demo was also infected with a virus - bad joke! in some compos there was no information displayed about the number of the running entry and the announcements with the microphone were hard to understand. the beamer for the big screen showed not the complete picture and this problem wasn't fixed during the party. in the online voting it wasn't possible to select some entries - they were just blank. also the number of entries on the vote form and the number of entries in the compo differed sometimes. so the door was open for wrong voting. poti/bm (evoke organizer) was helping some time, but at the end of the party no official thank you to him by suburban.

the highlights: the first demorelated event after a nice movie on the big screen was the second part of my demoshow with the best demos from '96 to '98. the best demos in the compo were coming from smash pc featuring teklords (3rd place), kolor (1st place) and pmf (2nd place). in the 64k-compo matrix won with a very nice follow-up to 'gcube', kolor was 2nd in this compo. the wild compo was dominated by a smashing animation called 'static motion 2' from litewerx. there were also some free cd's with all litewerx productions available at the partyplace. kb was again on the stage with a short live performance.

other stuff: it was also possible to visit the partyplace with a cheap day ticket so especially on saturday evening the hall was sometimes crowded with people without any relations to the demoscene - small children with their parents as example.

all in all dialogos can become a regular event in the future when the organizing will be improved on upcoming parties. after a longer food stop in hannover (thanks for a creative rice/noodle mix ;)) we were back in oldenburg on sunday evening.