mekka-symposium 2000 report

shortly after 11 am i have reached the partyplace, still located in the 'heidmarkhalle' in fallingbostel. but this year the neighbourhood was making some more trouble, mostly because the noise in and around the hall in the past years. as one consequence the security this year was an external team without scene people. even at this early time several 100 ppl were already inside, but quickly i found a good place for myself. after some difficulties with windows 2000 the network access finally succeeded. the network was quite stable this year, only the internet access was often very slow or impossible.

one surprise this year was that the group sanction seems to be back, at least beeman and kilroy stayed at the partyplace. they released nothing, but maybe we will see version 1.0 of the xtc-player for dos in the near future. also the work on winjey will continue. the weather was like last year mostly very nice with a temperature above 20C. the bad side effect was that the air quality inside the hall decreased rapidly, even with the 'no smoking' rule from the organizers. in front of the hall there was again a hotdog stand, but not open all time. inside you could purchase sandwitches, softdrinks and other snacks. in the evening kb made a very nice opening show, later in the night he made a live concert together with entropy. unluckily the volume during this concert was much to low so that many people didn't noticed the concert. there is also no recording available. at that time around 1000 people were in the hall, luckily only a few gamers.

after some hours of sleep in the sleeping tent behind the hall (this year with mostly good heating) it was time for the first compos. like in the last years i was not very focussed on the music and graphics compos, but there were some nice entries. in the pc 4k-intro compo the entry 'toasty' from freestyle was the most impressive one, featuring the well known rollercoaster part from cubic team's asm96-demo 'toasted'. at the evening two other live concerts were waiting. one to long concert from a punk band called 'local zeroes' and one very nice concert with computer music from welle:erdball. they sold also cd's at the partyplace. in the night you could also witness a live-striptease (!) on the stage. this was an advertisement for the upcoming radwar party in this summer, so sex sells? the last compo in this night was the wild compo. the compo was way to long, but there were some quite nice entries especially near the end of the compo.

the sunday was beginning with some trouble in the afternoon. scamp/vacuum was thrown out of the hall after smoking inside and playing to loud music. his bad luck was that his place was very near to the table of the security team. after a longer discussion he could come back. later he was away for hours, boozing. the 64k-intro compos were quite nice, especially the amiga-compo came with a kick-ass intro. in the pc-compo the 64k-intro 'heaven 7' from exceed was clearly the best and so it won. on the early evening me, entropy and few other guys decided to go into a chinese restaurant for eating. later several other sceners came into the same restaurant ;). so we missed the 32k-game compo in that a small version of turricane was the most impressive entry. the organizers of 'the party' in denmark made also some advertisement for their party. after 9 years of more and more commercialism they will go 'back to the roots'. can we believe that? now it was time for the demo-compos. the amiga compo was dominated by he loonies with a kick-ass 3d demo in that they showed several scenes from well known movies, but also some other entries were quite nice. the c64 compo was also very nice, the group crest is the winner here. the pc-democompo was very long with 23 entries. the last entry from smash designs called 'sleepless' was also the winning one. a very complex demo and a must-have. but also several other demos like the ones from haujobb or the federation against nature were very nice. the only disappointing thing is that the most demos came with the same boring techno music.

the pricegiving was hosted by steeler and he made his job very good. i was sponsering the pc 4k- and 64k-compo with additional 500 dm. all in all mekka 2k was a good party, especially for it's size. only the security sucked a bit. the shuttle from the train station to the partyplace and back was working well like in the previous years.