TP 1997 - The event


___This report is all negative. But I am afraid it had to be this way, considering the way I personally feel, and many with me, about this event.
___The first thing I want to bring in all your readers heads is that this party in Denmark is NOT held for the first time, but for the 7th (SEVENTH) time. Remember that, when you read on...
___It all began with the fact that I read through the official TP7 homepage, that the party will again be in Aars. I thought about last year and came to the conclusion that these halls in Aars were much too small for so many people. There wasn't even enough toilets for all the visitors (Especially NO clean ones. -Ed.) and the fact that you had to walk for about 10 minutes to reach the external sleeping hall didn't make better either... Based on previous experience, I decided to write an email to the organizers to be able to understand why the use the same halls. The answer I got back was...
"All the other halls that are big enough (Like the halls in Aars is big enough? -Ed.) in Denmark like Herning, Fredericia and Copenhagen are too expensive and we don't want to raise the entrance money. The halls in Aars are the guarantee that we can keep the old entrance price."
Actually a quite alright answer. I settled for it. Then some days later I again visited their homepage and what did I see? The entrance price was raised by 50 DKK. Bah...
Then, a few more days later I wanted to reserve some tables for us at the party, but the organizers has suddenly decided that only people who bought tickets in advance was allowed to reserve tables. We had not done this, considering the fact that my idea of "safe" is NOT sending money through snail-mail all the way to Denmark - Ergo, we only had to hope for good tables...
Some weeks later, the organizers discovered that because of the reservation rules there were very few reservations, especially from foreign countries. And now, because they were afraid that not enough people would show up, they changed their mind and gave permission for everyone to reserve their tables. As if this helped us very much? Now all the nice seats were already reserved by the locals. (Mostly Quake playing kids and sex picture traders, that is. -Ed.) Wouldn't it be better to set aside all those Quaker's and porno addicts back in hall 2 and 3 while letting the real scene guys occupy hall 1?
One couldn't say that this was a nice pre-experience and I had my doubts on whether or not this party would be great when we finally set off...
We arrived at TP7 in the morning on the first day and luckily we discovered some spear seats in hall number "1". There was nothing to wait for - We brought all our stuff inside and started to connect our computers. Everything looked good...
After a short visit in all three halls I tried to find all the sceners I wanted to meet at the party. On my way I dropped by the front desk and found two organizers in big discussion with some visitors who wanted to sleep but could not find a place to do it. The problem was that is was forbidden to sleep in the halls and the external sleeping hall was not yet open. (Exactly the same problem as last year. -Ed.) This resulted in the fact that no matter how tired you were, you could NOT sleep at all the first day...
Then the first shock became reality: The video projector in hall 1 "died" with a big BANG and some smoke... The organizers ran around in big panic, but we (Stupid us. -Ed.) actually believed that if they were able to organize a projector for every hall, they would surely have a spare projector to replace the broken one. Or, on the other hand, they could surely use one of the other, smaller projectors from the smaller halls... First, they removed the projector from hall 3, but this one never popped up in hall 1 after all. Instead it was placed at its old position in hall 3 again. Everybody was informed that it would take some time to get a new projector or to get the old one repaired. The funny thing was that they announced this information only via the bloody video projector. And, as we know by now, there were no projector in hall 1, thus nobody there knew anything about it. Haha...
Another funny thing was that the projector in hall 3 was so extremely ill placed that you only had a good view of the hall if you were placed under the projector itself. If you were sitting or standing behind this projector, you always had this huge thing in your view. Good place to fit a projector, guys.
This damaged projector was reason number one for changing the time-schedule, because they needed the video projector for the opening ceremony.
Now the normal things like small power failures at some tables, warnings that no microwaves ovens, toasters and other kitchen stuff would be allowed in the halls, and so on. The funny thing was that in hall 1 you got trouble with the organizers if they found a small toaster in use, but in hall 3 there were 2 or 3 refrigerators in use, some microwave ovens and a lot of other equipment without the organizers even bothering about it. The reason I could get from the organizers was, that hall 3 didn't contain very many computers and that the power could handle some of these kitchen stuff there. I wonder, why wasn't they able to rearrange the power supply to redirect some power from hall 3 to hall 1?
Then the next message was announced. "The power supply is working at it's limit and every electric piece of equipment besides computers must be shut down." You had even to shut down your computer when you were not actually working with it.
If you wanted to digest some warm food, you had to use one small table in hall 1 which was called the "kitchen power supply". There you were allowed usage of some kitchen stuff, but only one after the other, cause there wasn't enough space.
Meanwhile it was getting late in the afternoon and no opening ceremony was held or any other official party action had taken place.
At our table my friends were working on their releases for the competitions. And due to the power failures at our table, we were striving hard to meet the deadlines. When we finally dared asking the organizers for some power, we were told to go look for it ourselves. That was all the bloody help we could get!
Furious we did exactly what they told us to do, we helped ourselves, and by snatching some power from the "kitchen table" we managed to finish our work.
Eight o'clock the biggest announcement of all came... The power would break down totally in all halls and in the entire one half of Aars for some time. The scheduled time was first announced to be 4 minutes and later extended to a half an hour.
The biggest power failure I can remember in the history of computer-parties was a fact. No lights were present in the halls - Even the emergency lightning was disabled during this immense power-out which turned out to last for 5-6 hours judging by their final announcement. The showed us a big fuse from the power station explaining that this fuse was damaged and that it would take 5-6 hours to get a new one working. I spoke to some sceners who actually work as electricians and every single one of them told me that this fuse could not break down from a party like this.
So the light was off and also most computers. Only the lucky ones with notebooks and laptops could work on their machines at this time.
Some organizers were walking through the halls while trying to explain why the power broke down. A quite a good idea from the organizers, but why the hell send out a bunch of non-English speaking guys? Gee... If you wanted to ask these so called "organizers" something you normally did not get an answer. Actually there were ONLY ONE organizer I spoke to who was well informed. He was, unlike the others even able to speak English. (Wow. -Ed.)
At the beginning of the darkness I went our to our car, to get something from there. When I wanted to re-enter the hall, the security man at the main door told me that I had to stay out, cause they could not check the entrance bracelet in the darkness. I only looked disbelieving and asked him, if he would pay my computer if it was stolen in the darkness the time I was not able to watch over it... He thought a small moment for then to let me in. Although I was allowed to get it, I could se a bunch of guys outside who were NOT allowed for quite some
time.
After about 20 minutes, the organizers made the announcement that everybody should look very good after his equipment in the darkness, because they would not pay anything if computers were to be stolen. I hope that the organizers had this idea for themselves and that this was not originally mine.
The air wasn't all that good either. The organizers tried to open the main hall doors, but naturally this didn't help much for the ones situated on the other side of the halls.
Great party so far - No video projector, no power, extremely bad air... What could be next?
The only thing one could do now was having a little party with some people from Denmark and some guys from Haujobb. They sang some songs for us and entertained us quite well. You could also use this opportunity to get some sleep even if it was not allowed in the halls.
The only ones who actually used the power-out to benefit themselves was some guys from Smash Design who ran around showing one huge electric scroller with advertisements for the Mekka/Symposium 1998. Great idea, I must admit!
After about an hour in the darkness the organizers announced that some emergency generators would be installed very soon so that we could get some power to get the lights and the computers running again. This really happened at 22:20 o'clock. From this point on, the light went on again and we could use our computers for the rest of the party.
Finally they got a new projector (Or was it the repaired old one? -Ed.) and again hall 1 was able to obtain info. (Or at least, they could have been able to do just that. -Ed.) The funny thing was, that the one who adjusted the projector was not able to make a clear picture. It was sharp for a moment, but then he adjusted a little bit more and the sharpness was gone forever resulting in that the visitors in hall 1 had a blurred picture for the rest of the bleeding party.
After the Ceremony was postponed for so many times; From 15.00 to 18.00, till 19.00 till 23.00 till 00.00 it was finally arranged at 00.30.
I went to the information desk and asked the organizers when they were to come up a new time-schedule for the party. What they told me was that the main organizers would have a meeting soon and that we would have a new timetable in some hours. Yeah, he told me SOME HOURS and that's quite alright, but when I actually wanted to get a copy of the sheet including the re-arranged timetable, they wanted to charge me money for the copy. Boy oh boy... There I was paying 300 DKK to get in and they couldn't even give me a plain piece of paper for free?
When I got my sheet (And I got it for free. -Ed.) I saw they had listed every little competition at it. Even the stupid ones like Coca Cola crashing and the most useful monitor etc. By now they had a delay of 9-10 hours, but ofcourse they still insisted to arrange this totally stupid compos. As if that wasn't enough, they were intelligent enough to have a 45 minutes pause between each and every competition. Smart!
Due to the fact that Coca Cola crashing is not one of my favorite interests, I slept through all this bullshit and that was the end of day one.
We didn't really have high expectations to what was about to come up the next 2 days either, and we were absolutely right. Nothing special happened. Only the normal delays, problems with the graphics competition (Wrong number and name was written for each picture. -Ed.), problems with the network and so on.
As for the competitions, I liked them very much. I am not talking about the organizing of them, but about the actual entries. The overall story on the contributions was that they were generally better than last year, but there were never really a big hit coming apart from the C64 competitions - They were unbelievably GREAT!
When we wanted to vote, we noticed that most of the network was not very stable. We tried voting at some computers, but we weren't able to because of the network breakdowns. The organizers tried to set up a faster and better network for the voting, but this changed nothing. I'm not sure how many people really voted, but I guess it couldn't have been very many. After some time the pricing took place and all the productions we thought would win won...
We packed our stuff and went home after a very, very disappointing party. After some hours we arrived at home and went all very sleepy to bed and tried to forget how much money we spent for this thing called THE PARTY 7.
Our slogan for The Party 1999 would be...

- The Party 1999 -
"Better stay at home"






by Big-Rat/Nuance (c) Insomnia'98 




TP 1997, A COMMENT!


__After what seemed a bloody long bus-ride, and a non eventful boat-trip, we finally arrived in Aars. It took us a little while, arguing about whether we should go to a motel or not before we managed to haul our equipment inside the party-place. After much doo-dah, and jackety jack with the fellows trying to organize this event, we found ourselves a non-reserved table.  
__What was pretty weird actually, was that the organizers had decided not to open hall 3 until the next day, and hall 1, and much of hall 2 had already been reserved. As for the other facilities upon arriving, we were not allowed to sleep inside the hall. That would have been alright if they had opened the sleeping hall, which they didn't. We couldn't even take a shower, cause they hadn't opened the showers either. So we were stuck there, tired and sweaty. Well, that's not really enough to topple me over, not when it comes to computer parties anyway. One can always survive the odd day and night without a shower and some days worth without sleep. And... We did, at least almost. Towards the official opening hours of the party, I managed to fall asleep underneath the table and when I woke up there were people all around. They had opened hall 3 which started filling up, and, joy oh joy, one was able to go shower.
__The passing of days sort of went into a vague thing after that. It might have something to do with the fact that one could actually buy spirits, beer and what have you, for a very resonable price at Danish gas stations, not to mention Danish grocery stores. 
__I recall going for a wee sightseeing through Aars, together with Tecon / PJZ and  Morbid / PJZ. Actually... There is not much worth seeing in Aars. I'm pretty sure, if Aars had been in America, you'd have found it somewhere down south, and there'd be lots of weird looking people there, playing banjos (Insert dueling banjos theme from Deliverance here. -Ed.)
__What struck me after this little stroll, was the quality of the air inside the halls - Or rather, the lack of quality. Having smelled fresh Aars air for a couple of hours, the air inside the halls hit me like a brick. It was probably worst in hall one, and got better and better the further in you got. Mind you, I use "better" as a relative term. Probably a wonder that no one passed out.
__I spent most of the time walking around talking to people and friends, and even though there were a lot of Quakers, IRC addicts, and other unnamable people present, there was actually a lot of cool scene people there too. I got to meet a lot of friends I've only talked to through internet, and people I didn't know at all. This I think, is probably the reason to go to The Party, because I did detect a rather commercialized organizer staff. I have never been to TP before, and this being my first time, I have to admit, it reminded me a lot of The Gathering, which also is a nice place to meet people, but nothing more. 
__Power break. Yep. It had to happen. Although very annoying, it was also one of the funniest power-breakdowns I've encountered. This is due to the fact, that we didn't just bring down the power at the party place, we brought down the power in the whole of Aars, blowing a fuse at the local power plant. It surely was an experience, walking through the pitch-black halls, only having a couple of hundred cigarette glows guiding the way. The organizers had their share of work, walking around reminding people that it was not allowed to smoke inside the party halls. We finally made our way outside, which was even darker. Although now, it was now no problem finding booze and spew parties - Just go towards any light car in the parking lot.
__Well, nothing short of commercialism, and power breaks, it was time for the competitions. I won't dive into describing every release here, cause frankly, I do not remember many of them. The only thing that I do remember very well, is the "official" party joke. In a lot of the demos and intros, there were references and puns on the earlier mentioned power break and the party's slogan: Batteries not included.
__The competitions were all run on a big screen in hall 1 and was by far the best big screen I have encountered at any party so far. This was a screen that deserved to be called a big screen (Something you'd be likely to see in descent sized cinemas. -Ed.) and it had a very clear picture. The sound system was ok, but nothing special.
__As usual, there was the expected string of delays. The delays didn't last too long though and I guess the reason for most of them was the power break. As far as I know they didn't encounter too many problems with the productions either, although some productions would not run on their machines. (Like TRSI's huge demo for the Amiga competition. -Ed.)
__For some reason, the organizers obviously didn't anticipate many people actually wanting to watch the competitions. The area set of for people viewing the competitions was very small. Barely room enough for a few rows of chairs. Any other people wanting to watch had to be seated in the rows of hall 1. Which was a rather vexing experience. Having to sit besides Quakers, people downloading porno and playing their god damned Mp3's way too loud. And of course, if you didn't get room in front of the big screen and had to sit in the rows, be sure some tall fuck had to come stand in front of you. I'm just glad afro hair due's are out this year.
__The competitions went along with lots of nice productions, and lots of not so nice productions. But all in all a very enjoyable show. What about the competitions that startled me was the c64 graphics show. It is pretty amazing to see what some folks can do with this old, loveable machine. Sadly enough our bus had to leave before I could see the c64 demo compo though... 
__It has to be mentioned that it took the organizers nearly 3 weeks to put out the official results. And then without any names nor titles. Only points and entry numbers. Really sad!






by Optic/TRSI (c) Insomnia'98 




TP 1997, THE RESULTS


Editors note: To come up with decent results from a party seems to be harder and harder as the years pass by. The Party's organizers have this year used an amazing 1 (ONE) month to present the official results - And now, when they are finally being published, we find a result-list featuring some incredibly stupid misspellings and stupidities... Like Lops Kakki from DA of Jormas exists or Jazz / Haujobb of Haujobb? Any poor soul that have got SOMETHING to do with the scene, know for sure that there are no such thing... (Right, Da Jormas? -Ed.)

THE AMIGA DEMO COMPETITION

1.  My Kingdom by Haujobb & Scoopex
2.  Killer by CNCD
3.  Electroboy by Smoke
4.  Remix by Limited Edition
5.  Mellow Yellow by Factor
6.  Aphrodisiae by Haujobb
7.  Idoru by Depth
8.  Mortality by Tulou
9.  Lops Kakki by Da Jormas
10. GoaTraince by Loonies
11. Enforcing the law by Powerline
12. Power by Skytech
13. Dreamscape Disorder by Logic
____Probe
14. Photons Dodraugmix by Ephidrena
15. Katto by Kiki & Pods
16. Eurochart #32 by Depth
17. TurboTronic by Instinct

THE AMIGA INTRO COMPETITION

1.  Superautodrome by Scoopex
2.  Cruisin by Abyss
3.  Suicide by Oxyron
4.  Deep-pan - The final Slice by
____Efreet
5.  Entering Hypnosis by Haujobb
6.  Batteries by Crux
7.  Yafk by Nature
8.  MS98 Invitation by Lego
9.  Uloste by Rave Network Overscan
10. Galaxy - Freedom II by Darkoye
11. Govinda by Depth
12. Kikize - Tro by Kiki & Pods
13. Blues by Dual Crew & Shining
14. Feelings by Darkside
15. The Law by Wipe vs Zif Experience
16. HSB by Northpole Factories
17. Du-Ra-Sel by Boldyr
18. Tight by Dole
19. Bruchpunkt by Lightstorm Inc
20. Master Blaster by GFB
21. Project N by Nuance
22. Square Porrigde by Instinct

THE AMIGA 4KB INTRO COMPETITION

1. Wave 40% by Artwork & Bizarre Arts
2. Beer by Ephidrena
3. Seven by Depth
4. Clot by Looker House
5. Nitro '97 by Artifical People
6. 4Kb by Artifical People
7. Boh by Ambrosia
8. Eat 4K by J-Boy
9. Lsi 4Kb by Lightstorm Incorporated


Unfortunately the graphics and the music competition are still not completely released and we could not include it. Beam the organizers up, not us...


by The Party staff (c) Insomnia'98