Party Review for Mekka Symposium 2001

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!MS00 Report
Ghandy
Mekka^Symposium 2001 party Report

by ghandy/darkage

Spending your easter near Hamburg instead with your family became a real tradition during the past years. This time Exon and Mystic, both members of the illegal group Faith and me already arrived at Thursday night to make sure that they and their PCs would have a nice place to sit at. To our surprise the entrance was open and everybody was welcome to come in and build up his equipment. When we came too early at THE PARTY some years ago, we had to pay around 30 DM extra, at Mekka^Symposium it`s for free to come one night earlier. Well, that`s only one example for the differences between the management of the MS and other parties. During the first night I tried to sleep under a table beneath a lot of fat highvoltage power cables but what killed me wasn`t the electricity, it was the low temperature inside the hall.



The next morning at around 10 `O clock the hall was already nearly full! Only a few seats here and there were free but they weren`t many, incredible!. Two hours later still Sceners entered the hall but they had big problems if they wanted to sit together with their equipment as holes were not big enough. One hour later everything was overcrowded, the organizers wanted us to sit a bit closer in order to make space for more visitors, infact nearly nobody did. And then, during the day still people arrived and wondered where they could find a decent place. If they provide the same hall next year then you should arrive during the night before the doors open officially. Or else you won`t have any chance to build up your equipment, sad but true!

It wasn`t surprising that the Intels had the absolute dominance at the partyplace, around 70% of all computers were Intel inside, the rest devided up into C64s and Amigas, but still one can be happy with each alternative computer that shows up at a party. On other happenings such as the Gathering or Assembly only a hand full of Amigas try to compete with around 2.000 or more IBM compatible machines.







Relaxed atmosphere

The atmosphere was relaxed as always. Smoking and boozing was officially not allowed but none of the organizers had a problem with calm people drinking alcoholics. Also the men at the entrance weren`t that unfriendly as they must have been last year. Rumours told us that in 2000 the orgs hired doorkeepers from the red mile "Reeperbahn" from Hamburg in order to keep the peace. Maybe they were the same men serving their service, maybe they had orders to be as friendly as possible but all in all one cannot say that they were not polite. The only things they didn`t accept were troublemakers and people smooking weed.

For sure during the years the Scene has changed a lot and also has the visitors that came towards the northern part of Germany. But even if our beloved girlfriend is dead in commercial aspects, the Amiga Scene made a strong impression as never before!! At the democompetition 20, yes TWENTY Amiga demos were shown and none of them could be called a nightmare. 

"If even TBL travels from Scandinavia to Hamburg to show their latest demo this is a sign," a satisfied Zito of Darkage told us. 

The only problem with the TBL demo was that they`ve faked the fractalzoomer and the zoomed forest. These eyecatchers were realised by a precalculated (filtered?) zoomer with crossblending, still hard to realise but not as hard as if they would have been calculated for real. Not to forget that the winnerdemo was kinda ram-consuming.

"Kalms is actually working on a version working on machines with only 16 megs fastmem", Rubberduck later officially explained the audience in the irc.

For me the real winner was "Amsterdam Blessings", a demonstration from the Polish Mad Wizards containing fantastic demotunes and a superb design. On rank #2 in my personal compocharts came the production from Loonies. It provided yet unseen effects, a fast action and was nicely done all in all. The PC demos in comparism were not as stylish, many of them simply offered fast and smooth running 3d engines but that alone doesn`t make a good demo. Seemingly here a new generation of demomakers took place but still they have a lot to learn about well designed productions. One of the few exceptions was the demo "Propaganda"  by INF, really a nice one! Also the leading members of the PC diskmag guild were present with Psychic Symphony and Pain`s maineditor Unlock of Vantage.


What Else Happened?

Some camera teams of different tv stations ran around in the hall to film a bit of the typical scenish atmosphere. Clary of Drifters presented the Havok Scene Radio and made several live-interviews with Sceners such as Zito/Darkage, the cracking group Faith, Planet`s maineditor Neurop, the siteop from "Back to the Roots", Bobic and many more. The bookauthor of "Hackertales" and "Hackerland" Evrimsson of Nuance ran around with a mobile camera and asked everybody if they would know the phreaker Captain Crunch. The answers were filmed to be presented together with the father of blueboxing in a promotion show in Cologne in late April.

Dirtie, the leader of the musicgroup Moods presented their first audio CD "Digital Radio" which was broadcasted only a few hours before. We wish you many sold copies, it`s really worth to buy it. 

"Why should I put modules of known musicians on the CD??", Dirtie asked us. "Isn`t it better to present good tunes of totally unknown trackers to give them a chance to become more wellknown at that way?" 

Surely his words were convincing for many visitors ears.

During the first days of the party the members of the swedish Amiga demogroup Nature offered any interested persons to write down their own private scroller for the endpart of their fantastic 64kb intro Zeon. 

"I love scrollers", a smiling Pipe of Nature explained us.

Later they had to end their activities or else they would become problems with the size limitation. Check out "Zeon" yourself, with an asskicking 3d engine, realtime raytracing, precalculated samples and many, many more nasty details this intro is a real killer!

The ZX Spectrum Scener Raver of DCS and Phantasy came across Russia and many parts of eastern Europe to present his new papermag dealing with all kind of computer Scenes. Sadly he and Dipswitch/DCS^DTR had prepared only a few copies for interested readers. The consoles demo compo was a real success! Haujobb presented a stunning demo realised on a Sega Dreamcast and Paradox has shown the audience what a PSX is capable of. The third entry was made on a Gameboy color and still was able to entertain the partypeople a lot. Later Lincoln of Paradox wondered who entered the ps1-demo for his group. 

"Demo? What demo of our group?? I didn`t know about that!! But afterall I didn`t want to be as drunken as in the years before", he told us. 

In 1999 Lincoln was filled up by many various coloured pills, entered somehow totally stoned the roof of the hall and sprayed a logo of his former crew on the wall which was made of glass. Some minutes later the police took him away, and hopefully they told him that one should not write Lightforce without a "h". 

"I really cannot remember what happened during this day", Lincoln comments the lost of his memories.


To  resume the party:  It was fantastic!  Sceners from all corners of Europe came towards Fallingbostel, even those who would have only to drive a few hours to the Gathering!

Our only advices for y2k+2 are:

a) don`t raise up the entrance fee anymore, 70 DM is more than enough!!!

b) a bigger hall is a real must!  Next year even more people will come and then it won`t be only crowded, then this would destroy all the fun and the special atmosphere we enjoyed so much during the past years.


To close the article I would like to quote an email from Noogman of Scoopex that  I`ve  received two days after the party was over:

"The weather was so bad that we decided not to drive. Shit, now I`ll have to wait one complete year until the next good party takes place!!!"

How true, how true!