Somewhere In Holland 2 


The most expected event for the Dutch scene, the much advertised second instalment in the Somewhere in Holland series of gatherings, has been cancelled.

This long awaited Amiga convention from Spaceballs and Reality, which was originally going to take place on the 9th, 10th and 11th of July, at the Sporthal De Maaspoort sports centre, was forced 

to be called off, because of a sudden back off from the official and main competition sponsors.

Spaceballs  and Reality have invested a lot of time and work on this event; thousands of professionally printed leaflets were sent out to potential attenders, and most disk publications and 

scene related boards, were literally inundated with a series of updated official invitations. An invitation demo was even released.

Unfortunately, due to the recent bankruptcy  and liquidation of Commodore's Bahamas base, most of the main sponsors behind this event, were forced to cut down all extravagant expenses, leaving 

the Dutch organisers with a sudden need of USD 10000!

The arrangers were unable to raise this amount of money in the remaining short period of time to the party, so instead of playing dirty and then announce the cut down prizes during the party 

days, thus repeating another Hurricane disaster, the loyal Spaceballs and Reality decided to discontinue the event, at least for the time being.

ROM has asked Dope of Spaceballs, one of the main brains behind Somewhere in Holland, for his views about this party accident;

How many months have you invested in the party organisation, and of how many people did the main organisation consist of?


Originally the party, was going to be held next year, in 1995, giving us plenty of time to organise whatever we came up with. Boulderbrain however, convinced us all, that skipping one year would 

blow up the enthusiasm of potential visitors, and so we decided to organise the event for this summer. This decision was taken in December 1993, a couple of weeks before The Party III, on 

Sunday, the 12th of December 1993 at about 1:00, to be more precise. From that moment on, the big work started, ending towards the fall of June; A total of 7 months of hard work. We had about 7 

people working continuously on the organisation and a couple of extra persons handling the more special events.

Elliott of Reality was one of the the main organisors and the one responsible for the Video equipment.

Wizz of Reality was one of the main organisors and took care of all the flyer printing.

Boulderbrain of Reality was one of the main organisors and also took care of all financial states.

Dope of SpaceBalls was one of the main organisors, and towards the end turned out to be some kind of main director too!

Tycoon and Whale of Reality were co-organisors, but then were promoted to main!

The Fox 2 was a co-organisor and took care of all the audio equipment.

Folkert Brugman took care of all the First Aid Preparations, and kept in contact with the Red Cross department's Hertogenbosch.


Why has Commodore's sponsorship been suspended in the last minute? Were you ever given any plausible responses?


I want to state here that Commodore has NEVER been any sponsor of SIH II. However Commodore Germany was very interested in sponsoring SIH II, but they simply weren't allowed by Commodore Int. In 

the moment we contacted them (January) the rules used by Commodore officials spoke very clearly; "Every transaction made by any of the major departments of the Commodore concern need an approval 

from Commodore Int, Commodore USA, Commodore Germany, Commodore England and Commodore Phillipines." In January, Commodore Int. had an approaching bankruptcy and so, they didn't want to hear 

anything about an Amiga event which would eat up some 10000 USD for sponsorship, and so there wasn't any way they could sponsor us. They encouraged us, however, to hold the party. They "liked 

the idea of such events being organised in Europe".


So who were the actual companies that were promoted as the official party sponsors?


Having good connections in the small computer industry, we aimed at those companies that served the public immediately, such as dealers. We received much response, as we were offering a stand to 

sell or promote own products for a very cheap sponsorship. The main sponsors were;

Animania - One of the 2 Dutch importers of the famous Japanese style movies, often referred to as mangas.

Amiga X - A new magazine in Holland that needed advertising to gain market!

Barlaghe - One of the biggest Dutch Amiga dealers!

Click! - One of the biggest Belgian Amiga dealers. As there has never been a Commodore Belgium this company is often referred to as the "virtual Commodore Belgium".

The main reason for the companies to reject their money support was that they were facing bankruptcy themselves (which was not not a surprising situation) but why then, did Barlaghe rebuild 

their office in The Hague? Click! said the same. The other (smaller) companies got away with an almost identical excuse. Amiga X never wanted to reject their support, but as they were just 

starting off in this cruel market, then, they didn't have any reserves, so they weren't even sure whether or not they could continue the magazine, since they depended too much on advertisements. 

This is a very valid reason, as we had the possibility to look behind the scenes of this magazine and can verify it. Animania in the end, never rejected their movie sponsorship, but 

unfortunately, you can't pay a hall with movies...


Was it really impossible for you to find out any substitute sponsorships? How much money did you really need to cover the sponsors' back off for the competition prizes?


First of all, I want to state the rule we always follow; A broken egg is no egg, meaning that lowering the competition prizes is just a thing we'll never do.

Of course, we tried to find substitutes. We really did try hard. We must have contacted about 80 companies, but due to the critical situation around Commodore they didn't want to make any 

commitments (at that moment it was already April or May). We also tried our best, outside the computer industry. Everyone drinks Coca Cola, no, so what about Coca Cola or Pepsi then? Of course, 

these companies were interested, but just like most other major organisations, they needed about 3 or 4 weeks to take a look at the written request for sponsorship, which at a certain moment was 

just too much for us. Besides that, most of them already had plans for this summer, because they plan their sponsorship flow, at least, six months ahead. We did find natural sponsors yes, but 

again, we simply couldn't pay a hall with 10.000 litres of TANGO!

To cover up everything we needed some 6000 USD. This included ALL the competition prizes, the air cushion and food for the organisers. After dropping the food, lowering the prizes, upgrading the 

entrance fee to 35 guilders and sponsoring by ourselves, we still needed 4500 Guilders! This would also mean that the visitors would react in a way like, "well, it's a nice party. I met a couple 

of cool sceners and that's all", while it was supposed to be something like, "It was awesome, The big screen was perfect, the air cushion fantastic and the organisers recounted the competition 

money because Chaos thought that 100 guilders were missing! It was really a great event, and I also met some cool sceners!" Can you spot the difference?


Do you feel disappointed and cheated, because the main sponsors could not keep up their words?


Of course we all are, and we did let the sponsors know that, quite good, both with faxes and telephone calls, but in the end you just can't help it any more. When companies are spending loads of 

money, they don't care about signing a contract for sponsorship. After all, they give you a gift, so you should just be glad with it and keep your mouth shut. Next time, maybe we could do it 

better, but at this point I wouldn't know how....


You had, of course, made various contracts with some suppliers for the party hall, the inflatable castle and big screen. Did these suppliers demand any refund when you had to back off? Did you 

incur any personal loss of money or damages?


This seems quite funny, because the scene never thinks about it. Everyone says "Oh, the party was cancelled, how many months' work was lost?", and they don't ever think about the involved money. 

In our case, we happily made it with a total loss of 150 guilders per main organiser, thus covering the phone bills we had, and some postage stamps.


You had also organised professional printed leaflets, which of course, together with the postage, should have amounted to a quite large sum of money. Don't you feel disappointed now that you had 

to waste a lot of time and money, to make the invitation magazine, spread the paper leaflets and the text invitations?


The leaflets and the book were made by Nao of Spaceballs, so it didn't cost a thing and he enjoyed making them so that wasn't a problem. The postage cost amounted to 150 Guilders per organiser, 

as stated, and the invitation was received by the public as being a good scene production and even got a review in Propaganda 4, which gave us a nice feeling, so also that wasn't done, just for 

nothing. All the time we had spent on organising the party is, in my opinion, a fair price for what you learn with it. After all, you learn a lot when you're organising a party. Besides, it's 

fun and we had lots of joyful times, so no, we don't regret any big losses at all.


You and Spaceballs had obviously planned some special releases for this event. What has happened to this stuff?


In the first place, we were going to make an opening demo for the party, but choosing between looking for sponsors or coding a demo was an easy choice to make. We decided to make a video demo in 

a professional studio. However, after the party cancellation we put it on long range. Danny and Facet were going to compete in the competitions, both with an AGA picture and an ECS one. Elliott 

wanted to compete, but couldn't because he was an organiser. Nao was going to release a module, together with Spaceman. The music and the pictures will of course, be used in the future. Reality 

has been working for quite some time on their Reality Tracker, a powerful Protracker clone which would have found it's beta release at the party too.


What do you personally think of Commodore, now after all this party trouble has happened? Seeing the company's current financial problems, what future do you forecast for Commodore and the 

Amiga?


At this moment (beginning of August) Commodore Germany hasn't picked up the phone for days, which doesn't really point to a bright future. Personally I think that the Amiga is history when 

nothing is happening at a fast pace, or maybe it's already too late. I think it's a pity, but my future will head more towards Virtual Reality applications and Neural Net systems, so for me 

personally, it means that I'll just have to move my head a little earlier. Commodore, as a company, sucks, and has never not sucked. It's policy is so bad that you could already forecast that 

something would have killed it someday, already way back in 85.


Did you have any complaints from the party attenders who had already booked their entry tickets? What was the general reaction of the Dutch scene?


Fortunately, we haven't had any serious complaints. Nobody had paid any entrance fee yet, and knowing the situation everybody picked up the news fairly sympathetically. Legend, however had the 

urge to release a text file to provoke us. In general they claimed that their party was far better, cooler and not cancelled, but reading this same information you can see that one fact ruins 

the other. The one who wrote it claimed things that aren't even true. I don't want to pass any comments, but I know it has caused a mass reply to Legend, telling them to shut up, because we, as 

the organisers, weren't the ones to blame. I guess that we are just lucky to have such an organiser friendly scene!


Will there ever be a Somewhere In Holland 3?


At this moment I am enjoying my bank account getting fatter and fatter because of my summer job and I am thinking about what to do with it, not how to organise another party. This goes for all 

the other organisers too, but one fact we got to understand now, is that SIH 2 is no fiasco, as we initially thought it was. The scene knows the situation and accepts it. All our contacts are 

either asking us about SIH 3 or encouraging us to organise it, giving us their full support. Thank you all out there for that, but no, I can't answer you right now. Maybe in a few months' time. 

I'm not saying that there will be a SIH 3, I'm just not saying that there won't be a SIH 3.

Finally, I would like to thank all the people around me, my parents, my contacts, my friends and especially my sister, who has always been very enthusiastic and encouraging on the SIH subject. 

Besides that I want to send a special hello to all the ones in the SIH team. It was the right team, at the right place, at the wrong time, that's all! From all of us, I want to thank the 

spreaders, for their incredible support in spreading over 4000 books and flyers. I want to name Astro of Movement, Fashion of Static Bytes and Rokdazone of Infect who also wrote an article for 

the Invitation magazine.

A party is like a girl.
When you think you've done everything for her,
you forgot just that other small thing.
When you just want to kiss her,
the door bell rings.
When you think you have her,
she's gone.
But most of all, you'll have good memories of what
has become or could have been...


Until now this seems to be the most obvious victim of Commodore's current disastrous financial deeds. The scene silently awaits what has to come next.