Diary/Logbook from the Symposium'97

SYMPOSIUM 97 REPORT
by Darkhawk/Iris


Yes, you wouldn't believe it, but right now I'm typing this report
real-time, sitting at the Symposium hall on the night of the first
partyday.  I'll write my impressions on this party as they come to
me, and sum it all up in the end.

Last year's Symposium was pretty much of a success, with content and
happy partyguests praising the organizers and the friendly
athmosphere.  With this in mind, we were three members of IRIS +
Decoy/Puzzle&Passion who drove the few hundred kilometres down here
for four days of partying.  FRIDAY:

First off, it was quite easy to find the partyplace, one big hall
where all guests are sitting, with a 6x4 meter screen at the end.
It's quite a nice feeling having everything in one hall, much more
comfortable.  There's also lots of people here, mostly PC's it seems,
but also the cream of the Scenes down here.  Right now I'm listening
to the Skyphos/Artwork live act, which isn't that bad and the screen
is also flashing with the obligational Technoflashes and Acid
effects.  Good enough.  The organizers are indeed quite friendly,
lending us an audiocable and some tape for our banner.  They also
tried to get people to sing a birthday song for two people who had
their birthday today.  Well, the resulting song wasn't that normal,
heh.  There's also an Internet cafe off in one corner of the hall and
it seems like the partynetworks works effortlessly.  Something we're
not accustomed to from e.g The Party.  There have been some powercuts
though, some tables had their power cut 3-4 times, but it hasn't
happened here at our place.  The toilets aren't crowded, that's a
nice thing, and there's a pizzeria located within acceptable distance
of the partyplace.  But I have to warn you readers, do not eat
anything in a German McDonalds!  My God, it's disgusting!  And the
McRib.  YUCK!  It must be something they have recycled from their
wastebins.  But I digress.  Momentarily I haven't anymore to write,
so I'll stop for now and resume at a later time.

SATURDAY:

Oki, I've just slept a bit, but I must remember to add that the
concert with Skyphos actually gathered momentum and became quite
nice, and the visuals were good too.  Oki, and now that I've slept
I've actually investigated about the sleepinghall.  It's quite small
and there weren't even space for an extra flea, so I've slept under
the table, something that's not as bad as it sounds, actually it was
quite nice.  The organizers were so nice as to switch off the
mainscreen and their noisemaking speakers so that we could sleep.

Incredibly as it sounds, some things are even worse than the food at
McDonalds!  I really pity the Germans for the poor fastfood they are
able to get.  Well, I won't go into details about a certain gross
event that took place some time ago.  And another event, although not
as gross, is that the first release at this party has seen the light
of day.  The Official Eurochart #29 has been released, and it's a
nice bit of work!  Congratulations to Depth!

Oki, now I have a lot of things to talk about.  After returning from
the city after a little meal, we were thrown headlong into a very
funny improvised compo.  First four SID modules had to be guessed,
and the four guys who were able to guess the name of the tunes then
had to, in pairs, to sing along to the Gospel Karaokee from Complex.
The best pair each won an original C64 game!  Congratulations to
them.  After that compo, the wildcompo was about to take place, but
first we saw some selected commercials, that were pretty wild in
their own right.  After that, well.  The wildcompo started very good,
with an Apple II wilddemo in Megademo style, and a lot of work must
have gone into that one.  From there on, the competition very rapidly
detoriated into a free-of-any-talent-whatsoever videocompo,
interrupted by a raytraced demo from In-Sect, and some half-good
Elvis imitation at the very last.  But boy, were the other
contributions lame beyond mentioning, the best of those being a video
with a PC being demolished.  Interesting to see how totally
untalented people see their opportunity to get their work published,
just by filming eachother.  Although there were only 8 wildcompos,
only three or four should have been shown!

Yep, it seems like saturday is slowly starting to end, now there's
been the gfx compo, the C64 graphics compo and a live musical act by
Ronnie/TEK, which was quite ok, with visuals, smoke and light.  Sadly
it seemed like Ronnie was a bit disappointed in his audience, as they
were repeatedly being asked to dance, but I guess computerowners are
just too shy.  A crowd of people danced out to the far left of the
action, not daring to go in front of the stage, but when I asked
Cytron/Depth for a dance (not really meaning it, but he seemed
absolutely stricken with me), the audience got a small danceshow.
Apart from that, there were some nice entries in the graphics compo,
almost all the (six) C64 pics were of a high quality, and the normal
gfx compo was ok too, apparently the worst trash had been deselected,
so actually it was quite enjoyable, although many of the graphicians
focus on singleportraits these days, only one naked man and woman was
seen.

Seems like only the ANSI competition is left and it's being shown
now.  However, I think I'll forego the pleasure of seeing that compo
up close, and instead visit the toilets.  By the way, in the start of
the article, I wrote that there were plenty of toilets for everybody.
Yes, there are, but they aren't being cleaned, atleast not yet.  And
it's starting to stink quite a bit in there.  Anyway, who wants to
focus on personal hygiene?  Such a boring thing.  And yes, that
alcohol is allowed at this party is very cool and I'm profitting from
this myself ofcourse, but it really seems like some Germans just
don't know how to behave when they're drunk.  And then they're even
Amiga owners...  But I only find it enjoying, I saw somebody puke on
the floor in the front of the screen, and subsequently begin sleeping
up on the Scene while Ronnie played his music..  Tough guy.  But
still the organizers don't allow everything, as I heard that a drunk
guy (ofcourse another German) had a fight with the organizers outside
the hall, and that the police had turned up to "talk" with.  So the
organizers don't allow anything.  Anyway, the ANSI competition really
rocks!  Atleast what I can see from here looks like real pictures.
Infact they're getting quite a bit of applause.  ANSI competitions
can be quite cool!  Anyway, that's enough for now, the time is now
1.00 and this concludes the saturday for me until the musiccompo at
8.00...

SUNDAY:

Now all compo's have been shown and I sit here wanting to sleep, but
to do that I'd have to remove a 15 tons mammoth from MY
sleepingplace, so I'll just have to stay awake.  Instead I'll
describe the sunday for you, if I can correctly remember it all.
First off, it started with the 4 channel module compo, and although
some people thought it bad, it was different from all the all too
technical/one-stylized compo's I'm used too from other parties.  The
organizers seemed to pick something from a variety of styles.  And
that's ok.  It'll be interesting seeing the placements tomorrow.

Later in the day there was some sort of water-fighting compo, which I
did miss, but the mainidea was that two people were placed opposite
eachother and had to shoot their enemy with a super-soaker watergun.
Would have preferred the famous See-Compo last year though.  Hmm, I
seem to have trouble remembering the compo's and the events of the
day.  I'm just being notified that there was a shoe-compo aswell.
The participants had to line up and throw their shoes as far as they
could, then run off to retrieve them and present them to an
organizer.  Apart from those unscheduled compo's, I must say that the
C64 demos were almost all of a good quality, although there weren't
many.

The multichannel compo I didn't hear so I can't tell you about it..
Ah!  Just remembered, there was another surprise compo too, and I won
a TP6 t-shirt and five disks at that one.  It was a really easy
compo, we had to choose between three possibilities of questions, and
in the beginning the speaker said that now hardcore Sceners were
needed..  Cool I thought, but with questions like who is the
Microsoft leader and how many kb capacity is there on a DD disk, it
wasn't that hard to win.  We were six participants and five of us
won.  The looser got 4 disks and a Symposium t-shirt, ARGH!  Really
unfair but quite funny.  Oki, the 4k intros on the Amiga were of
mixed quality, but none were too bad.  The one from Focus Design
wasn't shown properly, bad luck for them!  But the winner will be the
Ambrosia 4k intro, a nice piece of solid work for sure.  And then
some people claim that Ambrosia are dead, tsk, tsk.  The Amiga intros
weren't that spectacular, it seemed like the groups wanted to
concentrate on the democompo.  As for the PC compo's.  Well, who
should care?  And the last thing, that is, the Amiga demo competition
was nice!  In a way that is.  The quality of the demos were higher
than on TP6, and showed a high decree of technical perfection.  Some
of them anyway.  The mainproblem though is that there really wasn't
much creativity or innovative ideas in them.  Some of the best one's,
like the one from Essence really was almost only one routine, a
3dEngine and some other small things.  A very fast and efficient
engine surely, but in the long run, all those objects are too boring
and reminds too much of the idealess PC Scene.  And the demo that is
going going to win, Megademo IV from Artwork.  Well that one has nice
and new ideas, a very fast 2cp and reused graphics.  But Azure really
seems to hang on to his old routines, he uses them in almost all of
his productions and that's not enough, nooo, he also has to release
the same code under other groups and handles.  But it was a real nice
demo anyway.  Did I mention recycling at all?  SUMMING UP

Well, now it's all over, and I write the last bit of this partyreport
at home, after having slept for 18 hours.  Special things that
happened during the monday was the prizegiving and lion feeding.  The
resultlisting was done in a very, very smart way, with bars at the
corner of the screen representing the entries, and those bars then
expanded, showing the percentage of votes for the entry.  Very smart
and interesting indeed.  The lion feeding I've never seen at any
other party.  It was very funny, the organizers threw hardware,
software, books, t-shirts, etc.  out into the wild crowd who had to
catch them.  The one who catched the thing got it.  Needless to say
people did go to great lengths to acquire a prize, heh.  And there
were some expensive prizes also, like a Soundblaster AWE card and the
like.  Brilliant idea!

Another thing I've neglected to say is that the food that could be
bought at the party wasn't cheap at all.  But one could buy chips,
chocolate and coke at the party.  During certain times they also sold
burgers, at overprice ofcourse, but still they tasted good to an
hungry Scener.

To sum it all up, I'll give my opinion of this party.  It might not
show that clear in my report, and it's pretty astonishing, because
I've attended 16 of the most noteworthy Sceneparties since 1990 and
countless small meetings, but Symposium was the BEST, most
WELL-ROUNDED party I've ever been to!  The organizing simply was
excellent, beyond my wildest expectations, the entries in the compo's
were of a high quality, and the people with whom I talked gave this
party the last touch, so that it was a real cosy Sceneparty!  My
thanks to the organizers to make this, and they can be very sure to
have me as an guest when they hold this again next year!