Spoletium 3 Official Party Report

                   Spoleto (Italy)  25th November 2000


 Spo3 is actually the ONLY demoparty in Italy of *any* scene, this
 meant that we also had people from other platforms attending like
 Rigel^KIC from Linux scene or Gecco^Ind, Mig^S1, Rock^S1 from PC,
  Surfing^Rj^Dms^Flt from PC/C64 ones (the latter being a real aficionado
 of this party) and so on. Everyone at the party was italian but we had
 many (most?) contributions from abroad showing the interest around this
 happening.

 The show started at 10:00 and local schools organized visits to watch
 demos like they were going to a museum, teens showed much interest and
 enjoyed the not-so-boring lesson silently, luckily enough they all left
 before the scene-boozers came in or there would have been some trouble
 with their teachers ;).

 It was almost lunchtime when sceners and plain Amiga users entered the
  partyplace after wandering up and down the town looking for it, there
  was a reserved parking for us but none seemed to know and cars were
  scattered quite far for a while, It was a mess to guide people to it.

 At least we had an huge maxiscreen (one of the greatest I ever seen)
  audio/video quality was above average and all promises in the invitation
  fully kept (apart from hard disk throwing compo): no quakers, porn, or
  LAN, a dream for every true scener? :D, best of all, relationship between
  security and attenders was the more relaxed you can expect as we all knew
  each others and troublemakers stayed home as SHOULD always be, anyone
  ever saw what happens to major parties in northern Europe knows what I
  mean.
  
 Local TV arrived to film the event and interview the main organizer,
 nobody seemed to care, quite strange for ego-stimulated sceners ;) ,
 journalists instead stayed home and cut'n'pasted the official press
 release without bothering to check what's up (mind it when you go to the
 newsagent ;P ).
 
 Compos begun just in the evening with greatest demos of every time
 being shown on maxiscreen in the meantime, it was like going to cinema
  also because of the darkness that surrounded anything most of the
 duration of Spo3 since the morning. We saw releases from groups inactive
 since lotsa time like Genesis and Morbid Visions and also from newcomers
 like Trinity and it's finally a good news for the italian demoscene,
 given the occasion it can show it's still alive even if heavily tied to
 local environment.

 Quality and quantity of releases was generally on the same trend of
  previous editions, pixel artwork ruled the gfx compo (yeah!) with
  Wade and Fusko being my favourites, mods compo was weaker IMHO with
  Skizzo^LFS underrated as placement and demos/intros ranking from very
  good to crap. Generally speaking oldskool influenced most of the work
  shortly followed by fun stuff (if you're familiar with italian TV,
  "Giulia" by Ezio will make you laugh quite loud, just to give an
  example).

 Votes were collected by nice girls and sceners were really happy to vote
 this time ;D, well know Surfing^Rj tried to fake votes forgetting a
 little detail, he wasn't competing at all! Holy booze, organizers had to
 give him a "special prize" to keep him quiet, but you know ,he's a showman.

 Shortly after midnight the event reached its end, everybody moved to a
 local pub waiting for the station to open, judging from smiling faces
 I can say that they liked very much the party, it was quite late and I
 had to drive home before falling asleep.