pouët.net

venue - yup
insurance (if someone dies, it's your fault) - cheap
access to food - are you kidding me? fast food vendors would queue up for that!
bog roll - cheap
website - yeah, i suck at web code.
people who are prepared to go - that's the hard bit
good idea of what to charge for ticket price - aiming for £50.
prizes - budget plus sponsors plus donations minus expenses = prizes
tables, chairs = included with venue
internet access - I'm a network architect by trade, that's covered.
more bog roll - cheap
electricity - covered in venue quote I have
hype - hope?
compomachine - easy to source
projector - quoted £1500 for a long weekend, 2x18000lumen 1080p
beer - CAMRA, venue is already licenced
someone to clean up reed's vomit - clean up crew
invitro - you've got two weeks, code code code
kebab van - this is the midlands
bog roll - I said it's cheap ffs!
hotels in vicinity - tick
fray bentos pie - Tesco nearby
girls - yeah, girls dig the geeks in the UK. Oh, wait...
bouncy castle - i'd be up for it if I didn't have to pretty much guarantee it'd get destroyed
condoms - i'm not investing in meat-filled condoms, sorry
paracetamol - on-site pharmacy
bog roll - stfu already!
security - venue provided, crew supplemented
bog roll - arse, I forgot about this one.

Cool & fitting name for another UK party! /me likes. :)

good idea!

as long as there is a demoscene-party going on in the easter 2011, we will most probably show up no matter where it is...

Response: my guess is there'll likely be plenty for you to choose from. Easter 2011 will probably be the demoparty-season with the most "I'll be at X! Oh, know what, I'm going to Y instead.." ever.

It's good that someone brought this up. If everyone starts planning some sort of Easter breakpoint replacement for 2011, then the worst thing that can happen is if a UK party clashes with something somewhere else. As well connected as London is, eastern Europeans might be tempted to go somewhere nearer and not on an island.

Alternately we could all go gatecrash the gathering and give those gamers some demos to watch.

I guess at some point I ought to code a "registration of interest" page, to see how many would be interested, and where they'd be coming from. Better read that Django book I bought and never read...

Do it.. you're setting yourself up for a massive financial fail if nobody turns up.

I don't mean to put a spanner in the works here ........... but for any European guys who would come to an Easter UK party - you will need Euro-UK power adaptors; thanks to our stoopid tabloid press and successive governments of either persuasion we haven't got Euro connector plugs as standard yet.

Also, cars in the UK drive on the wrong side of the road!

beer is served in man-sized containers too, and is available in flavours other than lager :)

And the English are all cunts.

Pff, you can put the flat euro plugs in english sockets too!

It's just not exactly safe.

dotwaffle : without being rude, as you write it sounds its all easy to setup a big demoparty, i have my doubts about ...

Could be worse.. you could use those 150 volt american ones without a ground cable and run the risk of dying in a bizarre heart attack/shitting accident.

I personally believe that all UK demo parties should provide plug converters to people who fly there as standard. Mainly because those ones you buy at the airport come in those impenetrable blister packs that you need a shotgun to open.

"without being rude, as you write it sounds its all easy to setup a big demoparty, i have my doubts about ..."

It's all effort. I think it's possible, yes it's going to be one hell of a task to organise, but there's no point in saying "that's too difficult, I'm not going to do it because I can't be arsed" - you have to at least try.

Regarding power adaptors, I'm sure it'd not be that hard to provide Euro-UK adaptors at near-cost on the door. In bulk you can probably get them for 50p.

Ok, let's boil it down to one thing:

IF... there is no clear successor to BP in 2011
IF... we can drum up at least 100 people to go
IF... the ukscene stop being so "it'll never work, you shouldn't even try"
IF... I can shut Meaty down on the bog roll issue

I'll seriously look into running an event in the UK, with plans to grow into something special, as smash suggests. But at present, until I know what's going on about other potential BP-replacements, it's too hard to drum up support. The interest is there, the support isn't :(

The whole idea sits a bit awkwardly with me and it's hard to articulate it without it sounding like I'm just throwing mud at what could be perceived as a rival organiser. For the record, dotwaffle has been a very valuable member of the Sundown organising team from the start, but his role has been limited to running of the intranet system (partymeister) and LAN.

The most awkward part is a bit personal, but I think in the ukscene generally you are perceived as an acquaintance, but I don't think anyone knows you above and beyond your involvement with Sundown as the Partymeister guy, and the chap who does some stuff on Assembly TV. Not being a content creator or socially invested into the actual lives of uk sceners makes it more difficult to win support.

Part of Sundown's success I attribute to the help and friendships I have fostered over the years. Sundown was never about me, it was really down to the advice I had received from the whole UK scene, who I talked to on a daily basis.

Being closely involved with the likes of yourself, meaty, ne7, noogs, smash and dvs ensured that the directions I was taking were the right ones, and to this day I still consider Sundown to be a party that undergoes constant refining to reflect the interests of the audience.

To suggest out of the blue that you can start a non-German party to make up for the hole Breakpoint will leave behind is a bit naive in my opinion. There are so many reasons why it wont work, most notably it being a new unproven party, Geographic location, not actually having much mindshare ('scuse the buzzword) - you really have to sell the party to the likes of Smash and Ne7 before foisting it on the scene, because Smash and Ne7 are influential, possibly more than you or they are aware of.

Oh, when I said geographic location, I meant it not being in Germany. I know Sundown is awkwardly placed, but it has a growing audience - a new party would struggle even if it was situated near a low cost airline operator airport.

I think Rc55 has put it quite well, I think if you do organise a party you will need to gain some identity and resources within the the demoscene first and work at it from there. Most "content creators" as rc55 put it are very busy people and need to have the trust, motivation, respect and most of all friendship with the party organiser to commit to help with aspects of the party. You need to be proactively involved in the demoscene to have these kinds of relationships and to make the party a success. No offense Waffle, but, apart from being a great network / partymeister user, what exactly do you do on the demoscene that will make people have trust in you to provide the correct event for the masses?

rc55, devistator: that's not entirely true... as a party mainorgo, sceners do not necessarily need to know/respect/trust you, being so big/mean that other sceners are too scared to refuse cooperation has the same effect :-)

Rowley Birkin: There's only one Scamp, and such efficiency only works in Germany. In the UK we have to fanny about worrying about peoples feelings.

There are a lot of comments about the... "hassle" of running a large demoparty. But even a small demoparty can be time-consuming (and expensive) to organise.

So I would agree with the other comments that if you decide to kick off a party, start small. Aim for 30, hope for 50. Like Sundown, it can grow as the years go by. Also, appealing to the "retro" scene can't be a bad idea, and will likely boost your numbers.

Regarding the date, I possibly won't be running raww.orgy next year, and I've noticed that if you have a party in February you're guaranteed about 3 weeks at the top of Pouets "Latest Parties" list. But you can't borrow my lounge.

rc55, you make it sound as if smash/ne7 could turn the party from absolute failure into wealth and fortune :)

waff0rz: invite your scene friends and let them advocate for your party. word of mouth is the best marketing for a party.

To be honest, telling me that because I haven't released anything "worthy" of demoscene culture infuriates me. I may not be a super-leet coder, and I suck at both graphics and music, but I try and give back as much as possible - hopefully I add to the party atmosphere with AssemblyTV and I assist as best I can with both the network and underlying compo-management at Sundown - plus I've tried to take the demoscene message outside of our comfort zone, giving talks about the demoscene in the UK and the USA. Some of them attended NVScene as a result.

Just because I'm not a respected coder doesn't mean I don't have anything to offer, and if that's the attitude people have in the scene, well fuck them. I enjoy demos - and have done for nearly 20 years ever since I discovered them back on the Amiga. I've been going to demoparties since 2001 and the vast majority of people I've met have bene welcoming and didn't care that I didn't know how to code a rotating path-generated particle system with alpha-blending and dynamic ribbons. Hopefully they saw the enthusiasm I brought and enjoyed my company! I'm quite well known for not taking shit, not worried about telling people that what they are doing is wrong - but also striving to make what I do is the best there is to offer. I *still* get emails from people talking to me about the demoscene, and I put them in contact with the best resources we have, from demoscene.tv to scene.org itself.

If you think a UK demoparty would be ill-attended, fine. Tell me that. What I'm hearing, though, is "don't even try, our scene idols haven't sanctioned it" which is exactly what I thought the scene isn't. The scene is based on merits, on what you've produced; it's also about getting together and watching some great demoscene art, having fun at the same time with your fellow sceners. If you think differently, fine - just don't tell me what I *can't* do.

If I see that there is the demand for a BP replacement, I'm damn well going to run one, and I'm going to try my absolute hardest to make sure it's the best party it can be. I care about seeing great demos. That's all that should matter.

Waffle: I wasnt really having a dig and I really didnt want to get into a debate whether it was a good idea or not tbh, but its a reality that you have to think about. And since any other constructive critisism I could think of would be regarded as a dig at your attempts to bring another party to the UK, I will stop here.. good luck with whatever you decide to do next.