pouët.net

Hi there,

the Nordlicht orgateam has been approached by the people of Innovalan who are successfully having the biggest Lan-Party in germany for over 10 years now.
While we would be very happy to bring some Demoscene-Spirit to the party we kind of have no idea how many sceners are actually interested in showing up and as thus how to scale our involvement.

Heres the facts:
- the party takes place in Neumünster in northern germany between the 5th and 8th of December
- seperate demoscene area with space for up to 150 people
- full access to the venue, including lots of bars and foodstands and enough space to put your matress
- professional infrastructure provided by Innovalan
- lots of gamers in the other halls of the venue(around 3000 in 2012)
- probably some real prizemoney (no details on that one yet, tho)
- sepearte tickets (price not decided yet, but def. cheaper than the ones for regular visitors)

The ideas of participation range from a small demoshow with some additional information up to a full scale demoparty with compos and everything, but it really depends on the number of sceners (and orgas) who would be willing to participate.
Since this is kinda short notice we thought it might be best to test the waters first before commiting ourselves to a failure and damage our reputation with the Northcon guys.

Northcon Website

So, what do you think?

I'm not sure about this. It sounds like assembly. Is there at least drinking allowed in the hall? Is our stuff safe?

Go full Assembly. But with a bigger focus on compos and drinking inside. Anything less than that is okay, but why aim lower if they have the budget for it?

Good popint. At least they sell cocktails and longdrinks, and they also state "Bei exzessivem Alkoholgenuss eines oder mehrerer Teilnehmer behält sich der Veranstalter das Recht vor, den oder die Teilnehmer von der Veranstaltung auszuschließen."

(in other words: drinking is ok, but don´t overdo it or you may get thrown out).

Also: "Der Betrieb von Lautsprechern, Aktivboxen und ähnlichen Geräten ist verboten."
(no speakers, brüllwürfel or similar devices allowed), but I guess this might not apply to the demo area ;)

I hope not, I always like to take along the Digital Sounds System Sound System™ with me n.n

Sounds like what Demozone tried to do and that was not really succesfull in the end. Though solenoid pulled of a few fun parties, so yeah..

And to clarify a bit, Demozone didn't work out because in the end the Campzone organizers, even though they were nice and tried to be helpful, didn't give a flying fuck about the strange demosceners and the security were huge dicks, but then again, this was an outdoor event, so no idea how it measured up to this.

after having talked to you yesterday, arv, and neumuenster is damn close, i guess i would attend if it was a party with compos. for a demo show i would not even leave the house i guess. also there are some other prerequisites:

* securities must not be too strict for sceners.
* audio must be allowed, also the sound system for the party must be decent. so ofc they would have to put us into a separate area
* network should be separated from the gamers' net. i don't want any script kiddie to hack around there
* not sure about how to handle gamers in the demo area. if too many are interested there must be a way to kick them out. or they only get in by invitation of a scener or something. the latter would suck somehow though. would mean: we are elite and have a VIP area. on the other hand...

overall: time is prolly too short to organize a full blown demo party, but in general i would say yes, given that it's organized and planned well.

No "VIP area" please. There's one valid reason why the sceners should have a separate hall and this is because they're loud and most gamers, especially of the e-sports variety, want to pursue their hobby in sillence. Which is completely understandable.

If anyone who's not strictly a demoscener (what's the definition anyway?) wants to sit in the loud area, let them. If anyone wants to come visit, check out what those weird people are doing and have a beer/cocktail, let them. The whole point of the exercise is to be _inclusive_.

you want diamond loafers with that?

kb: yeah, i basically want that too. but what i would not want is a demo area that is so crowded with gamers that we can't find a seat anymore or can't watch the compos because it's too full. i know, everybody is saying that this won't happen anyway. but that doesn't make me fear it less.

what kebby said.. we don't need even more elitism

oh and typical gamers are 15y old boys.. do you really think they wanna hang out with us old loud, drunk farts?

then the typical gamer won't be at northcon anyway, do they? isn't it 16+ anyway? and yeah, they are there to play, not to booze and listen to ppl yelling mittwoch for no apparent reason anyway...

I'd say go for it.

After all the Innovalan guys really do *not* need to do any of this so it's a nice gesture. Separate hall, drinking allowed (within limits): all sounds fine to me.

That's exactly what I'd want if I wanted to tell people about the scene. Or if I had my demo in the competition.

Well, without going into details, the only "bad" thing about this is the relatively short time until the event is taking place.

Other than that I see no reason not to try it out (if some organizers in the demo-scene are willing to support it)

Just in case anyone cares: I’d probably show up because it’s even closer than Bremen for me. :)

preacher has leading

this.

I dunno if it would be possible to show the compos on the bigscreen in the main hall, tho.

I'm definitely there.
Demos + Lan = Always drunk fun!

Ok, that somehow lights the situation in a different angle.
Demoscene sub-event without showing the compos to all visitors is kinda stupid. If some event like this is happening at a lan party, it should be fully integrated imo. Why should i visit a gaming party with scene event and a few sceners for quite a high entrance fee, if that event is totally seperated, except for some hall access and the date?! The idea behind this party should be to show both groups of people their different hobbies.
Without fully integration and that short time frame to the party, the amount of sceners attending would fit into a Gemeindehaus, you can't expect to fill a hall full of sceners.

Wohoo! Only 400 kilometers away! I'd be a dick not to attend! So count me in :)

However, I'd hate to spend a weekend there as the one and only scener, and we'd definitely need somewhere, where we can have all the noise we like. If it doesn't work out with compos, have some demoshows, and we'll all just share a few beers, work on prods for other parties and have a chat.

Where do I sign up?

ja, ist denn schon northlicht?