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I liked altparty for what it was. I met some new people and old friends plus made at least one new friend, saw a couple of interesting gigs, talked with people with oldskool computers, played old computer games, enjoyed a fantastic piece of cake in the café, heard interesting talks. As a demoparty as a lot of people seem to like the concept, it was kind of a letdown since I didn't even manage to watch the compo since the organization sucked, but does every single demoparty need to be the same (what I'm referring to is almost the same people just getting wasted and telling the almost the same war stories, and then complaining about the compos afterwards)?

The people who complained about creative people not being taken into account, did you go around and talk to people? The people behind the art exhibition, the guests, the random kids in the audience? Did you watch the stuff that was happening among the audience that wasn't your traditional demo party fare? I'd like to see more art exhibitions, more new people, more random talks and a lot more random happenings. More freshness to the stale scene.

(But yes, the lack of announcements totally sucked and the delays sucked shitloads more. Please do be more professional next time)

was there alcohol ban ?
i'm really afraid to talk because it might get people upset, but generally i enjoyed the party. but what others said. and compo fuckups were really bad. but fogscreen is cool tech tech :)

http://www.whichisgayer.com/compare.html?w1=alt+party+organizing&w2=main+party+organizing

take no offense, dear organizing, i neither attended main nor alt. :P

Gargaj, I think maybe you misinterpreted Diamondie? I think she meant Assembly was the worst party ever.

pete: exactly, and I _WAS_ at assembly, and it was prolly the best ASM since 2004

i totally loved this years asm too!

Alright, I'll take the flame bait: DiamondDie, thanks for the loving =). BTW, over 30 of the 80 AltParty organizers (including the main organizer) are ex or current AsmOrganizers. Hope I didn't ruin it for you ;-).

Anyway, on to the real topic of this thread.

AltParty has gone from a party that is going to die (yes, it was) two years ago to a thriving *alternative* event. It doesn't fit the narrow definition of a demo party, and I don't think it should. We need events that cross-pollinate between different special interest groups. I don't think we should be afraid of losing AltParty as "our own event", but embrace the opportunity to engage creative people outside of our immediate reach.

Besides demo parties have already moved away from "code/hang around at my PC day 'n' night" to "laptops & beer & compos & sleep somewhere else & spend a few hours at the party". My recommendation to AltParty would be to take this further and focus on 4-5 hours of really strong program in the evening supported by special interest stuff during the daytime.

I have a lot of trust on AltParty improving a lot for next year and getting over the practical problems they had. Big kudos for the team on trying something new and succeeding with it!

[quote]Also anyone ever thinking about organizing a party should visit BP at least twice :-)[quote]
word.


well, i pretty much had fun at the party. but, yeah, there are a lot of things that will need to be done better next time.

Every single entry was tested and confirmed to run beforehand except for 3 external machine entries (which ran without any adjunct hassle in the compo).

So here is my short list to explain wtf it fucked up so well this year:
- Internet connection stopped working suddenly
- Soundcard stopped working suddenly so there was a need to quickly figure out a new machine without any warning
- Some hardware configuration took too much time which clearly wasn't scheduled anywhere
- Oldschool powerpoint slides fucked up because openoffice suddenly went unstable/died
- Compomachine's hardware acceleration seemed to work only by shutting the monitor and showing *only* the projector image and well what do you know? yes, I'm shortsighted and couldn't see a shit. (This actually explain the weird blackouts with the projector image because i had to pull vga cable off since video mixer didn't work)
- Due to a sudden fire safety regulations we weren't allowed to use another projector to show entries&timetables when the main projector was in use

That was a short list to explain some parts that went wrong, there were many other but I think those were the main points. I apologize every one who submitted an entry and who think they didn't get the respectful handling of their entry, this especially mean the Dead Hackers Society and Kooma entries which I personally also liked very much.

Some can go freely arguing about that big demoparties should've considered all those problems that we faced and have backup plans for them but minkäs sille mahtaa ku paskat on jo housussa :)
...and other, probably smaller party organizers, probably now figure out some of the pain that was went through in our Victorian age Chateau D'saster.

Also my previous post hopefully serves as a note to other party organizers about analyzing combination of possible failures and having backup plans before the disaster actually occurs :)

i like the sound of sudden fire safety regulations

un drôle d\'état: Yeah, don't ask me but that actually was the reason that I heard and it might actually be true considering the Finnish laws and regulations. :)

For example the same applies for the part that no one was aware that there wouldn't be any bar inside the party hall just because bureaucracy took too long. Luckily the bar inside Kaapelitehdas was 50 meters from the party place so it saved a lot.

Well, there's lots of criticism in this thread. I guess we're already so used to well-organized parties that if something doesn't go as planned it feels like a disaster. As a whole Altparty was a success this year - wide audience (2nd biggest party in Finland / probably 3rd biggest in the world?), cool features like the live gigs, exhibitions and other extras.

Ok, so the compos weren't smootly organized - still a 2 hour delay is far from delays I remember lot of parties have had in the past - I think this has happened pretty much with every major party including Assembly, Mekka, etc. and things like total blackout at The Party (1997?) with 9 hour delay in compos are bit in another scale. :)

I hope the organizers have learned their lessons and will improve the compo organizing for the next year (pre-recording is really a good way to go nowadays). And I really hope there will be next time, as I liked the general direction where the Altparty is heading!

I'd actually be interested in how many people there actually were.

Saga Musix, AFAIK on Friday there was something like 800 visitors - which taking into account not being a LAN infested party is quite a lot. On the other hand I'm sure lot of people came to see just Front 242.

spreading of entries and results seems to be completely forgotten?

Regarding the 800 visitors: The ones who directly left after 242 or DP do not count for comparing it to other parties - I had the impression of a mid-range party, taking the people in the bar and the other computer visitors into account as well.

For those who did not notice: A large part of the art gallery and some of the live stuff was provided by sceners or people close to them, and it was a really good addition to the party.
And the non-sceners like the radio guys or the retro computing ones provided interesting stuff as well - providing me some kind of oldschool feeling I never had again for at least a whole decade (read: after all those gamer/warez/hacker audience got annoying and the computing scene definitely had split apart into seperated scenes).

For those bitching about compos beeing held live: HEY, DEMOS ARE ALL ABOUT REALTIME STUFF!!! Prerecording was mainly an ugly solution from the time where every production used its own video modes and possibly forced a reboot in order to avoid affecting the next production to be spoilt. And prerecording doesn´t help in making a technical breakdown impossible (e.g., the broken tape which had quite some impact on the 96k game compo at BP once) - it just changes the possible causes of it.
Anyway, todays technology can provide pixel-crisp display up to the bigscreen, thus I don´t want to see any blurry prerecording artifacts in neither my own nor other releases.

Overall, one can say that there are plenty of areas which could have been made better at Altparty (and at the organizers I´ve talked to take this even more serious than I would have rated it - mind that!), but I must say that I´ve never left for sleeping prior to 3-4 AM, thus it could not have been that bad at all - thank you all for the good time I had there! =D

First of all, thanks for the nice Alternative Party, which I enjoyed in many ways. Since 10 years I wanted to go there once, the happier I was to finally do it. The location, arrangements, performances, soundsystem, stage, ambience and services were simply some of the best i have experienced at demoparties. Also the general mood was very interesting and welcoming - not to speak of the awesome afterparty.

The bad part was unfortunatly the part, that interested me most: the democompos. While the other compos went smooth, the presentation of the demoentries was rather a disaster than a compo. Long breaks between the entries are somekind of ok, but fucking up the entries again and again - no sorry. Also the "realtime" argument is a kind of out of place here, as a huge part of the entries was not shown on original hardware anyway. Testing emulators and movies beforehand is simply necessary to run a democompo in an enjoyable way.
Furthermore I think that for such a mixed compo the spectator should know about the name / crew / system of the shown entries in a systematic way, not just some random texteditor notes.
Sorry for the hard words, but personally I just would prefer less focus on art and shows but rather on the demoside. I mean, considering that some ppl work hard for months on their entries for entering the highlight of a demoparty (compo), it feels a bit disrespectful to deal with the entries in the way i have seen it there.

Apart from that, I want to repeat, the party was wonderful and imho perfectly organised.

I enjoyed Altparty 08 a lot. Some plus and minuses:

+ Location: it was a GREAT hall. Not a lame modern sports area or so, but a big factory building. Still with modern facilities. Apart from Error In Line 1 & 2, I think this has to be my favourite party venue ever.

+ Variation: Many people seems to dislike that the party had art. I think it was for the better. There was plentyful of room for the demonerds like me to sit and code. This variation also brings a big variation of people, which is fun.

+ Geography: Placed in the best place in Helsinki I guess. Close to a big shopping mall, a great hotel and free parking spaces. It felt really comfortable that way. And old farts like myself prefer the comfortable way these days ;-)

+ Of course Front 242 - I mean, come on.. The gods of inspiration to so many demos and demo soundtracks. Even if I'm not a big fan myself it's a _really_ cool thing to have them there. And I tell you they rule a lot more live than on record. To add up a bit more, F242 had breakfast just a couple of tables away from us at the hotel :-)

- The bar (or café) was pretty limited, couldn't even get bottled water or a soda you recognize the name of.

- Maybe the computer exhibition should have been a bit clearer on what machine was on display and it's features.

- THE DEMO COMPO!
Ok I'm biased here, but let me tell you what happened when our demo was to be shown. All demos ahead of ours have been shown on a PC with Windows or Linux (except a MSX demo which ran on the real deal), something the organisers seemed to master okish.

When our demo was to be shown, they switched to a Macintosh. Well no problem right, just an MPEG-4 to play. The movie file was even mastered on a Macintosh so..?
The organiser who lead the compo had no clue how to use a Macintosh. He started with loading a up a text editor, making fun of the Macintosh with various texts. Already now I was thinking what the fuck is going on..

Ok, first try to play the demo, they load the MPEG-4 into Quicktime Player (should be OK normally) but they also had background screen saver examples running about. The movie started, and ran at perhaps 0.1 FPS! How cool when most stuff is supposed to show at full frame rate.. It took them a minute or so to realise something is wrong and shut down the movie player. The texteditor again, talking crap about the Macintosh one more time.

Next try, they put a DVD into the Macintosh (yes we delivered both MPEG-4 and a DVD to be on the safe side, and also offered real hardware if they wanted that instead). The DVD player launches. Anyone who has EVER played a DVD movie knows that there's a menu coming up where you have various stuff to select. No different in this one. The extremly competent person was clicking PLAY on the DVD remote controller repeatedly! Then he tried the menus, then he tried the overlay buttons - everything except the actual DVD-menu. Jesus.

In the end someone must have told him how to play a DVD and the demo started. So it ran OK, until it changed parts. They shut off the projector and audio in the middle. When they did realise the demo wasn't over, they switched back the video after 10-15 secs, and the audio another 15 secs later.

And if this wasn't enough, the audio was at about half the volume compared to the other prods. But perhaps for the good, the others were a bit loud sometimes.

So perhaps you understand that we're not entirely happy with the presentation there :-)



Then.. there is the actual vote counting problem. But I think the Altpeople with come out with an explanation/excuse themself when they have selected the least worst outcome :)


All in all, I digged Altparty in many ways, just too bad they blew the most important part (and nine months of coding for me and gizmo)..

thanks to all altparty orgas and attenders for the great party. yes, democompo should be the main thing at a demoparty, as it was already said, but i like the feeling, that altparty is developing and progressing in various directions. btw, i'd like to have a chillout area with some kind of projector/screen and ability to drink an alcohol, if it is prohibited at the main hall. thank you all once again!

Demo compo?.. Third time in row I'm passed out during the compos, so no harm done for me :)

Stream '08 was definitely better, but Alt'08 was awesome too. Had lots of fun. And for the first time ever, I got thrown out! Twice! <3 Rocked.
Haha, I figure that even if the dynamic demo we were doing would have been completed we'd never been able to run it with the requirements we'd have had.

..And I never realized EBM/dancable electronic music can be so good. Figure it really needs the live experience. Was absolutely awesome.

tzaeru, you're starting to learn how to be a true elite!

okay, i missed the democompo. instead i checked out helsinki by night. i had to watch reruns in the morning. hate me ;)

so, the democompo: from what i gather it was quite the blood bath. that's a shame for an otherwise brilliant party. they have done 9 prior editions which makes one think they'd have built up some experience.

the trick is, when doing it live and non-prerecorded:
1) reach deadline and gather entries
2) make sure you got all the required hardware to run the demos on, possibly discuss this with the demo groups
3) check all the releases on the hardware
4) discuss an order for the show to minimize dis- and reconnecting hardware
5) possibly perform a test run in this order