pouët.net

OK, so here is why we had all these delays in launching the Breakpoint 2009 party info:

At first we had lots of location troubles in late 2008, as some people from the city had "forgotten" about Breakpoint and scheduled a table tennis competition between all state financial offices (!) inside the hall for Thursday, completely messing up your setup-plan (Breakpoint takes 4 days to setup). Well, when we solved this by massively faking our setup schedules and after lots of negotations with the city we thought Breakpoint 2009 would be save.

Well, it wasn't. Already in 2008 we secured a sponsorship contract with a big main sponsor well-known to the scene who was planning to top their previous sponsorship because they really love what we do. So we thought all was well.

In late January then our major sponsors published their Q4/08 earnings. Which were like... a desaster. They announced a halt on all spendings, layoffs and all that.

I guess you can imagine what this means: The sponsoring money pools once reserved for Breakpoint have vanished with a poof.

For Breakpoint 2009 this means, that we have lost more than half of our previous 2008 budget 2 weeks ago. It was clear that all our party plans were now void, and we probably would have to cancel Breakpoint 2009.

But then during the last days a lot of sceners who already knew about this due to inside info started offering all kinds of help, organizers offered to pay entrance fee, some organizers offered to donate money... and all that. So we decided that we'll try to rescue Breakpoint 2009.

And well, now it's your part to take part in making Breakpoint 2009 the event you love. Please read on at

http://breakpoint.untergrund.net

Oh sh*t :/.

Is there any way to donate a small amount of money ? (10-30€)
I mean, I can't afford to donate 250€, but I will happily pay a few bucks in order to make the event the best as possible and maybe enjoy a party stream.

10€ isn't a lot, but I'm probably not the only one in this case..

I second wullon! I would be glad to transfer 10 to 30 euro out of a passion for the demoscene!

Yeah, adding a possiblity to donate via paypal or something would surely be a great idea.

The supporter ticket is quite a good idea.

However, IMHO party network and theme deco are more important than e.g. competition prizes or seminars.

wullon: Thanks for the offer - if you are coming to the party, there will be ways to donate money there. For the "supporter ticket" stuff we agreed on the minimum amount of 250 Euro becomes the writing of invoices and processing the bank transfers costs time/money, too. As Breakpoint is not organized by a charity but my Company (due to legal liabilities), writing invoices is the only way to legally get money for Breakpoint.

Maybe scene.org or DKEV will be able to process "real" donations via paypal or something...?

Hm yeah, scene.org does have a paypal donation system. I'll ping them and ask if they would be willing to process small-quantity donations.

Yeah, I'd probably also be willing to chip in some money via Paypal.

However, setting up a Paypal account that suddenly sees thousands of dollars flowing in from all over the world is a sure way to get it locked for 'suspicious activities' (ie. Paypal think you are running some kind of scam) so it would probably not be a good idea.

Damn, that sucks.

I hope that everything is going to work out so that we can match the material quality of BP09, but I have no doubt that it is going to be a kickass party either way, as long as it reaches €25k funding (Bigscreen + PA).

There was a live act that I was looking much forward to which I will hate missing, though, but that's life.

One wish: Please don't have a Brokepoint theme. Can we have like... anything else? Even 80's hacker movies and cyberpunk sounds like a good idea compared to that. Or pirates. Yaaargh :-(

what the FUCK

The Brokepoint theme is just temporary, as is the whole website. The real website and everything else will be launched as soon as we know what we will be able to pay for ;)

kk :)

And I'm aware that priorities when it comes to party features differ. Some people might not care about boozing, others might not care about shuttle service, while others never visited a seminar in their life etc.. so please don't discuss this.

Some of the features depend on each other and therefore are positioned where they are, others might be cut down in a form or another, so the content of the progress bar isn't fixed. It may change slightly over time.

So, please no fights about the order of features in that bar. Instead try to make it move to the right border, so we simply can do all the features everyone likes.

scamp: we saw it already

I'm looking into it now. Unless there are some unknown tax-hurdles, I think it should be doable, seeing as Scene.org is already preparing to sponsor Breakpoint in some way or another (details TBA).

I think it would be a good idea to have a "who's coming" site as soon as possible. That way, you can already count in another amount of (hopefully) fixed money.

lejia, gloom: Thanks :)

(And sorry for not asking about it PRIOR to the launch, I hadn't thought about this option before)

Making the party theme similar to this issue makes this look like a joke. Is this a joke?

What's wrong with the Brokepoint theme? The fantasy themes are too impractical, time to get back to reality. :)

Theme decoration should be dead last in priority. Seriously, if you won't enjoy the party as much without decorations, you're going for the wrong reasons. Also, I don't care much about a party network, but, that's just me; I'm sure many others do. Since I'm not planning to fly overseas this year, I suppose video streaming would be more important for me :).. but really, life goes on if we have to wait an extra few days.

I do hope some donation service comes up, as I would be willing to pitch in, attending or not.

saga: actually we already did that. the 22k on the bar is the money coming from visitor and organizer entry fees (with an expected drop in visitor count over last year). We'll launch a visitor registration as soon as the entrance fee is set together with the "real" website. However, visitor money never is save money due to visitor count fluctuations, so a safety margin is used, which in the end is added to the competition prize money.

Scamp: No worries, we're sceners - we'll adapt. :)

Phoenix: I'll second your request for a video-stream, since I'll be spending the easter with my then 7 month old daughter. Don't worry though - I'll be sure to tell her that the demos look less blocky when run realtime. ;)

scamp: ok, good to know that.

Oh I see, that's not the "real" website then :)

trace: no joke :)

The bar has just moved for the first time.