pouët.net

kusma: but then again, one could argue that the easy ones ("best demo") doesn't need a jury at all, since they're more or less reflected in which demos people watch / gets the most thumbs on Pouet anyway. IMHO where you need a jury is exactly for those tricky categories like Smash mentioned above, and if they aren't to be tackled, then why bother with the obvious ones?

okkie: this is stupid internet forum mistake I did. yes, after thinking again I wouldn't agree with myself.
if there is *ANY* chance that anyone who was involved into Scene Award Ceremony would like to continue the work - I am 100000% in. It is (was :( ) very important part of the Scene Awards.

gloom: "best demo" selected by the very top demo makers is something different than "best demo" selected by average pouet user, isn't it?

gloom: Because, as I said, get the "easy stuff" down before you try to tackle the tricky stuff. My quote was "Keep the categories down to a minimum at first. Perhaps go so far as only having a "Best Demo" and "Best Intro" category to begin with?" (emphasis added for clarity).

I never suggested abandoning the tricky categories altogether, I suggested to start small. Remember, even Scene.org started much smaller than what it became. But in my opinion they failed to build the required basis of having a transparent and democratic process that sceners (at the very least me, but I heard similar complaints from a lot of people) could identify with. So perhaps going even smaller in the first steps, and building on that for later years could make sense. Perhaps.

People: Please stop trying to make my argument into something it was not. Instead read what I actually said.

gloom: even a lame "best of 2012 as voted by the pouet trolls" would be better than nothing, purely because it gives a bunch of good demos some publicity, plus a bonus back pat for the makers. Really, all we need is a playlist of recommended demos. The awards just formalises it.

But yes, a better selection than "popular on pouet" would be good (although that's probably good enough to select a bunch of top demos, just not the 'technical acheivement' types).

one thing that was great about the scene.org awards was that a) they had the nerve to to do it and do it their way, whether people liked it or not and b) they had the scene's respect enough that many people cared about the outcome and that they were worth winning.

if there is something to take over from the scene.org awards i hope it a) comes from a place the scene on the whole respects, and b) that the people behind it pick a path and go for it, accepting the resulting criticism. you cant please everybody, especially not in something as subjective as this.



maq: shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. that sounds like elitism, we're not allowed to do that anymore. every opinion and vote - from people with 20 years experience actively making demos all the way to the ones with 2 days experience actively making noise on pouet - is equal and must - MUST - be respected.



:)

at least those pouet peeps have heaps of time for jury work! ;)

It's amazing how announcing the end of awards generates the kind of discussion than announcing a new awards edition :)

and if all these discussers volunteered to help the awards out we wouldnt have this discussion. ;P

Don't worry bro, I was just joshing you! ^_^

smash: i see your smiley.

Selecting the very top of the demoscene is already a pretty subjective business.

selection per se.

Without necessarily disagreeing with the notion about trying to focus on the "easy stuff", for me the not so big categories are usually what I care most about. I'm obviously engaged by the best soundtrack category (with being a musician and all), but breakthrough performance is also a category I believe to be "important".
And as gloom said, this is where you really need a jury (that is willing to dig a bit deeper).

I'm also wholeheartedly with smash on the need for elitism, I think people deserving of an award also deserves be judged by their peers (meaning people with actual knowledge of the field, not just "sceners"). As a musician, I'd like to be assessed by more knowingly criteria than "I FUCKING LOVE THAT BASS THAT GOES LIKE BWAAAAAH" in a setting like this (in general comments like that are much appreciated ;).


When it comes to the actual ceremony/show, it's something that takes a lot of work. Like, really much. Both in the months (yes, months) leading up to the ceremony and at the party itself.

Planning the show takes a lot of time, it's not like Frank just changes into a suit five minutes before start, wings a couple of jokes and run off again to thunderous applause.
Finding presenters for the awards that's both relevant, good on stage and willing to do the job takes time. Writing a script (or rather, several scripts that are iterated over and over again) takes time. Producing the visuals takes time. Doing audio stingers take time.
Having the actual winners there (and awake if you allow alcohol at the party) is hard too, especially considering that who won is supposed to be a secret to the general public. This means that you can't really work on this until very close to the party. I would assume that this part of the planning was somewhat easier when the awards were at BP compared to TG and ASM :)
Setting the entire program together with timing is a lot of work as well.

And then you come to the actual execution.
I know that the show had somewhat hard times at BP because BP simply didn't have the resources and manpower to produce it. That's not at all any critique of BP organizing, it's just how things are when you need to prioritize and have limited resources.

When we did the awards at TG in 2011, we had an entire stage and tv production crew involved in addition to the scene.org producers. PA mixers, light controllers, producers, runners, stage hands, riggers, logistics, video mixers, camera men, on-line editors, tv producers, tv sound engineers, network crew, streaming crew and then the support crew behind those crews again (food, coffee, water, fluffers and so on). Of course, we had an organization rigged for that in place making it a bit easier for us, but it's still a huge task.

I don't know how ASM solved it, but I assume a lot of people were involved there as well.

Now you could of course do the show with Frank in a suit, a single camera and four IKEA lamps, but an award show without at least an attempt of glamour isn't really engaging to do, watch or be a participant in (imo). Watching home made "tv shows" recorded in a basement on the local tv station is seldom entertaining, watching a half assed ceremony
For those of you that ponder on doing a replacement, this is probably something you should take into consideration early in the project.

tl;dr: the show is a fuckload of work, don't think you can do with half-assed planning thursday night over a few beers.

Actually in the Elitism vs. Populism thread: I like TMDC approach and I think it is worth to pick it from Scene.org Awards too. Just because it is different from the way we do it in the rest of the year on every party or with pouet thumbing, or whatever else... There are so many places where a single Scener can express his feeling about particular demo so it should be not much cry about listening to some "professional guys" once a year. I'm not into tech-stuff as probably average Scener do, so it is quite a lesson for me. All those "best technical achievement" and the other categories are worth saving and continue in the future.

Fireworks, flashes and all this celebration stuff is funny and probably helps a lot to establish an award in public awareness. Even more on the outside of the scene. For me personally, not to important.

So good luck to anybody who will take over the reins.

what is the tmdc approach?

there are obviously two major tasks the scene.org awards performed: the first is to honor (and motivate) the nominees and winners for their hard work and dedication and the other one is to create some sort of ever-growing top-list which can act as viewing tips for outsiders or beginners.

while both tasks seem equally important the first one does indeed work better with the way the scene.org awards were done. people naturally feel more honored if the ones who honor them know and understand the work they put into their work (as opposed to a general public vote where everybody and his mom can utter his or her opinion). All the glamour and amount of work that was put into the ceremony surely helps as well (to make it more important/official and get peoples attention).

the second task, however, doesnt really need all that. In fact a general census of which prods appeal most to "the masses" can be more valuable in this context than the opinion of a board of elite-sceners, which means public votes are a real option.
also the organizing work involved is comparably low, since you dont need to do a live-show, fairly select jury members (who need to meet quite some criteria) or generally make sure the results arent "biased" in any way. another plus is that the public voting system on this site are already in place and - if i got gargaj right - quite easy to seperate from the scene.org awards.

so instead of those two tasks being put into one award-show (and have people from one or another site constantly fighting it, no matter which direction it takes) maybe two different approaches would be the smarter thing to do.

Really a shame, netpoet and the awards became almost a proper annual institution.

Given similar experiences in sf fandom, I know awards like these are a ton of work. The ideal situation is that one group of organizers has the opportunity to pass down the awards to a new group of organizers. Actually this is true of parties too. I get the sense that, for one reason or another (I don't know what these reasons are) folks in the scene have a harder time doing this so far than folks in sf fandom have had . . . folks seem to age out of the scene in a way that they seem less likely to age out of sf fandom -- at least in the States it has grayed considerably.

So thinking about how to pass on the torch, not only in terms of developing the next award(s) in the scene but in terms of the scene overall is worth revisiting. What I see on threads like this is usually an undernote of venerable folks being depressed and newer folks being full of ideas, and then the cycle repeating.

So considering the structure of the awards and the demands of organizing them in different ways is important, but one also has to consider sustainability.

I am afraid of committing to a project like this; I tend not to lead if it seems like someone else might.

But some thoughts on previous comments, if they are useful . . .


I very much like these suggestions of kusma's
" *Transparency. Ideally have the public nominate and elect the jury. Let everyone know in advance who the jury are. Make the demos considered for each award as well as each jurors votes public. Re-elect the jury the next year.
*Jury burden. Separate the process of nominating (a relatively small) amount of demos in each category from the process of picking the winning demo. Give the jury the burden of picking the final winner, do not put the pressure of enumerating all possible candidates on them. "

lugoober
" l;dr: the show is a fuckload of work, don't think you can do with half-assed planning thursday night over a few beers. "

Yup (;
Any chance that it could be made less elaborate (just one presenter for example) with only the addition of a different MC, slides, and trophies? That's still a lot of work, but it's not quite as agonizing. Might make it more doable for sustainability.

wysiwtf
" so instead of those two tasks being put into one award-show (and have people from one or another site constantly fighting it, no matter which direction it takes) maybe two different approaches would be the smarter thing to do. "

Having two awards administered by different groups of orgas who talk to each other might be a more sustainable choice for the future.

No, it isn't -- at least the results, if that was what you were thinking of. Just look at what has been nominated or won in that category and combine it with the demos with the most thumbs up on Pouet for each respective year and the correlation is clear. We've also seen this every single year since the "nominate via Pouet"-feature was enabled.

My point was that "getting the basic stuff right", in terms of categories, is so easy it's not even worth dedicating a milestone to it.

If you're talking about building the organization then yes, start simple (the points you've lined up on the previous page are good indicators of what's needed).

I never said that all the categories should be abandoned either, so the same to you buddy :)

bump.

I seem to find myself remembering a thread on here a while back where the scene.org folks were looking for help.

I hope whoever plans the new award(s) plans to pass the torch too.

gloom: but my point is that the only attempt we've seen so far was *so horribly far* from getting it right, that your statement automatically renders as "bullcrap".

gloom: there's a reason why I put "people:" in front of that last bit; it was not directed personally at you.

I wonder, what those, who discuss such great ideas here, the last time have actively taken a part in a production to can therefore speak representing for the whole demoszene... hmm...