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ERROR IN LINE 3 SEEN FROM AN ORGANIZER'S POINT OF VIEW
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Some words in the beginning..
After two years of waiting it was finally time for the third edition of the
great Error in Line Parties. Time for meeting old friends, talking crap and
beeing productive. As a member of Escape this time I was involved in organizing
the event. But since I'm the only member of Escape that is not living in
Dresden I wasn't able to organize the location, insurances and such things. My
part was the search for sponsors, which easily can be done from anywhere.
Therefore I wrote dozens of emails and 51 letters to well known big companies
here in germany. But only a handful of these companies answered to my letter
and noone of these 51 companies was willing to support us with one single piece
of hard- or software. However the emails were more succesfully and with the
prices organized by the Reservoir Gods I think we had really enough prices for
the competitions. Special thanks goes to flash for sponsoring 25 of the Error
in Line T-Shirts. A big THANKS again to all, who supported us in any way :-)
...and now a small party-report
Friday, 18th April 2003
My trip to Dresden started with a big surprise. I had an agreement with R.I.K.
and Mr XY, both from Foundation Two, to drive to Dresden. R.I.K. was the driver
and wanted to pick up Mr XY and me here in Kaiserslautern, but before he left
he made an entry to the EiL-bulletin, that he would start now and pick up Mr
XY, me and Mad Butscher... How could that be? Four people in one car going to a
convention? From trips to other conventions I knew, that three people seems to
be the absolute maximum in one car.
However, we three left Kaiserslautern at about 14 o'clock and picked up Mad
Butscher one hour later in Wiesbaden. Luckily he had no monitor or TV with him
and only very little luggage. So we managed it, to get with four people in one
car to Dresden, although I had to snuggle with Mad Butscher on the backseat
;-). Another 6 hours and one Burger King later we arrived in Dresden and first
had some problems finding the Tusculum. But suddenly I saw many flickering
monitors in a building and so it was clear, that we were almost right.
One month before EIL I visited the Dresden guys for one week to do some
demo-coding (indeed we played much more with Coldfire-evaluation Board from
Motorola, than doing demo-coding). In this week we (Norman, Nils, Christin and
Robert) made a trip from Norman's place to the Tusculum, but when we arrived
everything was closed and it was dark already. So I saw it only from the
outside and had no idea how it was looking inside. And to be honest I had some
doubts since it looked a bit scruffy.
But when I entered the Tusculum these doubts flew away very fast. The location
was really nice and had a great atmosphere - most people enjoyed it I think. So
first I had a walk through the three big rooms and said hello to some people.
But after that I immediately built up my falcon beside Norman and Nils, since I
wanted to finish the _-demo, that had no name so far :-).
In the week before EIL I had some sparetime and worked hard on most effects. It
was much fun to code on the one monitor and chat on the other one with ray,
creature, Remo and Lotek Style, who were also hard working on their beams-demo.
Anyway there was lot of work left. Only the effects were finished more or less,
but all the timing had to be done and till then there was no real plan, when to
show which effect. So Norman was very sceptical, that we could finish the demo
in time. Therefor I had some 'Kinderriegel' with me, to motivate him a bit :-).
I made some green tea, which is a great stimulant drug if you don't want to get
tired, even better than coffee. Norman started to do some final polish on his
effects, while Nils put the timing-points into the MOD-File from the first part.
And everything was put together on my falcon. Since Norman's effects were the
first three, his job was done very quickly. Nils and me sat there till 7 in
the morning and almost finished timing of the first part.
When I entered our sleeping place - the gym - I had first to laugh out loudly !
Snoring from every corner, which was very funny :). Luckily I remembered the
last Paracon and so had some ear protection with me. So after rolling out my
sleeping bag I didn't recognise the snoring anymore.
Saturday, 19th April 2003
Some 4 or 5 hours later I stood up and had some breakfast. Unfortunately I was
too late for the organized breakfast, but luckily I had a bit bread with me.
After that I had time for going around and talk to some people. But this
was only a little time, since a bit later I started to type in the competition
entries for Norman's reliable presentation program. This took much time,
because there were many, many, competition entries in the musician- and
graphican- competitions, and when you thought, you were finished some more
entries arrived. Maybe at 20 o'clock Nils and me started to record the video for
the presentation later. It took about 6 (!) hours to record this damn video - I
was very happy when we were finished with this... The problem was, that some
people had special hardware-wishes for the presentation, suddenly a CT2-Falcon
appeared that had no TV-out (never seen this before, didn't even know, that
such Falcons exist).
Then we had to organize adapters and cables to be able to connect the Falcon to
the videorecorder. Or for another entry we had to build up an 8bit-Atari. As a
result I got very stressed during recording and needed some recovery. A partie
of Checkered Flag in a ComLynx-network therefore was very welcomed. Finally we
managed to finish the 70 minutes long video and showed it at 2 or 3 o'clock in
the morning, although most people were sleeping already. Just imagine how long
this would have taken in a live-presentation...
After the presentation I sat around a bit with scy and dynacore talking about
old times (well I wasn't a member of the scene yet, when they had their
Atari-times), which was very nice. So far nothing had happened with the demo
this day, and I was thinking about doing something. Because I felt tired, I
decided to have a fresh shower that should wake me up. But it didn't work and
so I went to bed.
Sunday, 20th April 2003
Next or better this morning I was early enough for the organized breakfast.
Since Nils was still sleeping, I couldn't do anything for the demo and so
walked around. Very interesting was the development board of the coldfire-team.
I think most people didn't even notice this board, for they were busy with
their own productions for the soon coming competitions. The guys of tscc had
big doubts about finishing their demo in time. They even thought about not
showing it at all.
Meanwhile the weather was keeping up and even the sun looked out a bit. Mad
Butscher and R.I.K. were so kind to do some grilling behind the Tusculum. I
think this was a welcomed variety, because you had the possibility to eat
something different (i.e. "Bratwürschte") than pizza.
In the afternoon Nils and me started working on the demo again (I think at
this moment we still had no name for it, hehe..). But it was impossible to be
productive in the 'organizer's corner'. Every few minutes someone comes and
asks something or wants to give away his competition entry. So we finally
decided to build up my Falcon in the kitchen, where nobody could see us. It was
a funny picture : The monitor was standing on a cupboard, while the Falcon was
standing on some cola-drinking-boxes. This time Norman did the recording of the
video and so we had time in the kitchen to be very productive. We finished the
1st and the 2nd part in a very short time (well the bee was already timed from
my visit in Dresden...).
Since I coded the last screen with the arrow a day before I left for EIL, Nils
had to compose a third short track in a hurry. He really did a fantastic job
with this. When Nils was finished, it was my part again to fix some last big
bugs and put all three parts together, but it didn't work. It was awful.
Everyone was in the mainroom playing whippong, while I was sweating in front of
my Falcon in the kitchen.
Finally - with some hints from Norman - I made the demo work, so I saw it only
maybe half an hour before Norman recorded it in one piece !! That was a near
thing... Same with the guys of tscc. They finished their demo even some minutes
later.. However everything was fine and I even could enjoy the last minutes of
the Whippong-Compo, which was as 2 years ago very funny.
After this stress, I drank a glass of red wine (thanks Christin :) and just
settled back for the coming demo-competition-video. It was amazing, many many
competition entries and most of them had a great quality. Especially the
ST-demos really rocked.
OK, life of the organizers is hard, and so after the competition we started to
collect and enumerate the vote-sheets. With about 6 or 7 people we sat around
the bar and counted and counted and counted... Finally Frank Naumann, the
FreeMiNT maintainer, did the final counting in the early morning. At this
time (about 6 o'clock) Nils and me started to decide, which competition
place won which prices. So we did it without knowing, who reached which place.
One or two hours later we were finished with this and so I had a bit time to
sleep.
Monday, 21st April 2003
But after two hours Nils woke me up again for the awards show. Before starting
with it we went through the gym and asked everyone to stand up for this last
event of the Error in Line. Finally at 10 o'clock we made the results public
and gave the great prices away. Many people had already left and you could see,
that this event was coming to an end very soon. After the awards show many
people packed and left very quickly so the whole partyplace suddenly looked
very empty. At 13 o'clock Mad Butscher, R.I.K., Mr XY and me left as well,
leaving the rest of Escape and Checkpoint back with a lot of work.. Again it
was time for some snuggling with Mad Butscher on the backseat. 7 hours and one
MC Donalds later I finally arrived at home and fell dead into my bed.
So this was the third Error in Line for me. And for the first time I was active
as an organizer. It was very different to the previous ones. I was a bit sad at
the end, since I really would have liked to talk longer to more people. But as
Norman told me before, you can't really enjoy such a event, if you are a
member of the organizer-staff. Anyway it was a great event and of course it was
worth all the work and stress. And again the Error in Line showed that the
scene is still alive.
Charon/Escape
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