Blimey!! Page 1 of 6, in the Assembly survey. What do they think, that I have the whole day for filling in forms? Like if this was some kind of psychological test or something. I think I’ll post here what I think instead.

Bad Points:

Too much Eau d’underarm

In addition to showing those slides which read Sleep! The party is more fun like that! the organisers should show also another slide which reads Have a shower! The party is more fun like that!. Specially on Saturday night – the whole place stank.

Outdated slides

Talking about slides, it would be cool if they showed always current information, i.e. outdated slides were removed. At one point they were announcing the party t-shirts and later on saying they had all been sold out.

Too many home stereos and rotating lights.

I think they should really either ban all the stereos or just kick out the attendants which insist on letting everybody know how bad their musical preferences are. At certain moments it was necessary to use earplugs to be able to listen to my thoughts. It’s fine if they want to play music, I can bear with that. Abusing it is a completely different concept.

Same goes for the useless rotating lights, I understand modding lovers like to create their own environment and that includes the light surrounding them etc, but at certain moments it was quite annoying to have all those lights flashing around yourself and everywhere where you looked at.

And what’s the purpose of bringing those lights to a party? Pinpointing yourself in a map? Saying Look mum!! I’m where the third rotating light is!!! just in case she sees the special tv1 program about Assembly?

Stand up comedy

It’s pretty much hopeless to make jokes in English when it’s not your native tongue and/or you’re not fluent in it. I have experience in that, so trust me in this one. Most of the times I didn’t even notice it was supposed to be a joke, and so I kept listening to the presenter, my facial expression completely unmoved.

At the end it just makes presentations tedious.

Messages and announcements in Finnish only

They should really take notes from Breakpoint in this one. All the public announcements in Breakpoint are in english, so that everybody in the public gets informed. I thought that was the point of public announcements.

Lots of announcements, instead, were in Finnish. Leaving us in a very confused state of mind.

Prizegiving ceremonies

There’s something more cumbersome than forced jokes. It is somebody reading numbers and enumerating the points differences between each competitor. And there’s a solution for that: Prizegiving ceremonies software! Featuring amazing and exciting growing bars which can show the rank and the total amount of points, while playing nice music which induces the crowd to clap altogether and gives a very old-school finishing touch to the party.

Website and PMS

The website needs serious information reorganising. It was hard to find elemental things such as the compo deadlines, and then there were lots of sections dedicated to rules rules rules rules rules and more rules. Did I say rules? RULES!

PMS (Party Management System?) needs little things to be more explanative. For example, when I tried to upload an entry, I was asked for The ticket. What was the ticket? In fact, they wanted to say the paper stripe with a long string of numbers and letters which you got when you paid for the tickets. It would have been enough with showing an example, such as: Hint! the ticket looks like AS2007JSD78FSDFHKSDJHFWU4YGSDJF¹. Luckily there was Gargaj around to help!

Oldschool area name

It’s quite misleading. It feels a bit out of place to be there with a shiny mac. I suggest it to be renamed to the more simple and obvious name of demoscene area. That would prevent people from expecting living computing dinosaurs sitting in that area and punching cards. Ah no, that’s too ancient – let’s just leave it in using a floppy disk.

Sound system was crap

Enough said.

Good points:

Good demoscene exposure to non sceners.

The Scenebooth was a very good idea. People which was in the booth said there had been lots of people coming there and asking questions, so with some luck some of them will get into the scene.

I’m not too sure about the location of the Oldskool area… if you move them away they look like if they are laboratory rats and nobody will want to touch them, but at least they do not have to put up with the crazy Finnish and their person-sized home stereos and freak music.

And if they are inside it’s better because in theory a curious non-scener could go to one of the scene places and ask them about the demoscene and all that. If only half of the people sitting in the oldskool area weren’t playing games all day long. Oldskool games like Bubble Bobble and Prince of Persia, actually. I saw it with my own eyes o_o!!

I think every generalist party should have a delegation of Scenebooth. With subwoofer.

Respect

In contrast to other parties (I’m looking at you, Euskal!) where gamers are just waiting for the smallest chance to create a revolution or ruin the scene events, here they turn off (most) of the equipment and pay attention to the scene compos.

Also, sceners are not moaning constantly about how evil gamers are. Given that I had done my homework, I even considered joining some game compo – if only I wasn’t so untrained :-)

I’m not sure if it’s just a convenient way of getting along or the difference between north and south Europe. But anyway it’s nice. It should be imitated.

Happy attitude

Don’t have the slightest idea of what the name of that children song was, but the moment when so many people began to dance/run/sing forming a long column around the party was very funny. Same for the final of that dancing game (wasn’t it Dance Revolution or something like that?), these guys are so amazing. How can they move their legs so fast!!

AssemblyTV

Every party should do that too. I’m not asking for the Assembly Demos in High Definition thing but a nice stream would be very cool. Euskal! I’m looking at you again!

Alive

It was a good idea since generally technorati does not work very well with these massive but not that massive events. A pity so few people used it.

Lives (raves)

Although I was just a bit in Lackluster’s live. But it’s cool to have lives, nevertheless.

Wireless connection

Even if it was a bit crappy due to the party location itself it was great to have some connectivity at every place I tried to connect. Also it seems that the wired network ran always properly so it’s something very remarkable too.

The rocks

It was funny until the police came! :-D

The weather

Sun for the first time in 1 month. In Helsinki – 60º10’N. Oh well! That’s what happens when you live in The Big Smoke, I suppose.

Conclusion

So will I go back to Assembly²? I’m not too sure. If I lived nearly maybe yes. But faced with the decision I would choose Breakpoint rather than Assembly. Bingen feels a bit claustrophobic after having gone there twice but they have currywurst. And a massive screen with also massive speakers.

Anyway, I checked another item on my list – I have been to Assembly!!

Next one… bcnparty!

¹ And why did they have to use such a long code? I felt the urge to copy and paste it – even if I just had a piece of paper to copy from. Even youtube id codes are shorter.

² And release the same song

I just arrived home safe and tired. We’ve had delays for boarding, delays for landing and 15 minutes flying in circles over a completely uninteresting area of London, while we got some way for our plane…

… and I’m too tired to write anything very deep and/or meaningful.

But before going to sleep at what was 1am in Helsinki but is now 11pm in London, I’ll just say it seems that anything with a colour scheme consisting only in 4 colours is pretty much hopeless in certain places, even if it looks neater and has a better direction that some of the arse-looking (literally) stuff which was released.

I loved it anyway! Here is my moral winner

And what else did I say you?

I anticipated our song was going to be disqualified for not reaching a minimum standard¹ (whatever the standards were, some songs sounded awful for my tastes). Well, it turns out that it wasn’t disqualified but it actually didn’t qualify, which is pretty much a limbo-like status. Like this: … you’re not in but you’re not out either, since I couldn’t make up my mind in a clear way… mmm let me think… oh well… anyway… try again next year!

Although even if it wasn’t played, it has been distributed. Not that I care too much about that, if somebody downloads the song and likes it, great! At the end, it can be a good exposure. But for god’s sake, MAKE UP YOUR MINDS!

You know, the thing with the qualify/disqualify duality is that they are like binary states. Something is “on” or “off” but it’s not in both status at the same time. Either that, or the device it’s just malfunctioning².

So I have decided that if I ever come back to Assembly, I’ll release the same song. And I’ll do an instrumental uberremix of the same song. And release a demo with the same song. Until they come to a decision.

Torturing? That’s so 90’s!!

This is called insistence!

Good night.

¹ You know that standard itself is a very funny term. Even if it’s supposed to be something commonly accepted, it’s not generally the case, and that’s why there are several standards, depending on who created (and obviously agreed to) them.

² I hope you’re not saying our song is malfunctioning!

I finally went for a walk in Helsinki. Funnily, I have been asked for directions three times. The three times I obviously had to explain that I didn’t speak Finnish.

I haven’t seen all the city, I have left half of it unseen for having a look tomorrow, also just in case trace and blackpawn want to have a look, so that I still have something to see hehe.

I didn’t try to follow any special direction, just went towards whatever looked interesting or photogenic.

This is a very hard city, or at least the area I have managed to see; there’s concrete everywhere, specially in that kind of industrial buildings meant for people to live inside but which do not look like a place where one would like to live. Maybe it is not brutal enough for being described as Brutalist architecture but I think it’s not too far from there.

When entering the party I was again spoken in Finnish and the same in the Kioski¹, I’ll end up with an identity crisis, looking at myself in the mirror and wondering where do they find the finnish traits in my face :-)

I had a look at the Scene Booth but there wasn’t anybody known there, so I went and took some pictures and videos of the party place. But I’m connected on wireless because I forgot about the network cable so I’m not uploading any videos or I’ll die waiting for it to finish.

Speaking about finishing, trace and blackpawn are working hard on their strange looking demo. I am idling here as you can see, waiting for my feet to recover from the city walk…

Socializing comes when feet do not hurt.

¹ I love that brand name, sounds very funny if you know that there’s a word in Spanish, kiosko, that we use for categorising that type of stores. It sounds like a diminutive name for kiosko.

The ride until the airport, the check in, security checks and flight have gone all smoothly. We got asleep for pretty much all the time and woke up with some marks in our faces and pin and needles in the arms, then we were waved goodbye by the supersmiling cabin crew (I have never seen people so happy and kind in a plane before, I think, without seeming stupid, that is).

Ohhh and there was another cool detail, the screens which usually are used for showing the average speed and temperature were used for showing the view from a camera placed in front of the plane, so you could see more or less what you could see if you were in the cockpit. Not a very impressive technological achievement but nonetheless cooler than just one schematic map of where we came from and where did we headed to.

As soon as we left the bags and all that in the hotel (which is also very good), we went to the party place. The Areena is surprisingly close to the hotel, but it is smaller than what we thought. I don’t know the numbers exactly but I’m pretty sure there are more people in Euskal party than in Assembly.

That said, these Finnish know how to make things impressive. There’s lot of equipment and decoration in the party, and just beginning with the simple fact that the inside is darker already helps to get into that underground feeling that any decent party needs.

Additionally, the Assembly TV not only is broadcasting live by internet but there’s also some TVs placed in the corridors surrounding the main area, showing whatever is currently being played on the AsmTV. That means there’s a lot of demos being played for people which probably won’t see them otherwise, and that’s always good. Even though there was no sound but I understand they don’t want to pollute more the sound environment, which is already quite filled in with stuff, with all the sponsor stands etc.

But the funnier part are the rules. There are lots of rules. I spent yesterday hours trying to read all of them, and I expected them to be followed, so when I came and found lots of big stereo systems in the party place I wondered what happened to the rules! It looks like little mini-raves or mini-environments are created by the people which bring even their own disco-ball. I haven’t taken any picture because I was deeply impressed but I’ll probably do it tomorrow. Or you can imagine it. Add some 1.5m tall speakers with 75cm wide subwoofers to the descriptions so it is richer.

When we came back this evening after meeting blackpawn which had just arrived, I had my bag searched. I knew that was going to happen (because I had read the rules!). So that was more rule-compliant, and I agreed with that. It seems I agreed so much that the guy inspecting my bag had to assure me it was everybody been looked for, not only me. Ahhh I collaborate too much!

It seems there is also a rule which prevents people from drinking and/or bringing alcohol inside the party. As it’s not something which really worries me I inadvertently forgot that I had read about that, and asked Leia: where’s your beer!? when I met her. And she said: but you haven’t been here before, have you!!!??

Ha! Of course not!

But it seems that I was kind of assuming that in a place which has lots of ads for Lapin Kulta all around (which happens to be a famous Finnish beer) they would serve beers to adults only. But they don’t trust the adults neither the teenagers in the party so what do they do? Ban all the alcohol!

I don’t have anything against that; somehow is a way of slashing the probability of incidents due to alcohol down to a minimum, so if I was an organiser I would try to cut down incidents to a minimum, always! But it doesn’t prevent it to look funny.

Then we’ve also found Sir Garbage Truck and all the rest of people: Gargaj, Zania, and people whom I know their faces but not their names :-D

Truck was very proud of his creation: scenebooth which happened to be a place to which newcomers can go and meet sceners and enjoy demos and learn about the scene and great things to come! So he managed to move all of us from the oldskool area and bring us to the physical representation of the Scene Booth. I’ll probably hang around there tomorrow when I am done with having a little walk around Helsinki (while trace and blackpawn finish their demo).

They also did a Demoscene outreach panel, featuring Gloom, Truck, Waffle and Gargaj, and although it was funny for people which knew what was the demoscene about, I can’t but presume that all the newcomers left the seminar area in a very confused state of mind. If you have to talk about demoscene to someone which doesn’t know anything, golden rule: Show them a demo!

But it is a good beginning. There should be more demoscene outreach * wherever possible. The Scene Booth itself looks promising. We need more of these initiatives, and I hope some people gets interested into all of that, specially young people which as it was commented, just consider a computer as a household resource and don’t think of it as a creative medium.

And basically that has been today. Now if you don’t mind I’m going to sleep a bit :-)

PD I finally managed to finish and upload my song into the Party management system. It took ages to upload and I had to ask for help because the form is quite confusing to understand but at the end it worked. Oh well, I should say our song because -trace- r08028 also did some work on it when he saw me creatively stuck. In BCN party style, place your bets. Will it pass preselection?

It’s less than one day (hours!!) for arriving in Helsinki and I’m quite nervous about it! In fact I’m getting more and more stressed the more we approach the party :-)

I have been giving the finishing touches to one song for the freestyle music compo, although I’m 99.9999999999999% sure that I don’t have a single chance to pass the preselection¹, but I can’t go there without even trying! At least someone will listen to the song (the jury! HA!).

The not 100% percentage is motivated by the statistics calculated by last.fm which assure I’m in a way similar to Little Bitchard

So people which like Little Bitchard may have a chance of liking my song too²

In what regards to the travel arrangements and all that, I still haven’t prepared the suitcase and worst of all – still haven’t decided which book will I bring with me to read during the flight. We depart at 7.30 and arrive at 12.25, it sounds superfrightening! Obviously we need to take into account the 2 hours of time difference but nevertheless is a good three hours inside the plane.

Or I could simply try to sleep, but I always find it hard to do, with all those announcements for discounted eau de toilettes, the general noise in a plane, and also the damned air conditioned which they always place in Freeze all passengers so they don’t ask for anything mode.

Trace is also very happy about going to Assembly, as well as Blackpawn (well, he’s more exactly psyched, and will have an angry cat waiting for him when he comes back to the States). Sml will join us there too and I heard Timescratchers (the mighty group which could easily fill in a complete party if all of their members gathered there) were coming there so it’s going to be a fair amount of Spaniards in the Hartwall Areena.

I was curious about who else from UK scene was going there. Tried to connect to irc’s ircnet this morning but all servers simply refused to accept my connection so I couldn’t contact anyone. Yep I could have sent an e-mail but I’m not that curious (yet).

I’ll try to write something while I’m there but I can’t promise anything :-)

¹ With legends like Little Bitchard entering the compo as well, what do you expect!?

² You know I’m just making fun of statistics, don’t you? If you don’t know it you should know it by now.