Demoscene Get-Together in Salt Lake City?
Dilve has started an interesting thread on pouet.net. The thread is extremely confusing and makes some exaggerated claims, but it seems like the event consists of a “digital arts festival” followed by a rave. Apparently, the winning entries from the digital arts festival will be featured in the rave. The event takes place in October in Salt Lake City.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out. I already have travel plans for two demo parties this year, Blockparty and NVision. Traveling to a third seems excessive, especially when it is a “digital arts festival” and not a proper demo party. Phoenix draws an interesting parallel between Dilve’s claims and Crash ’97. The Crash organizers made plans for a huge demo party with thousands of people in a huge sports hall, but only about 50 people showed up in the end. Even if thousands of people show up to the rave, as Dilve claims, he will be lucky to have even a dozen demo sceners attend the art portion. Blockparty 2007 only had about twenty hardcore sceners show up, and the organizers put in a ton of work to make that party a success. The fact is, our scene just isn’t that big, and just finding twenty sceners willing to pay for airline flights and hotel rooms is a massive success by itself.
Remember, too, that Dilve hosted a similar event last year, and nobody from the demoscene showed up. Organizing a proper demoscene event takes tons of work and massive amounts of credibility. Even in the context of a larger event, such as Notacon or NVscene, demosceners expect their own sub-party with their own organizers, competitions, and events. Hosting a generic arts festival and saying “demosceners invited” is not a recipe for success. There is a chance that Dilve will do things correctly this year, but only time will tell. A confusing post full of exaggerated claims is just not not a good way to start.
March 25th, 2008 at 7:29 pm
I have no comment on Dilvie’s attempt at a party, but I do think it’s pretty uncool cockblock Block Party by announcing 7 days before BP starts.
March 26th, 2008 at 8:35 am
I doubt it will have any impact on Blockparty (whoever wanted to go has likely registered by now), but the fact that he hadn’t heard about NVision/NVScene beforehand was a little disconcerting.
March 28th, 2008 at 4:39 am
Hey, thanks for voicing your concerns. I’m certainly open to feedback. I realize we have a bit of a credibility problem with the demoscene. In fact, that’s one of the reasons we hardly did any out-of-state outreach at all last year. Keep in mind, even with just the local support last year, we did better than any of the Pilgrimage parties attendance-wise.
I’d like to do what we can to improve our scene-cred this year. What do you think is needed?
March 28th, 2008 at 4:52 am
@Jim: I don’t think we’re competing with BP. Our event is in October. Plenty of time for people to recover, and seven days is hardly enough time to convince anybody to come to Utah instead. I really like the BP guys, and if I wasn’t busy with other things, I might see you there. =)
March 28th, 2008 at 8:20 am
phoenix: I’d bump that “little” up to “seriously”
March 28th, 2008 at 4:40 pm
Actually, I think reaching out more last year would’ve *helped* your credibility more, not hurt (as long as last year’s experience was better than Pilgrimage ’06
. You’d have more non-UT sceners familiar with what you’re doing. As it stands, everything you have planned is new to us, and I don’t think many newcomers will take the chance of going. “Big” is not necessary equal to “scene cred”.
March 28th, 2008 at 6:21 pm
The most important thing, I think, is staying involved with the scene. If you post regular news here and in other demoscene venues, maintain an open dialog with scene veterans, and release a compelling invitation, people will come to understand that the party is for real. Being out-of-touch about NVScene probably hurt your credibility more than SparkArts.
March 31st, 2008 at 10:43 pm
Well, I’m very interested in doing things right — so help me out. Who needs to be there? I’ll do what I can to get key players there, speaking, showing what they’re up to, hosting workshops, whatever. I know that I am out of touch, but I know there are a lot of people who are in touch, with their fingers on the pulse of the demoscene. So what will it take to get them involved? It sounds like people don’t *really* believe that more parties in North America = bad.