The Anarchy Winter Conference from Anarchy's point of view! Preface This, our first party had been planned for some time. After our initial decision to hold a party we were aproached by Quartex and asked if we would like to make the party a cooperation event. This idea sounded good at the time, Quartex said they would find a venue for the party after which advertising the event could begin, an aproximate date was set, the party was to be held mid November 1990. Weeks rolled on and when November was almost upon us Quartex said they hadn't found a place, so inevitably the party was postponed. Towards the end of November (and without Quartex) plans once again began....... The Venue The Party was held inside a school hall and its adjoining rooms and corridors, on Febuary 23rd 1991 in a town called Barnsley which is aproximatly 230 miles north of London, England. The Party! The party was set to begin at 10 am, and run for 13 hours until 11pm. A lot of guys started to arrive just before 10 am, and less than one hour later the building was packed with guys. Before long we had to get the caretaker of the school to open up more rooms so could fill them with guys. Most of the UK's groups came to the party, including Quartex, Betrayal, Crystal, Scoopex UK, Subway, Magnetic Fields, LSD, Slipstream 'n Anthrox. Lots of lamers came too including the lamest most stupid group in England Pendle Europa. They arrived at the party looking either like stupid american tourists or garbage collectors. They were kept seperate from the rest of the guys at the party by putting them all inside a tiny cupboard sized room in the front corridor of the building. The Organisation of the party had been maticulously planned, with with the following events planned for the day.. Kick Off competition, Big Prize Raffle (the prize - a Midi-HIFI) a KARAOKE (a fun game which often takes place at disco's/nightclubs, where contenders have to prove their worth by singing to their best ability to a backing track .. often with hilarious results!), and of course the crucial demo and music competions. There was all day food and soft drinks, a bar in the evening and a computer hardware stall on site too. All in all this party was set to be the bigest and best ever held in the UK. The number of people attending the party was record breaking for a party in England (which you must remeber is an island) with nearly 300 guys attending the party during the course of the day. One moment everything was going fine, and all the carefull planning that had taken place was paying off, until disaster struck! The worst thing that could have possibly happened..... DID! The power went out! Every Screen in the building and every light went out, followed by a great human groan! The caretaker was fetched to solve the situation, a few moments later the power was back, "Hurrah!" said a hundred voices. Sadly that was not the end of the power problem, but eventualy we did receive a smooth and reliable supply, but this came too late for the Kick off competition which had suffered several false starts due to power cut outs and so was inevitabley cancled. The four winning & runner up trophies were in a draw to the guys who entered the competition. The next disaster was the Karaoke equipment never arrived, although the owner did! This next paragraph may sound a little critical of one individual but the arrogance of this man was unabound! The demo competition being held in a room just outside the main hall, this was one of two rooms that had a safe powersupply due to being off the main circuit. Before the demo comp could begin OPUS of EQINOXE demanded that the demo competition be cancelled, his reason being that the source code for their demo had been lost during a cut before they had chance to finish it, he also felt that because only six demos were being entered for the competition that this wasn't enough to make it worthy and said that there was no pride to be taken for winning against so few oponents, but nobody else agreed with him, it was just him against the rest of the party, I asked him if he would be calling for the cancellation of the demo competition "because of lack of entries" if their demo had not been lost, he replied "we would have entered it". What an asshole! How anyone can be so selfish is beyond me! (and everyone else there agreed) In the end, the coder of their demo was called into the room, when asked if HE thought the competition should be canceled because of the loss of their demo he replied "Nooo! I dont care!.. Carry on!". Opus had egg on his face and when he left was probably the most hated person of the day! The demo competition (which was won by Magnetic Fields) and the rest of the day went sucsesfully. Conclusions Firstly have to make clear that I am a member of Anarchy, but I hope that some people wont think that because of this, facts about the party may have been biased in some way. What I have written here is factual truth. Maybe if this report had been made by a member of certain other group(s), it would have been biased to their opinion of the party and not based on fact. I hope you agree with me on this point and if you don't why not let me know? Overall the party was a great succses with an overwelming turnout of almost 300 people (considering that if you added together every member of every group in England you would be extremly lucky to make 400!) Everybody enjoyed themselves, some got drunk and some were tempted away from the party by young girls waving condoms at the windows! (this is completely true!) The main disruption of the party was the overloading of the power supply, which was completly out of our control, this problem then caused the cancelation of the Kick Off competition, and set a-light Opus of Equinoxe's selfish personality. Everybody I've spoken to since the party said they had a great day and sympathised about the power supply hassle! If anyone else has their opinion of the party I would like to hear it. I hope every onewho attended had a good time and didnt find the power problem too anoying.