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Evoke 2013 - in August, just like every year!

category: parties [glöplog]
Holy shit, that was one of the best parties ever!

I think Punqtured nailed it when he said it's "the perfect balance between large scale party and intimate get-together". This was exactly how I experienced it as well.

It was great to meat all the awesome people of Titan, see TRSI (and/or mates) be mind-blown by our cigarette filler, meet Gabrian (Kindbarend)'s 10-20 year older clone, get a close look at Still's amazing editor as well as a mini 4k-music tutorial by Punqtured. To be able to have a ride in the skatepark in the darkness was a pretty damn unique experience as well. (There are just too many awesome moments to name them all!)

But the most memorable experience of the party was getting the Newcomer Award, and not only that, but the fact that people actually started to recognize our name and got enthusiastic about our work. We really feel so damn welcome in the scene. Its like home ;)

The prize money was well-spent on beer and bratwurst in the train back, and survived for about 30 minutes :D (PB Party Train feat. Okkie is one to do more often)

Thanks for one of the best weekends ever, and we will definitely be there next year, hope to see you all too!
added on the 2013-08-19 13:17:07 by Roeltje Roeltje
Quote:
Also, Being an organizer makes you think about weird stuff: How did 4 toilets (for men) handle 500 visitors without any noticable problems or staus. I literally didn't have to wait more than maybe 1 minute at any point... Maybe I was just lucky :)

THIS!! OMG :) Hahaha - I didn't think of that until you brought it up, but you're absolutely right. There were no queues what so ever. Hahaha :D
added on the 2013-08-19 13:36:07 by Punqtured Punqtured
DE: Kalk ist halt nicht so beschissen wie immer alle denken :-)
EN: Kalk is not such a shitty place, as many people would like to think at first :-)
added on the 2013-08-19 14:33:53 by decca decca
big thx for di info on di upload (results)!
added on the 2013-08-19 15:51:17 by wertstahl wertstahl
Awesome party. The best Evoke I ever have visited.

Now where are the last of the entries on scene.org?
added on the 2013-08-19 16:00:53 by uncle-x uncle-x
all entries, besides the two democompos, are on scene.org now. the democompos are following in the next 1-2 days - but most of the releases can be downloaded from pouet already.
added on the 2013-08-19 16:22:09 by dipswitch dipswitch
I'm still awestruck actually, about the whole party, prices and waaaah - having the feeling it's just a dream, and that I wake up any moment and have to get back to syncing and coding.
A big, big thanks to the orga team - like every year you did an amazing job despite the lack of sleep, so please feel hugged <3
Also thanks a lot for all the interesting discussions outside, the booze from locations I never heard of, everyone who squeezed between the wall and the desk to get a glimpse at the little demoshow.

Thanks again for the style award, it's just - I still can't believe it, it really must be a dream.

Thanks, thanks, thanks - I'll be there next year for sure! <3
added on the 2013-08-19 21:49:56 by mog mog
i had a very good time, thanks to all the nice organising and of course my fellow mates in titan (yes, you blew the party to pieces!).

a special thanks for the saturday mettbrötchen suppliers as well, they were really tasty and exactly what my body needed at that time <3.

mood, djs, compos, weather, people... everything was awesome.
added on the 2013-08-19 21:57:32 by wysiwtf wysiwtf
@mog: Yeah, you now officially have »Style«! And an award to prove it! (:
added on the 2013-08-19 22:00:08 by gaspode gaspode
Quote:
Quote:
Also, Being an organizer makes you think about weird stuff: How did 4 toilets (for men) handle 500 visitors without any noticable problems or staus. I literally didn't have to wait more than maybe 1 minute at any point... Maybe I was just lucky :)

THIS!! OMG :) Hahaha - I didn't think of that until you brought it up, but you're absolutely right. There were no queues what so ever. Hahaha :D

Travel constipation FTW :D
added on the 2013-08-19 22:05:43 by Kabuto Kabuto
have there really been 500 visitors? not, like, 300 or sth? seems more plausible somehow... where does this number come from? (don't want to ruin the fun, just curious!)
added on the 2013-08-19 23:28:37 by jco jco
Demopartys always lie about the scaling factor between "actual number of visitors" vs. "number of visitors reported to the public/press". Some party orgas overdo it. Problem is: If you have lied once, you keep doing it the following years, because else you would need to tell the press that the number of visitors has shrinked when fixing back the scaling factor to reality, and nobody wants that.

Breakpoint always used something like 1.2x, Revision and TUM are on similar scaling levels. Evoke for years already used something like 2x.

Things become a bit messy when these numbers are used for comparsions between partys. No, Evoke isn't the second-biggest demoparty in Germany, TUM is - if you take the actual (unscaled) visitor numbers.

The real number of evoke visitors this year is probably somewhere around 250. This also matches the number of hosts I have seen accessing the Internet.

It's still a hell lot, and has been a pleasure to see so much fresh blood at Evoke. A good party is about the quality of visitors, not the quantity. Evoke sure delivered on quality.
added on the 2013-08-20 00:27:48 by scamp scamp
easy to explain. we know how many wristbands we order. we had 500 of these fabric wristbands. they were all given out. less than 20 people got new wirstbands because they put them on to tight and wanted a new one. some visitors didn't get a wristband at all (i.e. some of the female visitors).we gave out some of the paper wristbands that we had as backup but never thought we would have to use. we just wanted to be on the safe side.

the estimation of visitors is also supported by the amount of money that was collected at the infodesk.

so it is safe to say that we have a good understanding of how many people showed up.

we already new that something was different than the year before when we already had 200 visitors at 7pm on friday after we did the doors open/entrance fee collecting at 4pm.

that beeing said i have to say that most of us are totally stunned after this years evoke. the fun we had was tremendous, the releases were great and we are overwhelmed by so many of you guys showing up. a hundred more than last year! also seeing so many new faces and so many debut entries in the compos was amazing.

So thank you very much to you all of you. You guys rule.
added on the 2013-08-20 00:29:30 by xxx xxx
and btw, scamp is probally trolling.
added on the 2013-08-20 00:31:44 by xxx xxx
Some feedback and comments on feedback on networking:

- The evoke network team consisting of a single orga again was massively understaffed. You can not run a whole party network for so many people with a single orga. Philipp did a great job.

- The network itself was pretty excellent this year. The core router/firewall on the backbone was underpowered, which is why infected or P2P-Running machines caused that device to have very high load and show poor performance. After sending out the hitmen to kill off those users on the network, things were OK. For a demoparty of this size this isn't robust enough. Evoke will need something bigger next year.

- The WLAN worked pretty perfectly - it helped a lot that Evoke got themselves a WLAN controller this year. Unneeded ICMP filtering on the WLAN made diagnostics hard. Next time WLAN should however be installed BEFORE doors opening - the power cycles of the table switches needed with visitors present have been unpleasant.

- NOTE to those complaining about "wifi" speed, but actually talking about the voting system being slow: Those are two different things. And a general remark for ANY demoparty: If you have a device sitting on a table, use a god-damn network cable. WLAN is only meant for devices that are carried around. WLAN is a shared medium, everyone shares very limited WLAN bandwidth.

- I know that "good weather" and Evoke typically don't mix. But the orga area including the hardware being very high in the hall meant that the ambient temperature was too high for some hardware to function properly (scenesat's encoder fuck-apple mac mini) running up there.

- The servers weren't maintained properly and possibly underpowered. The DNS server had various configuration problems, partymeister had problems etc.

- My fault: I didn't make sure we would get proper ircnet access in time.

So yes, there still is area to improve in regards of networking, most importantly the number of orgas working on it needs to become >0.

But compared to the last years, Evoke has done some real good progress on this.
added on the 2013-08-20 00:44:50 by scamp scamp
Quote:
The WLAN worked pretty perfectly

I couldn't connect even once during the entire weekend, and I did try at least a dozen times per day. I could always see the access point but it would just time out when I tried to connect. I know very little about networking though and as far as I know, it could just as well be on my end. My home WLAN works fine, though.

Not that I am complainng a lot: That's a small thing really since I did manage to submit my entry and vote. Leaves more time for boozing :)
added on the 2013-08-20 00:53:18 by Preacher Preacher
Some general feedback:

One of the best Evoke's ever. Thanks much to the orgas and visitors for this very nice weekend.

The good weather, a rare thing for Evoke, has also helped.

I'm not listing all the things that I liked, it's too long. But I'm listing things that still can be improved:

- Add audio uplink to the video signal to outside bigscreen. Some ppl watch compos outside, but really would like audio.
- Some areas appear to need more orga resources: compo team, network team.
- Less delays on compos.
- DJ sets should be prepared ahead. Having the DJs play *right* after the compos instead of after an half-hour gap of silence is better to preserve mood.
- More Okkie MCing is needed. :)
- Food. With the size of the party, foodstands really would be an option. Yes, I am a lazy bitch.
- Having both pixel graphics and photos in the same compo does not make sense.
- The pattern by which orgas regulated the audio volume is a mystery to me. Some things where played (or announced) in a volume that caused pain, while some of the major compos where played with minimal volume. If it's OK to have DJs play outside until 4 in the morning at very high volume, it sure can't be a problem to also play compos INSIDE the hall at a volume which allows you to enjoy for example Stroboholics entry? And why did the orgas ignore the continous "LOUDER!" shouts during the compos? I know it's hard to judge the loudness back up there in the orga area, but if visitors shout "louder" it's a clear sign the volume is too low.
added on the 2013-08-20 00:59:26 by scamp scamp
elsewhere: Something I have experienced myself is that on a device I had used last year's Evoke VLAN, the SSID of that was still saved, so the device automatically used last years password, and then would silently fail. Maybe this is what you have expierenced - or it's a device incompatiblity with the WLAN APs.

Which adds another list to what can be improved on the network: Either don't re-use SSIDs over the year (call the network EvokeYEAR), or don't change the password.
added on the 2013-08-20 01:02:25 by scamp scamp
Scamo: that does make a lot of sense. I did have the laptop with me last year and then I had no issues. I kind of wondered why it didn't prompt me for the password but couldn't make the connection. Thanks :)
added on the 2013-08-20 01:06:57 by Preacher Preacher
xxx: I'm not trolling.

Of course there are various definitions of "Visitor". For me personally the real number is "number of humans that are somewhat part of the demoscene, bring some form of computer that connects to the networks, and sit on a chair on a table". This is something I can count and compare between partys, and also compare to what visitor counts orgas are announcing.

In Evoke's case I neither counted 500 table chairs nor 500 computers.

Which still doesn't change the fact that the numbers of visitors obviously has grown a lot since last year and that the party has been excellent.
added on the 2013-08-20 01:15:22 by scamp scamp
So as someone sitting together with others in front of the same computer, trying to sync things up and fix release stopping bugs I'm not a real visitor? Aww if I had known this before I'd have taken out my laptop and spend all the time surfing pouet instead ;)
added on the 2013-08-20 01:37:36 by jix jix
This is a man made from strawberries argument. STAHP!
added on the 2013-08-20 01:48:24 by m0d m0d
It sure didn't look like 500 ppl, but when you saw the shear mass of people sitting at the compo it sure as hell was more than last year. Also a lot of people didn't even bring their puters, lucky them who had their entry done in time ;)

Also for the network issue, they did a fucking ace job - I couldn't upload the entry after the third try, so I walked up to the info desk - he kurbelt on the phone, told the situation - I took a leak - got back - and was able to upload. That's lightspeed in my book, so Phillip - you rock, and thank you!
added on the 2013-08-20 02:09:19 by mog mog
the organizers did a great job. i complained about "my" table being unable to access the intranet party site. few minutes later it was fixed and worked like a charm til the end of the party.

i agree with scamp about this compo audio volume thing (especially because i followed the current trend to master my own stuff with a high degree of dynamics): people shouting "louder" might not be the best indicator, but this stuff can be measured by a simple rms'o'meter as well as subjective listening. i remember having taken notes about volume when doing preselection for compos myself... so yeah, even though a minor issue, there is room for improvement :)
maybe also consider upgrading to line arrays for even more consistent sound throughout the hall (not saying that the current soundsystem sucked, because it didn't, and of course there is also a price tag attached)

another thing: please get vsync with the beamer to work properly. it was kinda disappointing to see frame tearing on the big screen.

yet another thing: set up a local irc server and announce it on the bigscreen.

those are all minor issues, the overall party experience was amazing!
added on the 2013-08-20 02:38:14 by jco jco

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