\I[Organizing A Party|By Patrik Johansson/C-Lous|Section: Odds and Ends - Various]
\F2\4\MOrganizing A Party
\M- ICING'96
\F1
\C[ClipArts/pinnen.Chnk]
\M\3I arrived at the party place
\Mthinking this will be an easy
\Mmatch. Organizing a party can't
\Mbe very hard! What can go
\Mwrong? One whole year of
\Mpreparations, we are prepared
\Mfor almost everything!
\MBoy, was I wrong!
\C[ClipArts/pinnen.Chnk]
\2Some of the organizers arrived at the party place one day before the gates were to open. This first day we didn't work very hard. We built a table for the organizers and managed to get the stereo working; we had to have some noise in there! Late in the evening we got our first problem, the pizza deliver suddenly wanted more money! We talked about different solutions but at last we had to accept this condition. This resulted in higher pizza prices for the visitors, but luckily no one complained.
Next morning, we started to build the stage, it was a sweaty job but it had to be done. I got very dirty crawling around on the floor, but so did also everybody else. Then it was time to move out the tables! Ohh... It wasn't an easy job, the tables were heavy! There wasn't enough tables and chairs so we had to borrow a large amount from a school nearby. They were transported to us with a truck. The first shipping of four was supposed to reach us at 17.00 so we took a couple of hours off. Meanwhile the PC organizers started to build the network. At first it worked fine but later a cable broke and the computer in the cafeteria wasn't any longer a part of the network. Now it started to get late and the big screen still hadn't arrived. The shipping of chairs and tables went okay but a little bit slow. The party was supposed to be opened at 20.00 but the visitors started to arrive at 18.00. We wanted to let them in, but we weren't ready with the preparations. At last the big screen arrived and that occupied many organizers. 19.30 the last chairs arrived; it looked like we were going to make it! By this time there was a big queue outside the party area. Now it was time to party! When the visitors were let in, everybody had to register themselves and this was supported by the network. During this time the network crashed a couple of times. When this happened it felt like the world was going to collapse, but now afterwards I can say that it wasn't a major problem. Around 00.00 the queue was gone and finally I got a chance to rest.
We had made up a schedule for all non mainorganizers, which told us were to be at certain times. As an example, we had to guard the sleeping hall because people weren't allowed to wear shoes in there since it would have destroyed the floor - and that would have been very expensive for us. At first this schedule worked fine but when the organizers started to get tired this schedule crashed. This meant that it sometimes wasn't enough people in the cafeteria and so on...
The first night a small problem occurred. There were a lot of drunken non party visitors outside the arena who wanted to enter. If they had been sober maybe we had let them in, but now we didn't so they started to get violent. We called the police and then that problem was solved. What dominated that night and the following day, was all the power breakdowns which occurred. It seemed like the arena wasn't able to provide all the power that was needed. Our power experts had a terrible time! The visitors started to get annoyed, and we had in mind what happened at The Gathering '94. Luckily our experts really was experts. They did a great job even though we had small breakdowns during the whole party. Another thing that I can mention about the first night is that we hadn't bought enough food for the cafeteria, so three or four hours after the opening we had nothing left to sell!
\3\M \S[Articles/Organizing_report2.txt]\2\3Press this line to continue!