Spoletium 3 Official Party Report
Spoleto (Italy) 25th November 2000
Spo3 is actually the ONLY demoparty in Italy of *any* scene, this
meant that we also had people from other platforms attending like
Rigel^KIC from Linux scene or Gecco^Ind, Mig^S1, Rock^S1 from PC,
Surfing^Rj^Dms^Flt from PC/C64 ones (the latter being a real aficionado
of this party) and so on. Everyone at the party was italian but we had
many (most?) contributions from abroad showing the interest around this
happening.
The show started at 10:00 and local schools organized visits to watch
demos like they were going to a museum, teens showed much interest and
enjoyed the not-so-boring lesson silently, luckily enough they all left
before the scene-boozers came in or there would have been some trouble
with their teachers ;).
It was almost lunchtime when sceners and plain Amiga users entered the
partyplace after wandering up and down the town looking for it, there
was a reserved parking for us but none seemed to know and cars were
scattered quite far for a while, It was a mess to guide people to it.
At least we had an huge maxiscreen (one of the greatest I ever seen)
audio/video quality was above average and all promises in the invitation
fully kept (apart from hard disk throwing compo): no quakers, porn, or
LAN, a dream for every true scener? :D, best of all, relationship between
security and attenders was the more relaxed you can expect as we all knew
each others and troublemakers stayed home as SHOULD always be, anyone
ever saw what happens to major parties in northern Europe knows what I
mean.
Local TV arrived to film the event and interview the main organizer,
nobody seemed to care, quite strange for ego-stimulated sceners ;) ,
journalists instead stayed home and cut'n'pasted the official press
release without bothering to check what's up (mind it when you go to the
newsagent ;P ).
Compos begun just in the evening with greatest demos of every time
being shown on maxiscreen in the meantime, it was like going to cinema
also because of the darkness that surrounded anything most of the
duration of Spo3 since the morning. We saw releases from groups inactive
since lotsa time like Genesis and Morbid Visions and also from newcomers
like Trinity and it's finally a good news for the italian demoscene,
given the occasion it can show it's still alive even if heavily tied to
local environment.
Quality and quantity of releases was generally on the same trend of
previous editions, pixel artwork ruled the gfx compo (yeah!) with
Wade and Fusko being my favourites, mods compo was weaker IMHO with
Skizzo^LFS underrated as placement and demos/intros ranking from very
good to crap. Generally speaking oldskool influenced most of the work
shortly followed by fun stuff (if you're familiar with italian TV,
"Giulia" by Ezio will make you laugh quite loud, just to give an
example).
Votes were collected by nice girls and sceners were really happy to vote
this time ;D, well know Surfing^Rj tried to fake votes forgetting a
little detail, he wasn't competing at all! Holy booze, organizers had to
give him a "special prize" to keep him quiet, but you know ,he's a showman.
Shortly after midnight the event reached its end, everybody moved to a
local pub waiting for the station to open, judging from smiling faces
I can say that they liked very much the party, it was quite late and I
had to drive home before falling asleep.