»CL9:»SML:--------------------------------------
»CL8:           »BIG:Icing '99 report
»CL9:»SML:--------------------------------------

»CL4:     by Blueberry/Loonies&Efreet

»CL0:quickly translated from Danish and
edited by Curt Cool.

As the seemingly only non-swede, I
went to Icing in 'Stenkullen' in
Gothenburg in Sweden.

The partyhall itself was a big
sportshall, covered for the purpose so
that no light could get inside. It was
rather suitable, and there was also a
quiet and cool sleeping hall. The
surroundings were nice too - there was
a pizzeria right next to the hall and
a supermarket 5 minutes away. On the
party itself there was a little shop
which was open 24h a day where you
could buy sandwiches, softdrinks etc.,
and at which it was possible to order
pizzas 3 times/24 hours.

The electricity situation seemed
somewhat unstable in certain parts of
the hall, but network seemingly worked
well. A big drawback was that it
wasn;t connected to the internet,
which to me ment a lack of the desired
contact to the rest of my group.

Now, no more about the technical
aspects of "Icing".



There were about 450 people at Icing,
and as far as I could see, the mix of
people was like this:

»CL9:5% Amiga people
»CL8:5% PC sceners
»CL7:90% gamers

»CL0:The background for this estimation is
my intense search for Amiga people
which was honored with under 20 of the
kind, that I only noticed a pc owner
doing something close to scene
activity twice, and the amount of
productions at the competitions. The
low amount of support was really
rather sad because the party really
deserved better than that. One thing
that was about okay was the amount of
women present - and Swedish girls are
generally pretty.

But now to the key of the matter: The
competitions. All of the competitions
were delayed from 4 to 30 hours. On
the other hand, the organizers
completely ignored all kinds of
deadlines. You could see examples of
people delivering productions AFTER
the start of the competition, and
still managed to have it shown.
The pixel graphics competition was a
scandal - it was twice stopped because
of technical difficulties and
postponed. The demo- and
introcompetitions were held after the
prize ceremony should have been held,
and the prize ceremony was held very
shortly after so that people did not
have very long time to vote.
»CL0:There was quite a few surprise
competitions. Fastintro, of course,
where the theme ws "Vagtmästeren". The
only releases in that competition was
a few quickdrawn animations. Then they
had a bodycrashing, and not the usual
coward-bodycrashing with coke and
burgers, no it was mustard, remoulade
and oil. One of the better surprises
was a competition where everyone who
had brought something odd with them to
the party should bring it on-stage and
tell people about it. Some examples: A
girl had brought her little brother,
some guy had brought a PC (and as he
said: What's the purpose of that?),
one had brought a cellular phone which
he thought was really strange but
people didn't raelly agree with him.
My favourite was someone who had
brought an Icing schedual with
deadlines. The winner (chosen by
biggest applause), though, was the one
who came onstage with a CD and
announced that he had brought Quake.
Inspired by a great inflatable
Godzilla which some people had put on
their table and hung out with from
time to time, there was also
a Godzilla-ANSI-graphics-
surprise-competition.

The organizers had some trouble with
making SCALA work correctly, thus
dropping the matter completely quite
early, in favour of the primitive
solution using a textprocessing
program of some kind with a very large
font, with which the organizers wrote
the announcements, both realtime and
by having it all written, and then
scrolling it.

This was the reason for quite a bit of
fun, especially during the prize
ceremony where Chip/Powerline sat by
the keyboard and talked dirty about
the organizers on stage, to delete it
before they turned to look. That was
rather funny.

My own reasons for going to Icing was:

»CL9:1. to deliver our demo, Valhalla.
»CL8:2. to test my new netcard.
»CL7:3. curiosity/wanting to go to a party.

»CL0:The first part went fine (they took
the 1st place -ed.), though we didn't
get the prize without a few nasty
sentences from Chip:

»CL8:2. Endzeit - Freedom

»CL7:(and they got onstage and got their
prize)

»CL8:1. Keso »CL7:(yeah right)

... delete ...

»CL8:1. Loonies - Valhalla.

»CL0:3 demos wasn't exactly a lot. The
prize for the 1st place was 1000
Swedish crowns - not a lot, and
according to rumours, the 2nd place
had three times as much... (???? -ed.)


»CL0:The testing of my netcard didn't go as
expected, with no internet connection
available, but still, the card worked
find so I got myself some MP3's
instead.
As for the party itself, it was quite
a different experience than the other
parties I have attended, simply
because I didn't know anybody when I
got there at all. I didn't do much
during the party (except for the intro
I did for Up Rough - if that can be
considered sensible), but anyway, I
met some new people (I sat together
with Nukleus, a Swedish Amiga group,
nice people). It was some kind of a
wildcard not to bring a monitor, but I
managed to borrow one from the
organizers which weren't being used
anyway.
»CL0:All in all it was an exciting
experience. There wasn't anything
special about the party itself. The
atmosphere was good, the organization
not too good, but acceptable. It is
definitely worth considering going
there next year.