The Gathering

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The Gathering. The Vikingship, Hamar, Norway. The world's second biggest computer party [see computers] (only Dreamhack 2001, TGs Swedish sister party, was bigger, and even that is disputed). 4500 computer enthusiasts from all over the world (although mostly Norway). 4500 computer screens glowing in the dark. Need I say more? Perhaps I shouldn't.

Or perhaps I should tell you about a little about my own [see me] relationship to The Gathering, or just TG for short. My first TG was in 1999 -- and we all know the first time is the greatest, no? :-) Well, it really was a lot of fun -- meet people you'd never even seen before except on IRC [see Internet Relay Chat], program [see programming], and in general do stuff with your computer... In 2000 (at The Gathering 1900 -- a little Y2K bug there ;-) ), I returned as member of the TG-crew, being a part of the Info:Web-crew (ie. the ones being responsible for the TG web site)... Perhaps even more fun, that... So in 2001, I still was crew, although this year as a combination of being Tech:Linux [see Linux] (Linux tech-support crew, also being responsible for some servers and other Linux-related stuff) and responsible for the Linux-demos [see demoscene] coming in. TG01 was also a blast in that there was quite a lot of interest for the scene activities [see demoscene] (`scene' as in making demos, graphics or music, as opposed to just playing games or warezing [see illegal copying and "LAN" vs. "computer party"]), and in general I walked around quite a bit more, and found a lot of new friends I before only had known on IRC [see Internet Relay Chat and the Internet].

TG02 (the last TG so far at the time of writing ;-) ), we were trying to arrange for the scene to feel even more welcome, with things such as more scene-related stuff on the stage, an area specifically for demosceners, etc.. IMO, we succeeded, and there were a lot of kick-ass releases and a very good scene spirit :-) Personally, I had way too much to do in my dual-crew role, but that's just something one has to adjust to make things go even smoother the next year :-)

Of course, being the (second) largest party, TG also has the (second) biggest network and a quite OK feed to the Internet [see the Internet] -- of course, not enough for unlimited use for everybody, but even in the anarchy of 4500 people wanting their porn (*ahem*), it works quite well. Quite a lot come to TG only for copying software, MP3 or movies [see illegal copying], but like I said earlier, there is hope that this trend might at least turn around a little, although I don't think we can throw them out anytime soon ;-)

Even though I was in the demo crew in 2001, I was allowed to turn in a demo [see demoscene] in the fast intro competition (ie. you get three things that must/should be in the intro/demo, and you've then got a fixed time to make a intro/demo -- TG01 gave us only 4 hours, so it was a lot of stress to get things finished ;-) ) -- and it won! (That was a small sample of my sometimes weird writing style [see writing] :-P) It was really a lot of fun, and it was really a shame we didn't reach the deadline for handing in a demo in 2002. (See the demo [see demoscene] node for a download link and more information about demos.)