I arrived at the party place thinking this will be an easy match. Organizing a party can't be very hard! What can go wrong? One whole year of preparations, we are prepared for almost everything! Boy, was I wrong!  

By Patrik Johansson (Pozz / C-Lous) 

Some 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! 

When the evening arrived it was time for a couple of local rock'n'roll and synth bands to amuse us with some live performances. This wasn't a very good idea! I happen to know that 99% of the visitors hated it. We had made an agreement with the bands so we had to let them play. This event seemed to last forever. I fell asleep, but rumors say that they played nearly until the morning even though nobody was interested. (You're very right about that! It wasn't a pleasant experience! /Frm) 

Sunday morning! The day for all the competitions. First out was the 4-channel competiton, I think. Because of a lazy jury this compo got a couple of hours delayed. Then everything possible went wrong! The different juries didn't do what they were supposed to. Especially on the PC side! I think that it has to do with that one or two people had to much responsibilities. As an example, the guy who was responsible for all the technical things at the organizer tables also worked with the network (which crashed almost every time we had a power breakdown), and was also responsible for the PC demo competition, the PC intro competition and The Scene Jeopardy. Especially The Scene Jeopardy caused much trouble since he was the only person who had the skills to get that one going. I hope that everybody understands that even an organizer sometimes has to sleep, and that was exactly what happened that day... 

To me it seemed like every time you had to speak with someone this person had disappeared! Well, after much stress and even more headache we started the multi-channel competition. We had decided to run it live, so of course the first module crashed. What had we expected? Then they all ran smoothly. We were still way beyond our schedule, but suddenly everything went much more smoothly. We delivered the Amiga 64kb competition live. As always there is one or two intros which crashes. We were so kind that we ran one intro four times I think. At that time we decided to tape the Amiga demo competition to be safe from crashes. We held the Scene Jeopardy and the graphics 
competition as soon as possible and without any major conflicts. After that I think that every organizer just wanted to sleep but of course that was impossible. So then it was time for the fast intro competition. We ran it live and it seemed be running as we had hoped but afterwards we found out that two channels was missing in the audio from our Amiga. This wasn't the first time this incident had happened, but no one really cared so we got away with it! 

I fell asleep and when I woke up in the early morning around three or four, both the PC intro and the PC demo competition had taken place. We had saved the best until last! The Amiga demo competition, that is. This time we didn't expect anything to go wrong. We had taped it and it was just to push the play button. It seemed like one of our audio cables wasn't quite okay, because the old problem with two missing channels appeared once again when running Balance's demo "Freak". We started the competition all over again and this time without trouble! Now many of the organizers were able to sleep in peace... 

The last day we held the prize ceremony and then it was time for the heavy work, cleaning up after all those piggy computer freaks, but that is another story... 

At last, I think that the Swedish scene would like to give a big flower to the following guys because they have made Icing an annual event and an excellent party. DuffE/Sardonyx, the man behind it all with a fighting spirit you can't imagine. Liket/Goto 10, what had happened without you? Tobias "Electron" Jansson, a rock in every situation! A big heartily thanks goes from the Icing organizers to the Swedish Amiga scene for delivering such a fabulous demo competition. Once again, thank you!