[Oldskool] ASSEMBLY SUMMER postponed to October

[Pekka Aakko]

DAMN IT, too quick send by touching my touchbar ... a bit more 
explanation here.

Aapo Saaristo wrote on 06.05.2020 9.17:
> Good to see there are plans for keeping demoscene stuff going despite 
> the difficulties piled on the organisation of the event altogether 
> right now.
> Now that the demoscene is officially on Finland's list of UNESCO 
> intangible cultural heritage of humanity, it'd be a tragedy to see the 
> pandemic and the changes it's forced on the organising of the event 
> used as a means to excise demoscene from Assembly completely or to 
> fully relegate it to a semi-official "side-show" (not to downplay or 
> belittle Scene Lounge and the awesome people making it happen, but I 
> think we can agree it's a pretty far cry from the scene presence we 
> used to have at Summer events even a few years back) or something only 
> happening in the virtual context (that being said, an online event at 
> the original dates could be good fun, too).
> All the best to the orgs and hope to see everyone, sceners and gamers 
> alike, in the fall ��
>
> Br,
> /AS
Thanks for the nice words.

These are truly difficult times. For us, the decision was made so that 
we can have better chances of making the event happen. Nobody knows what 
october brings, but our hopes are high. We didn't have many (read: no 
other) options for the fall period than this and it does overlap TRSAC 
unfortunately, which I see that we should not overrun. Many from our 
compocrew are travelling there since its the last time they are having 
this event. Or it might be that summer vacations cannot be held at the 
time. Its the question of what kind of space we get for the event, the 
budget will be heavily slashed due to less participants due to space 
being available. So having the "normal" Assembly Summer is just not 
possible.

I am positive we can keep demoscene activities up and we want to do 
that. But the many constraints are what they are. I am hoping that we 
turn this more into an opportunity, work together with TRSAC for example 
to produce a combined scene effort. Let's see how this develops. The 
online event at the original dates is a real possibility that we want to 
explore and therefore getting feedback from the sceners is important to 
us to decide our action plan. Doing something is better than just pure 
cancellation.

Assembly is committed to be a scene event as well as general computer 
festival. I feel that this is our strength as well, since I personally 
see computer culture being much broader that just demos. And we have a 
nice opportunity to present demos to everyone. Yes, it also means we 
have to cater programme to much broader audience too, but I don't see 
that being a bad thing at all. This is how Assembly has operated for the 
last two decades.

Next year we hope things are more back to normal with wide screen 
compos, bigger creative area and scene lounge. The plans we have for 
2021 are still in motion :)

We hope we can publish our plans and how we pull this together in early 
June. There are multiple options still, which is a good thing, but 
choosing from them and seeing how we have staff to do those is the 
question. But there are no plans making this "as a new normal", Asm 
Summer 2021 will happen in August once again and Winter 2021 scene 
lounge is on the plans. So a lot of demoscene activities from us for the 
next year!

Hope everyone stays safe - and can participate to Assembly, be it then 
virtual and/or physical event <3

Pehu

-- 
Best Regards,

*Pekka 'Pehu' Aakko*

Event director
Assembly Organizing

Skype: pekka.aakko Email: pehu at assembly.org
www.assembly.org / Office: Sturenkatu 16, 00550 Helsinki

Snail mail address: P.O. Box 106, 00051 Telia, Finland

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