Review: LugRadio Live 2007

As regular readers of my blog will know, I wasn’t expecting to be able to attend LRL this year, but, through the extreme generosity of a number of people (you know who you are) I was. No regrets

I’ve left writing this post for a number of days, to let the tiredness wear off, to (hopefully) write a decent, balanced review of the weekend. I’ll take you through what I did, and then comment on the pros and cons and then come to some conclusions for next year.

What I Did

Friday

We (neuro, Essk, Xalior and I) left my house at around 1000, with me having worked solid from 0600, and already tired We made good time down the M74/M6 and hit Tebay early for a nice lunch. Then we hit the massive tailback on the M6, which was evil, and held us up for _ages_ and we finally arrived at the Quality Chin for about 1700. I was staying elsewhere, and had to wait around for Aq to come and pick me up, so I snuck in a couple of quick pints while watching a bit of tennis and footy in the QC bar.

After a bit of pizza, and a bit of lugging kit into Jono’s house, we headed off to the Hogshead for the pre-LRL party. This was massively busy, which is always good to see, and I managed to chat with quite a few folk, as well as pick up the game that I one from GamerTag Radio (namely Ankh: Heart of Osiris). Oh, and I drunk some beer, much of which was free as in beer.

A quick kebab on the way home and then a cup of tea before falling into bed far too late

Saturday

Up at 6am to load the van and head down to the venue for 7.30am, to be met by the horde of crew (of which I was one) to setup the venue in time for the doors opening at 10am. Fuelled by bacon sarnies (thanks BigRon and babyron!) the crew worked like a well oiled machine, and the huge swag bags were filled, the chairs put out, and badges cut and folded and everything was done.
After the intro, I headed into Ted Haegars talk on the Bungee development stuff. Looks pretty cool, although I’m not convinced it’s something I’d ever use (sorry, Ted), but Ted is always good to listen to. Then I ran upstairs and caught the end of the Bazaar talk, and Laszlo’s Jokosher talk, which was hugely entertaining.
At lunch, Xalior once again stepped up to the community plate, and forked out for pizzas for the #lugradio faithful, along with Kat’s lovely cakes I think next year we need to be a bit more organised about this, although I’m not sure how best to sort it, particularly with so many of the #lr people on the crew.
After lunch was the scary ‘Adam Sweets Gong-a-thong Lightbulb Talk Extravaganza’ which involved Adam Sweet, in a thong, with a gong, compering 3 minute talks. I gave a quick talk on LinkPot, which seems to be gathering momentum, but I wished I’d thought more about what I was going to say, as I could’ve filled the time better. Then I ran up to find I’d missed Elleo’s SabreGL talk, which was a shame, so I ran back down for the rest of the lightbulb talks.
At 1500 I went into the Mass Debate in the main talk room – this was a great venue for this, and I really enjoyed the debate this year – the previous 2 years I haven’t really got into it. After that there was a choice of 4 things I wanted to see, but I was really tired, so I missed all of them….
The (formal) part of the day ended with LugRadio Live and Unleashed, which was great fun, not least because I managed (to my enormous surprise) to be named Community Hero again, winning myself a (very shiny) Nokia N800 (more on that in future posts….), a hazmat suit (don’t ask) and an oil painting of the Chinny Raccoon, painted by the very talented Chris Hayes (who also did the LinkPot graphics). I feel both enormous pride, and a certain amount of guilt, at being name CH again. I hope that I can do enough in the next 12 months for people to feel that I deserve it, and that the community is a better place.
Afterwards we cleared the hall (and played with the N800) then picked up pizza before the evening par-tay. I feel it was a little quieter than last year – without the same vibe – although that may have been an indication of my physical state at the time Left at 1230 to go to bed.

Sunday

Began much as Saturday, with the crew setting up. I had realised on the Saturday that I had forgotten to locate the sound clips that I needed for the comedy buzzers on the quiz software I had written for Bruno for the quiz later on that afternoon, so I secreted myself in a corner for 90 minutes while I trawled through lugradio episodes for the right bits. Then I managed to catch a bit of Becky Hogge’s talk before lunch.
After lunch I caught a bit of Gerv’s talk, but I really need to see the whole thing Then I got everything ready for the Quiz. Amazingly, the Quiz software seemed to work fine, and we had some good fun – Bruno hosted, while the LugRadio and Hashlugradio crews faced off. The HLR folks won by a whisker, although it was a close run thing. It was difficult to concentrate on the audience reaction, what with worrying about the software and trying to compete, but people said it was good afterwards. (Source code for the quiz stuff will be available soon)
And then it was over.

Except for the (now) traditional post-LRL community party, at the QC. This was great fun, as always, and a group of us regailed each other with quality (and not so quality) jokes, and we got in a quick game of Hungry Hippos before going to bed.

Conclusions

Positives

• The new venue was excellent. Admittedly the atrium was problematic (see Negatives), but the main talk and lightning talk rooms were top notch, and I felt the exhibition area was probably better placed than last year.
• Top names, top talks. I felt like I saw more this year, but there was still a huge amount to choose from, and some really wide and varied topics.
• The community remains as wonderful as ever – a great bunch of folk that I really wish I had more time to spend with
• I won an N800!
• I felt the Live and Unleashed was good this year – it’s a tricky thing to do, because you’re trying to record a show for people to listen to, while at the same time fit in a lot of prizegiving-type stuff, and audience interaction. Very glad they sorted out a radio mike this year
• The crew were fantastic this year. And I felt like people were really able to help out, and feel useful at the event. Last year I was very much sorting out what I could with the Lan Gaming, and didn’t really feel like I had contributed, but this year I felt that I had been useful, and played a part in making the event a success.
• The quiz software worked! I was really nervous that something would go wrong, and, apart from a single crash , everything went smoothly.
• Top quality swag bags (aka “LRL Nutsacks”)

Negatives

• The price of beer. Both in the Quality Chin, and in the venue, the price and selection of beer left much to be desired. Plus the promised cafe at the venue decided not to serve food
• The Saturday night was a little flat for me this year, although that might just be me. Plus I forget to get Hungry Hippos out of neuro’s car
• The atrium at the venue has challenges in both lighting and acoustics. It’s a very echoey room, with huge skylights that made the projector a bit useless. However, I believe these can be overcome for next year.
• The exhibition was a bit quiet this year – I hope that they did well enough to feel it was worthwhile, and maybe persuade others to come next year, although I can imagine it’s a tricky event to ‘sell’ to some organisations.

Summary

LRL was better than ever this year. Yes, there are things that could be improved. But that just means that next year will be even better My biggest fear is that the arrival of LRL US (“Sworn in the USA”) may mean that some of the big names from the States won’t bother travelling to the UK for the “main event”. But there are still plenty of big names in Europe who would come, I guess.
My hope is that I can find time during this year to think more constructively about LRL 2008. One of the negative comments I saw on another blog was about the amount of stuff that seemed aimed at the “inner circle” of fans (those who participate in IRC and the forums I think) and I want to think of ways to improve that.

mrBen