What a blast. So much to see and do, didn’t manage half of it and what I did I’m still digesting. If they manage to do it again next year, get yourself down there. Look! Korean Lazer Ball!

And here’s Mercury, shortly after yet another rule change, this time one about making animal noises:

I’m still reeling from seeing the dedication of the iglab crew and their associated plotters. You are all superheroes. What an effort. Taking over the disused bar next to Watershed to use as a base, shipping props and people from Europe and the US, persuading people to run around like loonies making animal noises: play never looked like such hard work.

Personal highlights: txtFiles, Comfort of Strangers as usual, playing HipSync in the Lousiana, seeing the Moose come home, watching Mercury and KLB. Regrets: not making it out for Journey, which sounded as if it properly had people confused about the difference between reality and fiction (whole other post on this, I think: early AR stuff had people worried about the effect on people’s minds, but even this low-tech competition had people scared in police cells and clambering across Temple Meads roof), missing Rainbow Rain, failing to get three people together to try Dan‘s mScape game and generally feeling as if I was arriving ten minutes late for everything. Got to be in it to win it.

Harpbeat went well, I think: enough people joined in, which I wasn’t sure about, and no-one left or looked fed up. In fact we had a pretty good time running around on Queens Square for half an hour (one girl said it was the best game she played that weekend, which from a six-year-old means something). So most of my fears about it not working didn’t come to pass. But I’m still not sure it’s very robust as a game: it seems to be a lot harder than I thought for people to move around, while the singing thing seems a little pointless in some ways. If people can do it then why not just sing a song? And if they can’t then it’s just frustrating. And as Lyndsay pointed out, people don’t think of their note as a particular note, more that it’s the one that comes between the notes either side: people define their note to sing in the context of the other notes in the harp. Which Frege ought to have told me, really.

So I’m looking at a bit of a change of direction, though I think it might involve a lot of soldering. Watch this space.

Thanks Simon! And Simon! And Duncan! And Clare! And Helens, both of them! And all the lovely stewards! And everyone who joined in! See you next year!