Pilgrimage (demo party)

Pilgrimage is a demoparty which takes place annually in Salt Lake City, Utah each summer. The first event was held in August 2003, founded by Legalize of the demoscene group Polygony. Pilgrimage is unique in that it is currently (as of 2006) the only active demoscene event of its kind in all of North America, while over 70 demoparties take place each year throughout Europe. ^*

Party features

Competitions

Each year, Pilgrimage hosts a variety of different compos, most of which require a skill in electronic art and/or computer programming, such as:

Demo
Combined Music (MP3 and tracked music)
Pixel Graphics
Text Mode Graphics
"Blender" competition (equivalent to fast-compos at European demoparties)
"Wildcard" (equivalent to wild-compos at European demoparties)

In 2004, Pilgrimage managed to raise over Dollar|US $" target="_blank" >^*14,000 in cash and prizes to award winners of each of the various competitions. Major sponsors that year included Utah's largest independent ISP XMission, ACiD, ATI Technologies, and deviantART.

Seminars

In addition to competitions, which are the main focal point of any demo party, Pilgrimage also hosts seminars on art and technology-related subjects such as 3D programming and design, the history of art in computing, and game design.

Partying

Not forgetting the "party" in demoparty, Pilgrimage 2004 included the following activities:

A Dance Dance Revolution tourney, including several "old school/new school" matchups.
A city-spanning scavenger hunt organized by members the local 2600 meeting.
A demoscene trivia quiz show hosted by Jason Scott and Severina and featuring drunken/delirious nerd antics.
A demonstration of how the popular Finnish cocktail Salmiakki Koskenkorva can be made, and a tasting for all hearty souls.

Criticism

Many European demosceners have raised voice against various antics regarding Pilgrimage. [http://www.pouet.net/topic.php?which=2253&page=1

"Eurotrash"

In 2004, main organizer Legalize stirred up quite a few attenders during his opening speech of the party, where he (in response to European critics of the party) verbally offended the complete European demoscene, labelling them "Eurotrash". He also delivered a side-jab to attenders from Canada stating that they are "wussies", as don't have an active demoparty anymore - to which the members of demogroup Northern Dragons responded that the actual party invitation demo was "written by Canadians". [http://www.scenerep.org/scenezine/issue16.php They gave another tongue-in-cheek response to the controversy in 2005 by naming their compo-winning demo entry "Eurotrash".

Protocol 42

In February of 2006, it was announced that Pilgrimage was cooperating with the annual Protocol 42 LAN party. This has caused concern among sceners, largely because the description of the demoscene on the P42 website was extremely inaccurate and diminutive. ^*

PartyMeister

Several demoparties (including Breakpoint) across Europe use a demoparty-CMS called PartyMeister, which proved itself worthy during many tests and is still the favored tool of many organizers.

Pilgrimage organizing, however, publicly denounced PartyMeister in 2005 on its mailinglist for not having a software license fitting their needs and stating various incompatibilities with Internet Explorer. Ironically, the party that year was forced to use PartyMeister after the failure of their own system.