[F] GoudaRadioMeet Report

Happened: 19 and 20 July 2003. Report as posted to a.f.p.

Photos to be found over there

Well, after hours of meeting, being the organiser and presenting onna radio, I feel tired yet content and happy.

It was the second GoudaMeet ever, with the usual suspects in random order:
Sanity, organiser and local resident of the People's Republic of Gouda
Astrid, SO of Sanity and since this March also a local resident
David, newbie and local resident, and at the same time the only furriner
Olaf & Sindy, locals but not of Gouda
Patrick, definitely the loudest snorer
Leo, without navigation system this time because he figured out how close Delft and Gouda actually are.
Arwen, heavily backpacked
Eelco, Biker from Brabant

So, alltogether, 9 people. This made organising quite easy, as everybody was at the train station at 17.30 so we could set out towards the cafe (after the usual moneymachine visits). Eelco had by then already suffered an overload of touristic information during the walk from the Sanity Penthouse to the station. In the station, the first person we met was David, cleverly hiding away from the bunch of afpers hanging around the other exit. But instant recognition, and a warm welcome for this very new newbie. He had stumbled upon a.f.p. thanks to last year's GoudaMeet report, found out there was going to be one and decided to come - a wise decision, many of you readers will think now. And you're right, you know.

The meet then set out southwards, towards the historical city centre of Gouda, chatting away while occasionally being interrupted by more touristic information about our beautiful city[1]. Usefull information, too: "This crossing is the most dangerous in Gouda, it has the highest death rate". After that, we progressed through the hysterical part of Gouda where the organiser and local tried to explain why shops weren't allowed to put their own rubbish bins out despite the clearly overfull PRoG Official Government Rubbish Bins not providing enough waste-storage. And why a tree should be chopped after it was already expensively moved a few metres and which almost all local would like to stay[2].

Impressed by the abilities of our PRoG Government, the meeting crowd was shuffled into Grand Cafe Central (est. 1916). Last year's experiment with the Finn MacCool (a bit further on the Market Square[3]) was considered suboptimal, with staff that got confused when people went in and out, and little room for a group inside. So now it was Central's opportunity to show their worth to the afp-community, and they did well. David, speaking English, was quickly given the English touristy menu, while the rest was pointed out the Dish of the Day.

Waiting for drinks people quickly started talking again, on our side of the table in English and on the other side in Dutch, with Olaf being kind of stuck in the middle of the two languages. Topics around my side were, apart from of course Gouda and how David had ended up in it, and the difficulties getting a house or flat, DVDs, fish porn (it works! scientifically proven!), Australia and (just before dinner) throwing up.

Dinner was consumed with much enthousiasm and muffled eating noises, and generally considered good. Astrid got quite a large dish of vegetarian stuff, resulting in some jealous looks.

After dinner, and positive results from the scouts Leo and Arwen, the troupe moved outside to sit on the terrace[4], combined with seating arrangement reshuffling. This meant that the topic quickly came to the upcoming radio show and what my plans were. Telling them that it was 'all in my head' comforted them only just. Some ideas were exchanged and topics expanded, and all felt confident enough for the next day to change the subject to cats. Of course, at this point in time some geeky equipment was also found its way onto the tables.

After a pleasant evening the meet broke up. Olaf & Sindy and David went to their respective homes while Sanity led the crashers towards the worst neighbourhood of Gouda, where his home is, through the prettier route. Again, much touristic information was provided. At home, people were getting to know Felix, the resident cat, who immediately presumed that all these people must have come to feed him and started moving towards the kitchen. After a bit of talk and deciding on who would sleep where and which poor sod had to share a room with Patrick, everyone went to sleep. This went reasonably well, except that Felix was trying to get into Eelco's bed, mosquitos were trying to get into everyone (I'd forgotten to hand out newspapers) and in the morning Patrick woke everyone (except roommate Leo) up by not waking up but instead causing a minor earthquake by snoring extremely loud.

The next morning people got up, swore at the snorer, stoked the cat and then it was time to do the final preparations for the radio show. Leo and Patrick volunteered to be the Guests of Honour and also supplied music. Which meant in one case going through a huge MP3 CD, selecting the appropriate tracks and then burning them onto an Audio CD, something which needed the combined efforts of three Linux users (but mainly Leo - thanks!) fighting with X-CD-Roast, a crashing Knotify and in the end good cdrecord commandline knowledge.

The Radio Show went well, we didn't use a lot of music in the first hour because of enthousiastic talking and explaining about Terry Pratchett, the kind of books that he writes, the references and annotations, which books to start with, how we all got into Pratchett. The second hour gave the opportunity to play a bit more music, in between the talking about (pratchett/fantasy) fandom, CCDE, DWCon, and meets. While the music played we were receiving direct feedback from Arwen, who was following the show from behind the screens (and had a good time I presume, considering she stayed the whole show and wasn't forced to say something), which was immediately absorbed into the programme-making-proces. After the show, our listener (Astrid) called to say she enjoyed the programme. Our biggest fan however was located in the studio and helped keep the air below dangerous temperature and humidity.
The programma has been recorded, and will at some point be made available digitally - it's in dutch only though.

At the end, we could conclude that it had been a good meet, and that another radio programme (hopefully with even more people) is fun. Which is a Good Thing, so I'll keep everyone posted about that for next year (and ideas are welcome).

I would like to conclude with thanking all people that were there for coming, with special thanks to my co-producers Arwen, Patrick and Leo and of course David, who had a great night out and who we'll be seeing more of in the next meets.

Last but not least, the quotefile:

  Astrid: "I've got a tree in my placemat"
  Sanity: "That's quotable, isn't it?"
  Sindy:	"It is, and it's green"
  
  Leo:  "Every time I went to the toilet those ladies had
       their clothes *on*! [translated from dutch]

       [1] "Onze mooie stad Gouda", a phrase uttered several times in every
           speech of the last mayor of Gouda.
     
       [2] You want to know the reason? It costs the space of 3 market stalls.
           This while the rearranging of the Market Square[3] costed the space of
           20 stalls...
       
       [3] It's not square, but triangular.
       
       [4] I still am unsure whether that's a proper translation of 'terrasje'.
 

Photos to be found over there