by negke » Tue Jun 28, 2011 9:32 am
Overall it was great and there was a surprisingly high number of booths, possibly more than on any of the previous expos. Lots of cool and interesting projects and releases. I still haven't been able to actually play many of them unfortunately. Good events, too, though with limited participation (perhaps this was to be expected).
At any rate it showed there's still some juice in this old game (s).
Mod-wise CocoT and Asaki rule. Great maps by necros.
The drawbacks were in the technical details and presentation. The qx11 system was fairly awkward to use and it took a while (eventually too long) for the site to take on shape. At least at the beginning it may not have looked very inviting. In this sense, I think a major problem was that it was unclear how and when to add news posts (regardless of the ordering issue) - that should have been covered in the Help section - resulting in only few news items in relation to the number of booths.
QExpo was advertised on many community sites, but it seemed somewhat premature at that point, and the posts lacked vitial information. But it still worked out, and maybe expecting to see many new people from the outside taking an interest was out of question to begin with. Maybe some newbie sites like the Steam forums should have been targeted as well. But then again it was mentioned at Bluesnews, which is quite impressive I guess. Big FAIL at Planetquake for not covering it, though most people here probably couldn't care less.
There wasn't a lot of talk about the event and the booths overall. A bit in the irc channel, which unfortunately only few people visited, and not at all on the community forums, which is a real shame. With a central community site it would have been better, but the Quake scene doesn't have that.
It was also most unfortunate there wasn't someone to do additional news or summary posts and articles at the end of each day, a moderator in a way. And then the expo ended just like that, without a word, or a big post summing up all that's happened throughout the week. I know Chip said he's working on such an article, and that's good, but it's too late now. I think people have lost interest and moved on by now.
Anyway, while this all sounds quite negative, I think QExpo 2011 was a success after all, considering I didn't expect this much activity and this many booths registrations. BIG PROPS TO CHIP for making it happen and doing all the work. If you hadn't taken initiative, it might not have happened in the first place. Thanks for keeping it alive once more! And thanks to all participants!
Who knows if there will be another regular QExpo in 2013....