Yeah the only time I was this cold in Mass Housing was when, last year, I set up my mattress next to the giant industrial fan in the corner.

I think there were just crazy draughts coming in from the metal doors or something and I guess they couldn't be budget insulated?

I don't know why this is the only thing I want to reply to so far but:

Naegleria - There actually was an elevator to get from the ground floor to the upper floor of the arena, you'd have to walk through the swampfort we had set up though. Also I don't know if the weight limit could accommodate a group of Americans. However there was a chair in there.

So I attended and hosted, which means I did everything but run a game. Anyway, I'll just go through everything that I dealt with rather than doing pros and cons:

Venue (Town) - I had no problems at all with Vaxjo, the fact Maxi's was the size of a decent supermarket and had a deli where you could get decent (albeit cold) food was a godsend, and unless you were running pure nocturnal you could probably have something different to eat every day. There wasn't much to do in the town directly, but I suppose that's what the marathon itself is for.

Venue (Mass Housing) - The part where the lights didn't work in the toilets on day 1 was so funny it basically overrode any sort of inconvenience. My main issue with the place was that it was really, really cold. I was going to bed fully dressed and then waking up with a chill because those giant metal doors were letting in a draught and someone propped open the main door with a breeze block. It was extremely close to the venue though, and besides the one problem that everyone I talked to knows about at this point, it was 'okay'. I'll probably get a hotel next year though but that's more for extra privacy and convenience.

Venue (Arena) - I'm not sure how much I can really comment on this since we managed to set up "the swamp" and then essentially bunkered down in there for the entire marathon. But I did like the idea of everything being run out of one room, and then a couple of side rooms for eating, messing around, playing games and so on. My main issues were:

There was no big projection of the marathon, which meant we either had to invest in a pair of binoculars or watch the stream online even though we could HEAR the hosting going on (which at one point meant we were getting an echo of Spike's hosting when we were trying to watch). Oasiz explained why that big screen couldn't be used, but a projector would've been nice.

Secondly, and this is a rather weird thing. I wasn't a fan of the arrangement of the tables. Rows would cause pretty bad congestion and prevent people from seeing games in front of them. Maybe an inward facing square with a few gaps might've been better? I don't know.

Finally, there was no live schedule anywhere that I could find in the venue. Just as an idea I had, one could've been printed out, put near the hosting station on a wall and then above it wrote how many minutes or hours to take away from the time. I mean you could look online, but still, it's a bit weird. Especially since hosting station had its own schedule, albeit one with the times not on it.

Venue (Side stuff) - ESAGame room was really cool, those controllers are still fun to play on. The Legend guys selling board games are the nicest people I've ever met and we got a lot of fun out of that as well, seriously they are the most based people alive.

Lanyards - Good idea, not the best execution. The photo fiasco leading into some people not getting emails and having to send a photo might've caused quite a few people to not get pictures, also the fact we got them a few days into the marathon wasn't great either. Besides that, I really liked them, though paying extra for them might've rankled some.

Commentating - This was fine and it was just literally "Do you want a headset, okay here you go.". I know seeing chat isn't for everyone so I was cool setting it up for the runners who wanted it.

Hosting - Oh boy.

Shoutouts to the guy who was hosting during the Harry Potter run for showing me nearly everything I needed to not become a total imbecile at hosting. Shoutouts to Soezee for being really cool to hang out with for several hours at a time. And thanks to Spike and Jinny for taking over for us.

Everything seeming to be run out of Discord was...not very good. Soozee had no idea she was hosting with me until she got to the venue, and we had no idea WHAT we were hosting together until someone got out their phone and went onto the ESA Discord and showed us. My interviews not being trainwrecks due to them either being with people I know or someone I could talk about professional fighting games with was an amazing stroke of luck considering I had no pre-marathon prep time.

The schedule being offset to the extent that my hosting block got pushed from 10PM to 4AM and then to 6AM after I woke up at 4AM (due to the PAL SNES delay) was so bad I don't even know what to say.

Receiving conflicting instructions from tech on two separate days wasn't great. (Wait for the scene to switch vs Stop the interview asap) But I heard hosting will get to hear tech next year so that might resolve itself.

Interview part was fun regardless, though that might be because I lucked into good interviews.

Other stuff - So we don't get fooled again. Just please release a schedule that indicates exactly how post-marathon stuff works, since all we got told was "Stream stops on Friday/Saturday, doors close on Monday at noon" when in fact the following happened:

Saturday morning - Stream ends, bonus stream begins, packing away slowly begins Saturday evening - Swamp told to pack away Sunday morning - Bonus stream ends. Main power is cut(!) at around 10AM, everyone essentially relocates upstairs or to the main entrance room, we chill out and watch Asylum shit or play games with remnants. Monday morning - Told to leave the arena, doors actually close around 8AM (so four hours earlier), we sit outside for two hours and then go to Pizza Hut because sitting in Mass Housing is not preferable in any way..

If we knew Sunday would be so completely weird and Monday would actually end 4 hours early people might have booked earlier flights. I know it's asking a lot, but it would be insanely helpful,

Besides most of that stuff I enjoyed it though. I think we were just a bit down at the start Tompa.

Overall , I completely loved the event, but for the purposes of feedback, I'll talk mostly about stuff I either know about or affected me, most of it is negative (since that's way more useful):

Venue location was cool if only because it was spitting distance from the station. However, it being too big was a bit of a drawback in a way, since I didn't even know where some of the runs that I wanted to watch were being practiced. Same deal with fighting games sequestering themselves into a tiny room connected to a small room because that was where the 'first TV' was and then inertia keeping us there.

I preferred Nyeport's layout in a way, since there were only five clearly defined rooms and nothing was really out of the way.

Mass Housing was so bad that I snap booked a hotel after staying in there for one night. Walking 20 minutes to sleep next to a giant tower fan that turned on at 4AM wasn't exactly appealing. I didn't even approach the showers and hearing about people being locked out was also slightly alarming.

Venue closing early would've set me off really badly but the door was open anyway so no harm there.

Lastly, tournaments. I got the post-mortem from Robo on the way back. Apparently everything looked fine on stream, but the actual running of it was a near disaster during the event. SF4 tournament was fine since I was essentially paid off. All I can really say is that I'll actually help out with running the Mystery Tournament next year and just do other stuff on the side if the demand is there.

Also Yellow Stream (at least until Day 3(?)) was really bad. The on-site audience and commentators were completely unable to hear or see the runner for PC runs.

I can bring the stuff I brought last year again.

I said our World of Illusion run was 22 minutes flat instead of 22:54, could you please fix this for me?

Thanks in advance.