This thread is for any feedback (positive or negative) about NASA 2019, and any desires you have for NASA 2020. If you have any comments specifically for the hotel (bedrooms/conference/waterpark/etc) then please list those too since the hotel asked us to give us feedback as well.

Here's three general questions to structure the feedback:

What did we do well?
What did we not do well?
What do you want for next NASA?

A bunch of attendees and staff had a chat on Saturday before the room was closed, and I'll list the general sentiments here:

Hotel venue was nice, getting there sucked.
NASA back in the U.S. would be great (Chicago being the most mentioned city).
Email newsletter for better communication about event info and merchandise.
Registration page should have ticket/merch/amusementpark all bundled together.
Scheduled carpools for airport pickups, activities, and food.
More panels.
More organized multiplayer tournaments/challenges/trips/etc.
Monthly(ish) Weekend Mini-Marathons at various cities (Chicago meetup, Baltimore meetup, Jackson/Edmonton/etc)
NASA Equipment Wishlist so we could have the same tech for the U.S. (Bunch of current tech is shared from Darkaries work).

If you don't want to post on speedrun.com or just want to post anonymous feedback, than you can do so here on this google form.

https:/​/​forms.​gle/​WxqfBsACX9NdCNgf9

I straight up didn't go because I had no way to get to and stay in St Cathy's for as much money as I had available. It goes without saying that the easier a place is to get to, the more people are going to go and so as many problems as being in Canada solves, going back to the US to make it easier for more people to come might just be a hard pill NASA needs.

I'll do some short and sweet bullet points for right now and come back in a few days with a wall of text for my feedback (not joking, either).

Current pros:
1. Atmosphere at the event was fantastic.
2. Event was well handled by the current staff.
3. Tech was immensely easy to deal with.
4. Staff during runs were extremely easy to get along with, and helped make the experience even better.
5. The majority of the people there were extremely friendly.

Current cons:
1. Commune to get there was a pretty big hassle for me.
2. There were some runs that I wish had bigger crowds at the venue than they had.
3. Schedule got shifted due to unforeseen circumstances, and I have trouble adapting to change. I understand that due to the traffic some of the runners got involved in that you had to make a tough choice about making certain runs go before others. More on this in private.

I will undoubtedly think of more as I mull over this.

Personally I really enjoyed the massive room that was a fusion of stream room and casual, but for the next event I think a return to having both a distinct stream room and a casual room would be great.

The event itself was solid and i'm happy to have been part of it.

Hi, I'm Gandair, I am from Arizona in the US, and I ran Diablo 3 and Frostpunk during the marathon. waves

Likes:
1. Canada, I enjoy the country, climate and weather are pleasant in the summer, and I enjoy the favorable currency exchange rate from USD to CAD.
2. High Room Ceiling, the room being taller changed the acoustics and temperature in a way I felt was favorable.
3. Stickers, the NASA sticker I got was neat, little things like that are nice but I understand they can inflate operating costs.
4. Marathon Game Selection, LTTP/SM combo randomizer, JSRF 2p1c, King's Quest i-VII, and SMO Bingo were big highlights of the marathon for me. Mixing in "alternate" games/categories is a refreshing change from the "sameness" which is slowly affecting all speedrun marathons (online and offline) more and more over time. Strong "traditional" runs like Halo 2, DKC 2, DKC 3, Bomberman, FF VII, Streets of Rage, and NieR:Automata also contributed to it's strength. In summary the list was well curated.
5. Marathon PC Data Drive, it's beastly hard drive enabled me to easily install my marathon games in a short time. I want to know what model that drive is.
6. Marathon PC Peripherals, the headset, keyboard, and mouse are of fantastic quality, were responsive, and were comfortable to use.
7. Event Management, when the power went out in half the room I was playing a card game with Naegleria and others. He looked over, saw darkfox investigating the issue, and played another round of the game, after that round he looked over again, saw the issue still wasn't resolved, and politely excused himself to check on what was going on. I enjoy management who don't overly micromanage and seem to trust their staff to do their jobs. It's a sign things are being done well. With NASA having had 4 events now it must be true that things are being done well.

Dislikes:
1. Spontaneous Event Management, there wasn't much traffic on the forum for this event which was different from years prior making it difficult for me to make plans during the event. I feel as if most of the communication was done through twitter and discord. As a suggestion it would be helpful, if maybe a little annoying, to @everyone on discord and tag people on twitter to notify them of spontaneous events. During the event I remained logged into twitter and discord on my phone. Were I not at the venue when the hiking trip was preparing to leave I would have missed out on a good time. Perhaps restrict the privilege of @'ing everyone via discord and twitter to admin accounts if potential abuse is a concern and allow attendees to request an admin post an event notice on their behalf.
2. Hardware Information, this is a niche issue I encountered during the event which could impact PC runners during runs which require precision cursor placement. I did not consider asking about or researching the display I would be playing on prior to my runs. Having display specifications for the PC monitor available before or during the marathon would be helpful. A sticky note or marathon hardware post on the site would suffice. On a personal note this was entirely my failing for not thoroughly investigating display size (physical), resolution, and mouse DPI settings prior to my runs. Knowing the marathon hardware in advance people can set their home systems appropriately for practice.

Other Comments:
1. Room Audio Bleed, people talking and other video game audio from nearby TVs were audible during my run. It's volume was low enough to be tolerable, at times it added to the fun ambience of the event, but other times sound effects would momentarily distract me. Personal preference on this subject may vary from person to person as some may enjoy loud party environments and some may prefer a more closed setting.
2. Schedule Change Notifications, due to understandably sub-optimal weather the Wonderland trip was moved during the event causing a shuffling of the schedule. As a person who's run was not affected by the schedule shuffle my viewing schedule was affected by it. Half my time was spent outside the venue adventuring around town. There were a couple runs I would have preferred to be in the audience for. Coming back to the venue and seeing a run on which I didn't expect to be on that day was a bit disorienting. If large schedule changes could be accompanied by a discord or twitter post that would be helpful.

To respond to Naegleria's specific questions:
What did we do well? A/V production, hosting, game list curation, listening to runners who asked questions or had concerns
What did we not do well? Communication could see improvements in regards to schedule changes and spontaneous group events
What do you want for next NASA? I want to run a perfect dark tournament and commentate it like it's big esports (I have experience with competitive events), a "how to start streaming" panel which could be serious OR a parody, another high ceiling venue, stickers that are one single piece, the return of Nando (who even has that gorilla?), and I'll have a cannoli while you're at it. Thanks.

Summary: Production is on point but social management had some rough spots.

>I want to know what model that drive is.
Here are the specs for my desktop, which we use as the gaming PC:
Not listed is the Zowie FK1 mouse that we were using, which is my backup for the finalmouse I typically use

The drive you are asking about is either the 850 EVO 1TB SSD (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B019H3B3P6/) or the 960 EVO 250GB NVME M.2 SSD (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01LYFKX41/)

I enjoyed my time at the event, even though I was only able to be there for one day. Thanks for having me!

What NASA did well:
- The atmosphere was great. It was nice to be able to talk to other runners about their games in person and see them played.
- The tech was very professional and setup times were quick (as far as I could tell)
- The venue was pretty good

What NASA did not do well:
- Maybe it was just me but I don't seem to recall having access to Wifi at the event. If we were given wifi as a group, I sure didn't see anything posted about it. In the future having internet access that's not data would be wonderful.
- Communication/planning and social media presence in general is not stellar. I'm a student and it's not always easy to plan around work and school, and I'd bet a lot of other people have that same issue. Knowing which specific day my run was going to be held more than two weeks in advance would have helped immensely, especially considering that transit was not very convenient for those of us not driving. I'd agree with Gandair that in general, communication about planning could see improvement.

That said, even with those gripes I did have a great time and I'd love to come back for another run, hopefully with more free days next time!

Overall: event was dope and significantly more fun than last year in just about every way when it was already awesome.

Venue was cool and free passes to the water park were a nice perk. Our room felt like a luxury suite with two queens and bunk beds. We ordered a rollaway, not knowing the room had bunk beds, and ended up not using it. Thankfully they didn't charge us for it like they were supposed to. We asked to be conjoined with another room and they ended up putting our rooms next door to each other which was good enough. We probably would've only booked one room for the 7 of us had we known about the bunk beds.

Event room was kinda cool having it all in one place because I could practice and be in the stream room and watch the runs live at the same time instead of on a projector screen or TV from another room. I did feel like I had to whisper, worrying I'd be picked up by the table mic or bother the runner or something, but I later realized anything short of screaming wasn't going to be an issue. Speaking of the table mic, it was cool to have the whole couch mic'd up without headsets, but not everyone was picked up clearly. I understand that's just because of the conic pickup range of the mic so maybe have two next year or something, idk.

I ran KQC I-VII and tech was super helpful when setting up. I was very nervous, being the first person to ever do this run live, and honestly not sure what to expect, not knowing the things that would be easy to overlook or forget, etc. Setup went well and the run went off without a hiccup, mostly. My one complaint is that I had a commentator via Discord call (he couldn't travel internationally) and he was forced to watch the stream in order to hear what I was saying and therefore heard what I said with a delay. This made dialogue nearly impossible, but I understand why it was this way. With more time we should have been able to fix him not hearing me in real time because to be honest I didn't know that was the case when the run started and I was already panicking because I was almost 15 minutes past start time because I had to install so much on the stream PC. If the run before mine wasn't on the same PC I could've done it before but I also could've done it earlier in the week so that's all on me.

I'm sure there's more to be said, but it's generally all praise which means do it like you did it this year and we're good.
So here's what you asked for:
What did we do well? Basically everything.
What did we not do well? Basically nothing.
What do you want for next NASA? USA venue might be cool, but I have no problem with it staying where it was in Canada this year.

Already looking forward to NASA 2020.

Oh yeah I forgot about the Wi-Fi. It was bad. Not your fault.

This being a first real-life marathon, I think it was a great way to experience something new.

Lets start with the cons:
- The Wi-Fi certainly sucked here. Our hotel room was so far away from the main desk that we could only get coverage in certain parts of the room and none of them were on the beds or anywhere convenient. I had to lay on the floor to at least get coverage. Anywhere in the event was fine, though.
- The network speed for the event was great but I heard someone asking around if someone was downloading anything because the stream was dropping frames, leading me to believe it was not consistently fast.
- Given the event ran 24/7 I saw it rather inconvenient that registration was not handled 24/7 as I got to meet a guy standing outside the doors waiting for registration to open.
- I also found it quite inconvenient that nobody notified me of my schedule change, of my run being transported 2 hours later. I had to scramble and make a new name on Discord just to tell everyone the run would be later because none of the staff let me know and it wasn't until i skimmed over the schedule at the event that I saw the change.
- A lot of the CRTs stopped working. It's not really anyone's fault, I just felt it was a big shame to go and buy some CRTs and have them not work anymore.
- Being the guy on a lot of the nightshift and morningshift runs to watch them, I feel like they could have gotten a better crowd to watch them, that they deserved more people to watch them. I tried my best to stick around and keep the lonely early morning runners company (and fueled them with Timbits) but there is not much that can be done to help this.
- I heard the event is probably going to be in USA next year. It will be difficult to get there due to plane costs if I want to go, but I can imagine it was the same for pretty much everyone else not in Canada. Money is always tight here, so it might make 2020 a potential no-show. This is a really weak con due to the fact that it's purely subjective. I just hope that it gets an equal share of being in USA and Canada.
- The fact that not many people cleaned up for themselves made the tables quite messy.

Now for the pros:
- I really loved meeting people here, and made so many friends. Most people were quite friendly, and I got to make some new friends. It completely blasted my expectations out of the water for what I perceived online to actually talking to them for real. Some people were actually a lot closer to me than I realized, meaning I now have people to visit.
- It was a great positive atmosphere. Everyone did their best to keep the event positive. Extreme shoutouts to RaikouRider because he did an exceptionally good job at that and I'm so proud of him and his runs. Positivity helped keep the energy going and really made the event the mood that it really is.
- It's small enough to be able to get to know people really well, but big enough to be a fun experience.
- Everyone can be who they are, and that's what I really enjoy about a marathon about this, it's designed to show people how moving speedrunning is and how much passion players put into it. Keep it this way, and I will definitely want to attend just for this.
- The staff were understanding and clear with pretty much everything, and also set up everything quite nicely.
- The room was spacious and free to move around in while seating pretty much everyone in the event.
- The selection of games to play as also amazing.
- The selection of speedruns was also really fun, a lot of good laughs and a lot of really amazing things to see, and compelling enough to make me want to try some of those games too. For the event being a literal show-and-tell for speedrunners, it does it's job correctly.
- The support from other members was amazing. I got congratulations for my run after the run was over, and everyone was polite about it. Everyone treats one another with so much respect.
- The ice water cooler was an absolute necessity, gotta stay hydrated. Keep it forever. Keep water-san with us. (Please don't take this literally and draw a cute face on the water cooler)
- The projectors were top-notch and super clear. A lot of the times it was easier to look at the projector than look at the runner's screen, which is what they are there for.

And finally some suggestions:
- We could have some snack bar to snack on because snacks are awesome.
- Maybe at some point we can have a multiplayer block at the end of the marathon for just having good old multiplayer fun just like we were kids on the N64.

Overall I had a fabulous time and I really hope everyone else did too.

The good:
- The one room setup went a lot better than I had originally thought. Big fan.
- Hotel perks were great, lots of food choices close by and things to see and do.
- Shirts were super cool, so were stickers.
- No major tech issues as far as I can remember.
- General event management went on without much problem from my eyes.
- Mafia.

The improvable:
- Wi-fi sucked ass, even in my hotel room which was 17 steps from the front desk (more the hotel's fault than NASA's).
- Communication on various things such as event changes could have been improved.
- As much as I'd rather have NASA in Canada, going back to the USA might be better for a wider demographic. Maybe flip flop it every year, since we've been in Canada 3 times in a row.
- Having something on screen during intermission other than the room cam would have been nice at times, especially in the morning.
- Organizing trips (wonderland) could have been done before the marathon started.
- Some runners were only there for their game and then left, we need to coerce them into staying and doing shit with us.
- We need to get Nando back.

There's was too much uphold at the event tbh

hold

HOLD