The Gathering 2004: The World's Largest Computer Party

The Vikingship

The Gathering is the venue for what its organizers tout as the world's largest computer party. Indeed, with a crew of about 200 people, and about 5200 attendees, this is a huge party. If anything, the event is not anything like a weekend LAN-party held by a local church group or some other such community organization.

We first must emphasize that The Gathering (TG) is not a LAN-party, but a computer-party. If you by mistake refer to TG as a LAN-party, those who like to be precise in their choice of terms might flame you. The difference is that at a LAN-party, the main attraction is the network. At a computer-party, the focus is more on brining like-minded people together to share their affection for computers, meet new people and to compete (at least this is the author's opinion).

The Gathering is a huge event

The Gathering is an annual event held from Wednesday to Sunday each Easter at The Vikingship in the small city of Hamar, Norway. This arena was made for the 1994 Olympic Games, for the speed skating competitions. This is probably the largest single hall you will find in Norway, and it' the perfect place for such a huge event.

The 5,200 available tickets were sold out in 12 hours after they went on sale months before the event was to be held. If the online ticket system hadn't malfunctioned, tickets might have sold out in less than one hour. More than 3,000 people placed themselves on the waiting list once the tickets were sold out.