Paper weight

Luggage on arrival in Luxembourg: 11 kilos. Luggage on departure from Luxembourg: 39 kilos, plus a back-breaking carry on. I think that qualifies as a successful event.

Being a co-organiser is a frustrating task. Like a diabetic beekeeper, you simply don’t get the chance to sample what you’ve spent so long preparing. Apologies to those speakers, marketplaces and panels I didn’t make it to. I was a little busy, but the feedback was so overwhelming positive about the whole thing, and the atmosphere so grief-free and upbeat, we’re thinking about creating our own religion. Or maybe we already did?

One question I was asked was “Why is everybody here so happy? Are they pretending the recession doesn’t exist?” The best answer I can think of is that the independent magazine world is one in which creative struggle is a daily event, in fat years as well as thin. You work with what you have, you adapt to available resources, but whatever happens, you create regardless. The recession hasn’t made a single one of the hundreds and hundreds of attendees begin to doubt why they want to make magazines. It just changed some of the parameters.

The feedback is still leaking out of the netosphere. Highlights for me have to include Kasino A4’s Greyscale Bar, and editor Jonathan Lander’s baby son sporting a “Kasino A6″ mini tshirt; Sang Bleu doing live tattooing at the event, including of Maxime, the magazine’s creative director; having a cup of tea round Karen’s place and discovering Barry Norman’s pickled onions; peeking behind the curtain in Volume’s Dr Strangelove-esque War Room; sailing on a pirate ship with BabyBabyBaby; finally spending some decent time with La Más Bella, for a long time one of my favourite magazine creations; telling Liebling how much I admire their mag even though I don’t speak German, and being told “We put the pictures in there just for you” (Bless!); seeing how Nuke filled their incredible gallery space with wonders, including a washing machine built out of pictures of a washing machine stapled together; finally meeting the minds – and beards – behind Good, and loving how they exploded characters from their pages into the room (and back again); seeing cinema patrons discover IdN’s animated wonders (the world-premiere sneak preview of IdN TV).

Other stand-out moments: Kati and Guido’s restraint from doing something nasty to me as I blithely strolled in to the Making a Magazine room at 5pm on Saturday and cheerily asked “How’s it going?” (and then seeing the results slowly start to appear on the wall, amazed at how good it all looked and read – those two are insanely talented and make a great team, unending thanks to both. Here’s the cover); interviewing Jeremy without Jeremy being there, and seeing his reaction as he worked on the resultant piece; delivering a Pecha Kucha in the style of an overexcited kids TV presenter (I’ll be writing up a version of my talk for the blog soon); constant amazement at Mike’s organisation, brilliant (and entertaining) team, and his calm pleasure throughout; Hans and the magazine store – well, duh; the unofficial addition to the programme, in Kasino’s Greyscale Bar (“Five golden rules to surviving Colophon2009″); seeing the book We Make Magazines LNK for the first time (it’s really rather purrty); the exhibits, the parties, the talks I did see and the faces of people as they came out buzzing about the talks I didn’t; discovering new magazines, new people, new adventures, new collaborations. Celebrations and new beginnings. Passion. Creativity.

We learnt a few things that we’ll tweak for next time, some ideas that we’ll implement, some improvements, some changes. Overall, however, I think we can declare Colophon2009 a success.

I’ll be posting the list of publications I picked up and some of the lessons I learnt over the next few weeks and months. There’s a big pile of it to get through. Big thanks also to everyone who gave me free copies of their magazines – you sure know how to keep an addict giddy. The magazine we made will be available online and in print over the coming months – more to come on that.

What fun. But don’t take my word for it:

Highlights from Stack
Sang Bleu in the build up and then in action
Turning an event into some spectacles
Little White Truths
Moving Wallpaper*
Drinking in greyscale
Postr magazine and the aftermath of their Gonzo party stint
Volume and the situation room
A fan speaks
Pictures of old Luxembourg

And the videos: Caution: Contains Luxembourgish and The watchful eye of the Athenaeum.

Not to mention the numerous Flickr galleries, and of course Jeremy’s comprehensive coverage. If I’ve missed your blog / information then let me know – we’re hungrily gathering all viewpoints we can.

One of our main speakers, amazed at the whole thing, has called it “The Sundance of the magazine world”. I think we’ll use that on the flyers for 2011. Coming?