YtseCon II

The second YtseCon, short for Ytse Convention, was held on Thursday, December 28, 1995, at the Holiday Inn in Rockville Centre, NY. Like its predecessor, the YtseCon II was a chance for people from around the world who share at least two common interests -- e-mail and the music of Dream Theater -- to get together and finally put faces and voices to friends about whom we knew nothing more than names and e-mail addresses.

These friendships had been built up electronically, both on the Ytse Jam -- the internet mailing list devoted to discussion about Dream Theater -- and on IRC. (For information about our IRC channel, e-mail me.) These friendships became so strong that people offered rides to other YtseJammers travelling in the same direction. People in the New York area (where the concerts were held) offered floor and couch space to otherwise strangers who had familiar sounding names. Over the four days we were together, we carried on as if we were once best friends who haven't seen each other in a while. The Ytse Jam became... a family.

I sincerely doubt that anyone has ever had an experience similar to this on such a large scale. About seventy people came to the YtseCon, from Florida, from the state of Washington, from Arizona, from Boston, and even from Rockville Centre. :-) And a handful more were at shows, but not the Con. We recognized each other by our Ytse Jam t-shirts. We drank $2 bottled water together. We bought backstage passes together. We joked about other people we had never met, but knew rather well through the Jam. Most of us (at the Birch Hill Nite Club that Friday night, anyway) got to meet one of our favorite bands backstage. But, most of all, we got to hang out with friends we never knew we had.

We have entered the second half of the 1990s, and there's no turning back.

You can all enjoy the cool things I collected during the YtseWeekend of December, 1995.

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