I was at NASA 2019 from wed to really early Saturday and was at NASA 2018 the whole week. Also I did not proofread this oops. First I want to say that the marathon location was amazing but full disclosure my gf and I rented a car. I understand that others had more difficulty due to it's distance from YYZ in Toronto. Within walking distance there were two bar/restaurants open until 2am, a 24 maccas, BK and Tim Horton's nearby plus that pizza place. There were a few more places within walking distance too. Food availability was nice. As a craft beer nerd and bartender I loved that just a short drive from the venue there was an LCBO and a small downtown strip with even more food options, including two nice to-go places one for burritos and one for pitas. There were two craft breweries one of which also had food and in the opposite direction from the venue as that downtown was the lake where there was another craft brewery. Quite happy with the food, drink, and booze options near the venue. BroBuzz makes several great points about about the community surrounding NASA. I enjoy having the leniency to be an adult in regards to how I speak and act which is what drew me to NASA in the first place. I'm not afraid to talk when I'm there. Chat did get a bit outlandish at times. I've been watching the VODs for runs I missed and they got pretty bad with the anti-gdq commentary and sometimes the pride month comments took a weird turn. For the most part I felt it worked out but I also feel as if the chat moderators could stand to timeout-slap people a bit. Emphasis on the time-out not bans. Meme duration timeouts would be nice to see like banning a user for the duration of a run, banned for a day, banned until you went the fuck to sleep and woke up again (6-10hrs) and stuff like that if they're being a shit. Permabans are garbage imo. Banned until next NASA or banned for current marathon duration could be like the worst unless they were being really malicious or something. That's just my thoughts on the subject. The marathon ending when it did sucked and it directly contributed to my decision to leave on Saturday. Flight availability and price on Sunday was kinda terrible for me but admittedly I did budget poorly and recently get fired from my job. My other option for leaving would have had to have been Monday (cheaper than sun flights) which meant another day of food, hotel, and car rental which didn't balance out even with the cheaper monday flight. Then there was the question of what do I do in the post marathon time as the crowd was thinning. Felt like I would be forcing myself to kill time potentially. I'm sure I'd have just hung out and had an ok but it seemed not the greatest use of my money. Plus people who had to work on Monday would be stuck with having to leave on Sunday in any case and the best flights are always early flights. Timing felt awkward there. Schedule delays oof. I'm a big fan of goose and was excited to be able to there for Speedlore. Since it's a speedrun marathon I expected things to get a bit behind. Yes setup blocks act as a bit of a buffer for that sometimes but still it happens. It got more behind than I expected. Goose's Speedlore and Enasper's MS3 runs (also Quo's kirby 64 which was before I arrived) were runs I really wanted to see but I almost missed Metal Slug because of how late it went. I left to make my flight right after it ended, ~3am end time and my flight was at 6. Some no-hard-feelings run kills may be a solution or getting better estimates for runners. I like to imagine we're all adult enough to handle having a run cut short, cancelled, or moved for the sake of marathon integrity. Show must go on and what not. Marketing for the event sucks. When I had a run in it in 2018 (Diablo 3 any%) I had to explain to everyone I told about it what NASA's marathon was. It's understandable when I talk to those outside speedrunning communities but even within speedrun communities I would encounter streamers who didn't know about it. We as people who had runs, attended, or otherwise were involved could stand to all pitch in and talk about it more. Hype up the fun stuff we did and so on. People think the event is cool when they find out about it in my experience. Word of mouth seems to count for a lot when the speedrun community is split up across as many streams and discords as it is. I'm extremely happy with attendee behavior at NASA. This time like the time before it was peaceful, there was good banter, memery, and a lot of fun memories generated from it. Everything mafia-game related is fun if I'm playing or just watching. People were polite. What social awkwardness that was present was not the bad kind and everyone seemed to work around eachother's quirks nicely. No one from what I've seen so far in VODs or in person seemed to excessively talk over the runner during their game. People who did make comments from the audience seemed to be quite respectful about when and how they went about it if they did so. Staff was wonderful and easy to talk to. Having other events such as speedlore, tech panel, how to make a marathon panel, mafia (at all, even if it was during a run), and the dragster tournament were really nice additions. There is potential too much of that would ruin the novelty but one of those alternate things in a day's schedule I feel would fit nicely as a change of pace. It also serves as a break for those purists only into runs since then they know they can afk then. It's something I really liked seeing added to the marathon but I do have a concern about how it could potentially take it over and turn it into more of a convention than a speedrunning marathon with a few addons. The venue itself was nice but I disliked not being able to have alcohol in the conference rooms. When I asked MASH (everyone else was at Wonderland when I arrived and Aries setting up a run so MASH checked me in) if there were any notable rules changes from last year to this year and he mentioned the alcohol change I had a bit of a concern. One of the things I like about NASA is that people tend to congregate socially in the event rooms. I thought maybe this time people would all be hidden away in hotel rooms clique'd up and leaving the conference rooms empty. That turned out to not be the case as I still saw plenty of people around doing things. I did miss the novelty of having a beer or cocktail while hanging out though. I'm told this was a venue policy so I understand there was no control over that which is fine by me. Heck drinks or no doesn't impact my enjoyment of the event. Thinking about it while I was there a "drink responsibly" rule could stand to go a long way though in the event there are venues in the future which are alcohol friendly. I remain thankful for how it was treated at NASA 2018 where we were trusted to be able to drink and not fuck everything up. Personally I really appreciated. That went ok, mostly. Things were great here even without alcohol openly present. Other non-booze venue comments. In the social room the high ceiling was really nice. Good airflow all the time and it never felt stuffy even when a bunch of people were present playing mafia. Heat management was also better for that reason. With the room being the size it was mafia could get loud and the volume of the game didn't overpower other conversations. Having the colored lights in the stream room really added to it and adjusting the brightness of the lights was nice to see as well. The big table in the back of the stream room was a good addition to the setup. Tech is something I want to touch on because watching the VODs back on my computer post-marathon there were many runs where the volume was too low. Sound quality was good and the sound balance was good but it was overall very quiet throughout the marathon. I feel a bit bad about it but I did enjoy watching Dark Aries dive for the volume controls during speedlore because of all the different youtube video volumes. That was unexpected and I sort of am kicking myself for not thinking to warn Aries about it or mention that possibilty to goose prior to the show. I'd seen goose's shows before and knew that was a thing that could happen but didn't think to bring it up to anyone. Stream audio is the most difficult thing to deal with though and other than volume I felt that audio quality was good and consistent throughout the marathon. Adding speakers to the stream room was a nice change too. Lastly I'd like to suggest an on-site event calender or other notices for social things and also for them to be more firmly planned prior to people arriving at the marathon. The two times I've been to NASA it's been part speedrunning social stuff and part vacation for me. I did some touristy stuff with my gf and there's always specific runs I want to see or as in 2018 a run I was doing that affected how we planned our schedule for the week. Wonderland seemed like a great thing to do but each time I either didn't know about it in advance (2019, but I wasn't checking the forum often) or had already made plans (2018). If the side events were known not necessarily what exact time but at least the day they were to be happening, even if tentatively, before the marathon starts it would be helpful overall imo. A whiteboard or a printout on site and including the mention of side events in the main marathon schedule post would be really cool to see. I want to put emphasis on including it in the main marathon post. Sometimes people are lazy that's all they check. If you list side events right next to the schedule people looking at the schedule for runs for any reason will also see what else is going on at the same time as the runs. This means people don't need two different pages open side by side or to tab back and forth between. Also including it beside the marathon run schedule means that people not at NASA who view the schedule see that there are side events going on which helps advertise that there are other things to do at the marathon and perhaps inspire people to attend the following year. NASA events have been awesome both times I've attended. Looking forward to being there next year hopefully with a better budget and time to practice runs to submit.