BetterThanMinecon

BetterThanMinecon (BTM) is a group of semi-annual conventions originally created by Asie but since then hosted by unascribed. The original convention was created July 3rd and 4th, 2015, based on a Twitter joke. The roughly 26 hours of preparation resulted in a modpack, a server containing a convention center, a number of booths representing some of the features of a variety of mods, a talk room in which several panels were hosted, an IRC channel, and a Mumble server. Its success led to several other BetterThanMinecon conventions.

The BetterThanMinecon modpacks include developmental, highly unstable and/or special-purpose versions of mods featured at the convention, and as such its contents are not recommended for redistribution or use in other modpacks. One mod used in BetterThanMinecon 2015 was compiled mere minutes before the launch of the server. During BTM preparations, the server is usually restarted very often in order to fix bugs in featured mods as they are discovered.

The name was inspired by a combination of several modders being dissatisfied with the actual Minecon in past years, and a pun on the mod Better Than Wolves. Its unofficial name, "Bug Testing Marathon," comes from the large number of bugs that are identified during its preparation phase. These bugs range from minor (monsters in a demonstration booth trying to target players outside their range; MumbleLink not linking correctly on certain Linux clients) to "spectacular" (a player wearing Forestry Spectacles or an Apiarist's Hat causing all players nearby to re-render a 5x5 chunk area every tick; OpenGL display lists leaking memory outside of the JVM's memory allocation, causing Minecraft to ignore -Xmx memory settings and continue to eat RAM until a client's computer crashed).

The conventions

 * 1) BetterThanMinecon 2015. It occurred between July 4th and July 5th, 2015, and was the original convention.
 * 2) BetterThanMinecon 2016. It occurred between January 2nd and January 3rd, 2016.
 * 3) BTM16 2.0. It occurred between July 29th and July 31st, 2016. This convention was conducted by unascribed instead of Asie.
 * 4) PicoBTM 16.3. It occurred between September 24th and September 25th, 2016. It contained no panels or booths; instead, it was a place to watch the Twitch livestream of Minecon 2016 using OpenComputers.
 * 5) RetroBTM. It occurred in late in late February, 2017. It used the "retro" 1.4.7 version of Minecraft, but had few participants.
 * 6) BTM Moon. It is planned to occur between November 17th and November 19th, 2017, although the exact hours are not set in stone.

Interactions with the Official Feed The Beast Wiki
The first two BetterThanMinecons contained a Q/A panel hosted by, a staff member of the Official FTB Wiki. The third BetterThanMinecon contained a panel hosted by, a Chinese translator of the wiki, discussing the Chinese Minecraft community and translation of modded content. It also contained a booth hosted by, another editor, to advertise the wiki.