A warm welcome to Rene Sears on our Dragon*Con team. Also welcome back John Scalzi (though please note that he’s Twitter only, he’s still on vacation from Whatever).
The hastag for Dragon*Con appears to be #dragoncon and we have a tracker up for that now.
Wi-fi in the convention center at Melbourne was excellent yesterday so we anticipate no problems bringing you the Australian Awards ceremony tonight. News on the Hugo Awards coverage will follow once we have confirmed the timings.
Posted by Cheryl @ 5:21 pm
We are delighted to announce several more Australian reporters.
First of all the ladies of Galactic Suburbia have offered their personal blogs and Twitter feeds as follows:
In addition we have Gary Kemble. Gary is a horror writer, and also a reporter on social media for ABC News (that’s the Australian Broadcasting Company). We are delighted to see someone from a mainstream news outlet covering the convention. Gary has a Twitter list that follows lots of Australians who are planning to attend Worldcon.
Posted by Staff @ 9:52 pm
We are continuing to refine our use of hashtags for Worldcon. We have dropped #hugo as it was being swamped by tweets about Venezuelan politics and men’s clothing. We have dropped #A4 because it was being swamped by tweets about Audi cars. We have added #aussiecon and #hugoaward as we have seen people using them and they appear to be unique to us.
The preferred hastags are: #aus4, #hugos and #Worldcon.
Posted by Staff @ 9:32 pm
We have noticed a few issues around the use of hashtags for this year’s Worldcon.
As usual, #Hugo is attracting lots of tweets about Venezuelan politics and mens’ clothing. #Hugos works much better.
In addition people are complaining that #Aussiecon4 is too long, and are looking for an alternative. #A4 appears to be attracting a lot of unrelated tweets from Europe. The current suggestion appears to be to use #Aus4. We’ll keep watching and adjust our Twitter trackers accordingly.
Posted by Staff @ 11:09 pm
Fun Funds are wonderful institutions whereby kind fans club together to send one of their number on a trip to a convention far away. The lucky recipients of this generosity have to promise to entertain their benefactors by writing about their adventures. You can learn more about Fan Funds here.
Ireland’s James Shields is the 2010 GUFF Delegate. Fans from Europe are paying for him to visit New Zealand and Australia for Au Contraire and Aussiecon 4. James is making full use of the Internet to keep people back home informed about his travels. See what James is talking about here.
Posted by Staff @ 11:04 pm
The good news from Wellington is that we have succeeded in tethering a couple of laptops to iPhones so Errol Cavit and I will be hosting live coverage of the Sir Julius Vogel Awards tonight. Coverage should begin here at around 8:00pm Wellington time. There is apparently a cocktail reception at 7:00pm. We nobly promise to still be sober at 8:00.
Posted by Cheryl @ 7:30 pm
Au Contraire is now in full swing. I have been blogging briefly about it here, here, here and here. The rest of the team has arrived, as has a delightfully large international contingent of visitors on their way to Melbourne.
Internet access is patchy, but if we can solve the problem of why, despite an excellent signal, some people can’t connect to the hotel wi-fi, then we should be fine for the Sir Julius Vogel Awards on Sunday.
Meanwhile most of us have a small travel-related problem to tackle. Jay Lake explains succinctly here.
Posted by Cheryl @ 6:03 am
We are delighted to add the following to our team.
Posted by Staff @ 6:50 pm
One of the great things about an Australian Worldcon is that you get to visit Australia. Many of our reporters are taking vacations before or after the convention. Paul Cornell has been tweeting from Cairns in Queensland where he has been to swim on the Barrier Reef. Meanwhile Rani Graff has these fine photos of his visit to the Northern Territory.
Posted by Cheryl @ 9:06 am
A number of people have been kind enough to offer their services as reporters. The team currently looks like this:
Update: Mike Willmoth added
Posted by Staff @ 1:39 pm
