Convention Reporter

Many of our reporters will be active program participants at Worldcon. Those of you following the convention from afar won’t be able to attend those program items, but the schedules do give you a good idea of some of the things each reporter will be writing about. Some of them may even tweet from panels. So where reporters have blogged their schedules we’ve provided links to those posts right at the top of each reporter’s page. We hope you find that useful.

Lots of people are currently working very hard on preparations for Worldcon. Few people work harder at this stage than costumers. One of our reporters, Kevin Roche, has been posting work-in-progress reports about his latest costume on his blog. Check out how he is getting on.

Those of you who follow the doings of the World Science Fiction Society may be interested to see the agenda for this year’s Business Meeting. There is an overview here, and the full document is available as a PDF. I have made a few comments about some of the proposed business on my own blog.

I’m an Irish woman, Writers groupie, Gamer & sf fan. I went to my first convention just a few years ago and discovered a world filled with people who are like me. Oh, we disagree about lots of things but we can talk about that for hours.

As one of our editors, Kate will be keeping an eye on the site from home so that our field reporters don’t have to. She’s in Western Europe so she’ll be up a few hours before the convention.

The Anticipation committee have been working hard to secure wi-fi deals at the convention. They have just issued an announcement (click here, scroll to bottom). The headine information is:

• Free wi-fi in the main party hotel (Delta)
• Free wi-fi in the main exhibit hall (including dealers’ room)

Wi-fi from within programming rooms will have to be paid for, but it now appears to be at a level where we are feeling more confident about our live coverage of the Hugo Awards. But for most of you the good news is that you will be able to blog for free from the convention center. If you are planning to do so, please let us know.

Rani Graff is an editor and a publisher of Science Fiction & Fantasy in Tel Aviv, Israel. He is the head of Graff Publishing, a small press founded by him in 2004. Among the authors published in Hebrew by Graff one may find Robert Charles Wilson, Cory Doctorow, Jay Lake, Garth Nix, Scott Westerfeld, Chris Roberson, Carol Berg, Diana Wynne Jones, George Mann, Naomi Novik, Geoff Ryman, Elizabeth Moon, Rick Riordan, Mark Twain and many others.

Before founding Graff Publishing , and while working as a lawyer and a content manager for a Hi Tech company Rani was also active in the Israeli fan community and during that time was the second chairman of the Geffen Awards between 2001-2003. He is also responsible for writing the awards’ first set of rules.

See Rani’s reports here.

Liz Gorinsky is an Associate Editor at Tor Books, where she edits a list that includes acclaimed speculative fiction authors Dave Duncan, A.J. Hartley, Mary Robinette Kowal, George Mann, Cherie Priest, Pamela Sargent, Brian Slattery, and Cat Valente. She also assists editors Ellen Datlow, Jim Frenkel, and Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden and acquires and edits comics for Tor.com.

See Liz’s reports here.

Christopher J Garcia is a writer, film producer, historian and fanzine editor from Sunnyvale, CA. Chris has worked at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA, for the last ten years. His fanzine The Drink Tank has been thrice nominated for the Hugo Award, losing in glorious fashion the first two go-’rounds. He also edits Claims Department, co-edits Science Fiction San Francisco with Jean Martin, Journey Planet with Claire Brialey and James Bacon, and the up-coming Exhibition Hall with Derek McCaw and James Bacon.

See Chris’s reports here.

Fábio Fernandes is a writer living in São Paulo, Brazil. A journalist and translator, he is responsible for the Brazilian translations of several prominent SF novels including Neuromancer, Snow Crash, and A Clockwork Orange. His short stories have been published in Brazil, Portugal, Romania, ths UK and the US. Fernandes runs his own blog, the Post-Weird Thoughts and is also a co-editor of acclaimed book review blog Fantasy Book Critic. He’s currently writing his first novel.

As one of our editors, Fábio will be keeping an eye on the site from home so that our field reporters don’t have to. He’ll also be helping cover the convention in Portuguese.

You won’t see much in the way of tweets between conventions, but during a con Twitter will be a good way of checking when our editors make blog posts. For individual reporters you should follow their personal Twitter feeds. You may also want to check out our Worldcon Twitter Tracker. During the convention it will be looking for tweets that use Worldcon-related hashtags.

And yes, we are @ConReporter.