Convention Reporter

We’ve decided to add an extra convention to our coverage schedule – SMOFcon 27, taking place in Austin next weekend. One reason for doing is this that SMOFcon is the only place other than Worldcon that Worldcon committees are subjected to public grilling. We’ll tell you more about The Fannish Inquisition later. But we are also doing this because we want to test using Google Wave to cover a convention. Unfortunately you’ll need a Wave account yourself to follow our wave, but there do seem to be a lot of them about these days. We will also be running the usual Twitter Tracker, for which we recommend the hashtag #SMOFcon27. We’ll also experiment with Twitter lists.

If you are going to be attending SMOFcon and would like to help with the coverage, or would like to be added to our wave, please email us.

Today we have reports from the following:

• Local journalist Gary Singh in metroactive
• Keffy Kehrli
• Matthew Sturges
• Nick Mamatas

The flood of World Fantasy Con reports appears to have subsided, although I’m sure there will be more (I haven’t finished mine yet), so I’m now starting to think about where this site goes next.

Had Twitter Lists been available a mite earlier I would have set one up for everyone at the convention. That may well have caught more tweets than just following the hashtag, though some may not have been germane.

I’m also pleased to see this post about using Google Wave for convention coverage. It isn’t viable for us yet, because none of the conventions we cover have enough clout to get our members Wave accounts. However, by the time of the Melbourne Worldcon Google may well have opened up Wave to everyone, and in that case we could do something very interesting.

Actually, however, I’d be much happier if A4 did it themselves. The main point of this site is to show conventions what they can do, not to do it for them.

Comments?

No, not the Martians, the World Fantasy con reports.

Nancy Hightower wasn’t getting any sleep.

Blake Charlton detected an air of gloom over the industry.

Damien G. Walter found it “the best convention I have ever attended.”

Alex Telander has a report on the Writing Human Characters panel.

Mark R. Kelly also has several panel reports.

David Levine was impressed by the level of tweetage.

Today’s batch of World Fantasy reports includes the following:

John Klima seems to have enjoyed himself despite travel disasters.

Catska Ench is unhappy about the art show (it was, by far, the weakest World Fantasy art show I have ever seen).

Jed Hartman found the convention good but odd.

Pixiu Press has photos here and a report on the American Fantastic Tales launch panel here.

Gail Garriger has reports here, here and here, and has photos of the Best Con Party Food Ever here.

Lucienne Diver has more photos of the Halloween costumes.

Devi Pillai shares what she learned at the convention.

Scott Edelman has a bunch of posts of which we particularly like this one about how Twitter enhanced his enjoyment of the convention.

Brenda Cooper has decided that WFC is her favorite convention.

Matt Kressel has video of himself accepting a Howie on behalf of Ekaterina Sedia.

Here are some more World Fantasy related posts.

Molly Tanzer interviews Garth Nix (in the convention Press Office because we got so busy there were two interviews happening at once).

John Anealio performs the Last Drink Bird Head song.

Zoran Živković has some photographs.

And Karen Wester Newton lists her WFC Top Ten.

Barely had I posted that previous set of links than I found a whole pile more.

Matt Brunsteiner talked to local authors.

Alan DeNiro buys books and weighs in on the costume controversy.

Charlie Jane Anders investigated Urban Fantasy.

Jenny Rae Rappaport enjoyed the night life.

And Yokimo the Goat met lots of famous people.

Rather later than planned, due to Kevin and I going down with a case of Con Crud, here are some links to reports of World Fantasy that are appearing around the blogosphere.

Alex Telander of BookBanter seems to have had an exhausting day.

Chris Roberson appears to have had a great time.

Lisa Goldstein reveals that she is responsible for Jeff VanderMeer.

The Guardian tries hard to find some controversy but mainly gives good publicity to the very wonderful Margo Lanagan.

DongWon Song needs a new liver.

Analee Newitz wrote a poem and moderated a panel.

John Picacio was inspired by Stephen King.

Paul Genesse met lots of people (and seriously over-estimates the number of people in attendance).

Neil Clarke was energized and exhausted.

Janice Hardy learned a lot.

It has been (and indeed continues to be) a wonderful Halloween at World Fantasy Con. Despite the baleful glowering of the Blue Meanies, costumes abound. Some of then are utterly splendid. Kevin has lots of photos that he will upload soon (hopefully tomorrow). The late night zombie panel even had some of the panelists in costume.

There were costume parties too. Both the Weird Tales party and Gigi’s birthday party were billed as costume-friendly. But while Gigi scored very highly thanks to a large pile of specially imported Tim Tams, everyone else was blown away by Gail Carriger’s launch party for her novel, Soulless. Not only were the party staff all in superb steampunk costumes, but the food was far and away the best I have ever seen at a convention party.

Goodness only knows what the fallout from this will be. We were warned before the convention that if we as a committee did anything to encourage costume wearing then the Bay Area would never be allowed to have a World Fantasy Convention ever again. What I expect to happen is that an edict will be handed down banning any future operating committee from having their convention include Oct 31st in their dates.