Bristolcon 2015 after action report
Another Bristolcon has come and gone. I’ve finally had a full night’s sleep so I am now de-frazzled and can’t wait for the next one.
I think everything went okay, apart from 2 committee members getting stuck in gridlock on the Friday night (traffic accidents) so that the goodie bags, prog books and panellist timetables were unavailable. Oh and our paypal card reader refused to speak to the hotel wifi.
My reg desk cock ups were a couple of people not on the list (they had their paypal receipts with them, so no problem) and my butter fingers having put another couple down as "John, Smith" rather than "Smith, John".
The only complaints I had from punters on the day were (a) could the free coffee include de-caff and (b) why does the bar take 20 minutes to serve people a panini? Speculation was made that the kitchen possibly only has one panini machine, yet everyone assumes that paninis will be fast and orders them - a perfect storm of food backlog.
I was on one panel (Bad Ass With A Baby) and moderated another (Reboots). That latter one had a running theme of folk saying “Well at least no-one has rebooted [insert name of TV show or film here] and folk shouting out “They have - it’ll be screening in [insert date here]”.
Attended the What Makes A Good Dystopia panel, Secret Life of Editors panel, Libraries Past Present & Future panel, Prof Ian Stewart’s time travel talk and Jaine Fenn’s GOH speech. Having more committee members certainly makes for being able to get to more programme.
Despite being told that the reg desk didn’t open until 08.45, people were turning up wanting their badges at 08.10. Who knew that there were so many early birds in SF&F fandom? :-)
I think everything went okay, apart from 2 committee members getting stuck in gridlock on the Friday night (traffic accidents) so that the goodie bags, prog books and panellist timetables were unavailable. Oh and our paypal card reader refused to speak to the hotel wifi.
My reg desk cock ups were a couple of people not on the list (they had their paypal receipts with them, so no problem) and my butter fingers having put another couple down as "John, Smith" rather than "Smith, John".
The only complaints I had from punters on the day were (a) could the free coffee include de-caff and (b) why does the bar take 20 minutes to serve people a panini? Speculation was made that the kitchen possibly only has one panini machine, yet everyone assumes that paninis will be fast and orders them - a perfect storm of food backlog.
I was on one panel (Bad Ass With A Baby) and moderated another (Reboots). That latter one had a running theme of folk saying “Well at least no-one has rebooted [insert name of TV show or film here] and folk shouting out “They have - it’ll be screening in [insert date here]”.
Attended the What Makes A Good Dystopia panel, Secret Life of Editors panel, Libraries Past Present & Future panel, Prof Ian Stewart’s time travel talk and Jaine Fenn’s GOH speech. Having more committee members certainly makes for being able to get to more programme.
Despite being told that the reg desk didn’t open until 08.45, people were turning up wanting their badges at 08.10. Who knew that there were so many early birds in SF&F fandom? :-)