Worldcon

Oct 06, 2010 23:27

It's been about a month since Aussiecon 4, but I didn't get around to writing about it earlier.

We stayed at the Crowne Plaza for a couple of nights and then at the Hilton, which did a rather nice breakfast. (Free wifi, spring rolls and drinks in the afternoons in the executive lounge was neat too.) The con didn't really seem to end, as such, as we caught up with friends who stayed on afterwards including darklion, who inhabited my couch for the next week.

Overall, A4 was fun, of course, but without the level of immersion that a Worldcon can have. And, of course, it would have been much better to have held it in warmer weather.


The initial impression, I would think for most of us, was great. Clare did a great job making registration fast and efficient. mortonhall's programme was pretty good, with the majority of disparaging comments concerning the number of under-attended Kaffeeklatsches hosted by unknowns. Programme ops (aka smofbabe) seemed to be trying to make programming look bad by reprinting the whole programme every day, even though almost nothing had changed. (But then programme ops also snatched all the whiteboards, etc, for themselves and were generally pissing off most of the committee, as far as I can tell.)

The guests were good. I particularly enjoyed seeing Shaun Tan's short film The Lost Thing and his discussion of its path to the big screen. Paul Cornell's Just a Minute was another highlight. Actually, the wait for that one was memorable too: Numbers waiting outside the locked Plenary 1 grew to well over 100. By about 5-past-when-it-should-have-started, the head of Facilities turned up and herded us all down to Plenary 3, a particularly strange action, given that one of Kim Stanley Robinson's items was taking place there at the time. Inevitably, they herded us all back to Plenary 1, once the incredibly hard task of opening the door had been accomplished.

There were plenty of other fun items. Seeing jocko55 and the_dags on a panel about fan clubs was just like old times.

The venue was great in some ways. Big (maybe too big), comfortable, easy to get around. It was a big letdown in other ways, such as the huge delays in simply opening rooms or catering. When about to leave the art show opening, almost an hour after it started, we heard there was supposed to be food and drink. A little later, some MCEC staff brought out some bowls of chips and peanuts and plastic bottles of juice! Pathetic.

I'm not often in the city, so it was interesting to try out some of Crown Casino's plethora of restaurants, although the hard part is finding them in that labyrinth. The ones we tried were pretty decent -- way better than the food court, for not much greater cost. (Actually, possibly cheaper, given our use of Entertainment Book.)

Sadly, A4 party organisation was a debacle. Initially, official parties were supposed to be in the tiny, inadequate hotel rooms on the top floor of the Crowne Plaza. (Same stupid idea as 1999, and it didn't work then either.) Luckily, the hotel pulled the plug on that plan at the last minute, forcing the bid parties and such to use real function space at the hotel, which was much better anyhow. The real downside of this mess was that many evening functions were scattered across other venues in the area, from the big Voyager and Brotherhood Without Banners parties being held at Crown Casino to small parties in various hotels, while some folks just hung out in the Hilton bar. The fragmentation across so many venues at night just made the con seem even smaller.

The end was rather a fizzer. There was not, unlike most worldcons, a dead dog party. Well, not officially, but lots of people crashed the volunteers party anyhow. The Montreal worldcon had alcohol to donate to the dead dog (if there had been one) or the volunteers party (if it had gone on past the time with MCEC staff running the bar), so it just had to be given away to those who happened to be nearby at the time.
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