Nullus Anxietas 3 - The Australian Discworld Convention

[molokov_au]

Stealing an idea from eruvadhril on her journal, I figured I'd summarise the fantastic weekend in Sydney at The Australian Discworld Convention in bullet-point form.

• Thursday night just catching up and chatting with Sue, Pat, Carmela, Martin, and more. Nice and relaxing, and a great start to the weekend
• Sleeping in a bit on Friday and missing the 9am "help us set up" time that I'd promised Steve I'd be at. Into costume & finally up to the convention centre at around 11 - and turns out there were plenty of people to help so I was off the hook ;p
• Lots of compliments on my John Not-A-Vampire-At-All Smith costume, even if a lot of people couldn't place the character. Can't blame 'em, he is rather minor and obscure.
• Daniel's presentation for Snowgum Films - a remastered HD version of "Run, Rincewind, Run", and the launching of a Kickstarter Campaign for Troll Bridge. The video shown at the convention should be uploaded soon - but if you'd like to see this fan film finally completed - throw in a few dollars and spread the word to all other Discworld fans.
• Getting the chance to do a short play test of the new Ankh-Morpork Board Game. A lot of the artwork isn't complete yet, but it looks to be quite fun.
• Wossnames! Always a hoot, where we fill in the wossname with an appropriate - or inappropriate word. It's a good chance for me to do some improvisation in character, and people thought I was funny which doesn't happen that much in real life. They laughed at my jokes! :)
• Terry's Shorts was immediately afterwards, so I stayed in costume but dropped character. Unfortunately missed Chris reading Hollywood Chickens to duck into the Assassins' Guild meeting, but managed to see the rest - Kerry reading "Where's My Cow?", Nick reading "A Collegiate Casting Out of Devilish Devices", and I squeezed in "Death and What Comes Next". When we had finished those, there was still half an hour left - so I put a vote to the audience - should I finish up with a short poem, or a longer (25 min) short story? They voted for the longer short story so I got my chance to read "Final Reward" which was the one I had wanted to do from Day 1 of organising this session. Hope those who stayed for it liked it!
• Opening Ceremony - Beth & Tania translating Ozstryne to the Mother Tongue, and seating Terry upon the golden throne - yep, an outback dunny, full of spider webs and graffiti.
• Magic & Stand-up Comedy done Discworld style by Matt & Mick. Great work, guys
• Terry's interview with Steve - some interesting stuff
• Tasting some apple brandy & apple schnapps all the way from Tasmania. Strong stuff!
• Skype interview with Bernard Pearson, fascinating as always!
• Rob entertaining us with a brief Q&A before Bedtime Stories - does he have a novel of his own in him? Maybe...
• I skipped out of Bedtime Stories early due to being so tired... Rob read the first 50 or so pages of 'Snuff', which I'd heard an earlier draft of at the UK Con, so I wasn't worried about missing too much

And on to Saturday!

• Being recruited to inhume Reacher Gilt during Vetinari's Trial - only to be asked at the last minute to turn my attentions to a /different/ Reacher Gilt to avoid interrupting the trial too much. When I finally did the inhumation, I think it surprised quite a few people on stage - obviously not all of them were let in on the secret. Death by fairy sticker it is! (The fairy said "I Did It!")
• UU Quiz! Maybe not as many people as I liked (we were competing with a play of Wyrd Sisters) but the 8 teams who did compete seemed to enjoy themselves and thought it was hard but not super-impossible. Good to know :) Congrats to the Quirm College for Young Ladies (Co-Ed) who won by at least 12 points
• Finally remembered to eat something after the Quiz (yep, a 3pm lunch) and attempted to relax a bit leading up to watching the Great Debate
• An entertaining Great Debate on whether a God is for Life, not just for Hogswatch. Best bit were the audience heckles, especially from a 17-year old Nanny Ogg sitting next to me!
• Hearing about Toni's research PhD thesis into Fandom, based partly on the surveys she did four years ago at NA1. Are Terry Pratchett fans intellectual snobs? I say yes, only because a) we're smarter than fans in other, more mainstream fandoms (in order to get "the joke"), and b) about 50 people attended a lecture on fandom based on research done for a PhD thesis. :)
• Gala Dinner - WOW! Fantastic brilliant awesome spectacular work done by Gabby - Table decorations and centrepieces were all unique, as were the party favours given to everyone. Lovely food (and way too much of it), Great entertainment from Belly Dancer Michelle, Folk Singer Martin, Conjurer Matt, and a Band with Rocks In (well, with Folk in, anyway). Best of all, the committee kindly sat me on the same table as Terry and Rob! Ok, yeah, I didn't get to talk to them very much, but it was nice just being there :)
• Yeah, once again, I kept being called the male "Anoia", despite the fact that Cephut, God of Cutlery is mentioned in "Pyramids", way before Anoia even existed! But then I did get to pose with 2 or 3 Anoias, and used the cheesy line "O Dear Lady Anoia, may I rattle in your drawers?"
• The Deification of Blind Io's replacement - Sofalina, the Goddess of Laziness. Kym seemed to have a ball, and even got to sit on Terry's knee for a photo
• ... and then we headed down to the bar for late night drinks. Got to meet a few new people, chat with everyone, scare a few of the Penrith locals who thought all these costumed people were weirdos[1] but we all had a laugh. Was one of the last to retire at 3am, which was a "whoops" move on my part. So much for getting decent sleep...

Sunday!

• Up early, without a visit from Bilious, and so I managed to get a chance to watch the Foot-the-ball game (which ended up as a 3-a-side. Who schedules a game for 9am on Sunday?)
• Had a squiz at some of the Auction items, lovely stuff, but I'd already made my mind up not to bid
• Martin (folk-singer) Pearson performed some funny and touching songs for us, including a few from his Tolkein parody, a recitation of Rindercella (a Tairy Fale), and concluding of course with the Hedgehog Song!
• The abridged Guards! Guards! Radio play was quite clever, but having to cut it down to 1 hour meant so much got missed! Oh well. Radio plays are a great idea :)
• During the Auction, I sat in Ops and tried to relax - it was great with people rushing in occasionally telling us of crazy results. Rob's Bedtime Stories pjs went for $1250. Rhianna's brilliant painting went for $900. And the auction overall raised $15000 for three charities. Ho-Lee-Carp!
• I really wanted to see Nanny Ogg's Cookbook - The Play - but Suzie insisted I'd be at the NA4 discussion, and it's probably a good thing too! Lots of people showed up to that, and after some input from Steve, we all agreed that the big Conventions every two years should be Sydney or Melbourne, but that it could be possible to have a mini event in the years between in other locations like Adelaide, Brisbane, Gold Coast, or even Perth! Having been pushed by Ilona and others to consider the idea of an Adelaide event, I have grown to like the idea of something smaller than a full-scale Con. We're going to start by getting a social group to meet regularly, and hopefully spawn an event committee out of that. NO PROMISES yet, but there's plenty of good inspiration particles floating around.
• And finally, the Closing Ceremony. The regular long list of thankyous, and it was brilliant of the committee to give out "Thankyou" mugs to the volunteers! Now I have three NA3 coffee mugs, but only one of them thanks me for volunteering!
• And then a bit of packing up, and some food, and then it's all over bar the partying. Or partying at the bar
• The Terrace bar was still quite noisy, despite being a Sunday night, so we migrated to the quieter Cocktail bar, and made it much noiser with talk, games of Werewolf, a few folk songs and poetry recitals. Coming in half way in hearing eruvadhril recite Tim Minchin's "Storm", I then got nominated to recite a poem... well I know "Jabberwocky" off by heart, so that one got a performance :)
• Later, the remaining few of us moved outside, and started singing Rocky Horror, Monty Python, Avenue Q, Les Mis, and various other and sundries! By 2am it was getting freezing, so that was bedtime for the remaining stragglers

And then on Monday, a small group of us got a train to the city, and then made our way to the airport at the appropriate time to ensure we made our flights home. Exhausted, happy, full of new ideas, best Con ever. No offence to the guys who ran NA1 & NA2, you set the bar very high, but the NA3 guys exceeded it - maybe they thought they needed to! NA4 will do fantastically, I'm sure.

Photos are at the Nullus Anxietas 2011 Flickr Group, so enjoy!

ADDENDUM:

• Forgot to mention that the Thieves' Guild hired the Assassins' Guild to mass-inhume the Alchemists' Guild - which we did during the signing queue on Sunday morning. Unfortunately not all Alchemists were there - so there were still a few stragglers who could resurrect their remaining members. Still, a little bit of fun and a lot of animal stickers were used as the means of death

[1] And you don't think wearing a shirt from a sports team you only watch and don't play in weird?