Worldcon final

[nwhyte]

We resume on Sunday afternoon, when I returned from lunch to find myself witnessing the official photograph of the official signing of the official contract for the new edition of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, by John Clute, Dave Langford and Peter Nicholls. I was pleased to learn later from Dave Langford that he is fairly optimistic it can

Comments

Re: ps

[bohemiancoast]

The current set up of Worldcon Tech militates against this. Tech and IT were separate -- which meant that, for example, for items where we had to link up a playstation to both a data projector and a PA, there was a protracted period of crap getting it working. We longed for Martin Hoare's fire-and-forget PA system that we use at plokta.con; these were more complex and more finickety.

We did use dataprojector in several of our items, ditto audio of various types. We had quite a few problems with tech in fact. Next time we would take our own data projector, which would hit the specification we'd asked for and which we'd understand the vagaries of, together with all the extension cables, four gang sockets, and audio and IT cables we might want. I think I'd prefer the tech to be treated as if it were furniture or stationery -- given to us at the beginning of the con, and then picked up at the end, with tech in the middle being a 'do it yourself and ring us if you get stuck' affair. Certainly the standard of IT support was variable.

Overall, Worldcon has too many talking heads panels compared to a UK con. So much so, in fact, that the talking heads panel is seen as the default programme item, and participants assume that's what they're doing even when all discussions and the programme book guide say otherwise.

Re: ps

[cherylmorgan]

It is also worth bearing in mind that in the SECC programming rooms all of the Tech was built in. We had to pay for it (whether we wanted it or not) and we were obliged to use it. I'm sure both Tech and IT would have loved to bring more of them own stuff.

As to the organizational issue, it is pretty much impossible. Kevin and Ian did a very good job of co-managing Tech so that Events and Programming didn't fight over them they way they did in Boston. But IT touches all aspects of the convention and pretty much has to be a central service.

Re: ps

[bohemiancoast]

actually, my issues weren't in SECC rooms -- they were in Moat House rooms. And had I remembered that Argyll 1 and 3 were the only programme rooms of any size that didn't have inbuilt tech, I might have argued harder for a 'box of tech in the back of the fan lounge' solution. Oh, well, never mind, nothing ran more than 10 minutes late I don't think.

Re: ps

[cherylmorgan]

Ian would probably have been very happy with that. But whether he could have got the budget out of Colin is another matter.

Re: ps

[major_clanger]

This was my experience: on Thursday, I asked three times over the two hours preceeding a talk where the requisite PC for the presentation was, and in the end Prog Ops and I agreed to relocate their spare computer just in time to let the item go ahead.

Yet another thing I'll be paranoid about planning properly for Concussion.

MC