I finally got away from my computer at around 1:00pm and headed off to the convention. I was able to bag a couple of good interviews about future Worldcons – one with Farah Mendlesohn about programming in Montreal, and one with Stephen Boucher about facilities in Melbourne. I need to clean the audio up before I can podcast them, but hopefully they will go live next week. I’m also hoping to talk to Dave McCarty about the innovative ideas the Chicago in 2012 bid has about supporting memberships.
I did a quick tour through the Art Show and found a couple of things worth mentioning. I think that the Raku Ray Guns have been mentioned online before, but now I have seem them in real life and I can confirm that they are every bit as awesome as they look in photos. Elsewhere in the show I was impressed by Myles Pinkney, particularly this picture, which I may just buy a print of.
I was pleased to see that the exhibits area has filled up a bit. Obviously some folks were late arriving. However, the con still looks lost in such a big building.
The “SF Outside of the English-Speaking World” panel went very well, and we could have easily filled another hour with all the stuff there was to talk about. Many more people are now in awe of Finnish fandom.
I was going to be at the Chesley Awards ceremony this evening, except that ASFA has had a few problems and there will not be any awards given out until later in the year. This leaves me at a loose end for the evening. I’m not quite sure what I shall do, but I suspect that the words “Chris Roberson” and “bar” will feature somewhere along the way.
I’m also thinking that I might be able to do live blogging from the Hugos. Stay tuned for more news.
Please do give our best regards to Myles- a fine artist, a great guy and allegedly one heck of a karaokist!
Yay Miles! I’m glad he bowed to peer pressure and went to Denvention. I am so sorry we are not there to take him up on his offer of a tour of his studio.
Cheryl,
Glad you’re having a fun time 🙂 Thanks so much for your contributions to the “SF outside the English-speaking world” panel, it helped make it a success.
Looking forward to the Hugos on Saturday night!
Best,
Alvaro
http://myaineko.blogspot.com/
Alvaro:
Thanks for dropping by. I was pleased to be able to help out today.
Daniel & Kelly:
I did go to the Art Show reception this evening. I didn’t see Myles, though I don’t know what he looks like, but I did drag John Picacio over to look at the exhibit. John picked out this picture as particularly interesting, and as usual his taste is spot on.
Yay for coverage of Anticipation! I’ll be tuning can tell you that…you know Rene’s in town too of course, I’ve been trying to get him on podcasts, though he’s shackled to the sign shop half the time last I checked…
I wish I had been there to see the “SF Outside of the English-Speaking World” panel since thats the sort fo thing I hunger to see at Readercon. If you blog about it at all I’d be interested…my taste of Finnish sf (already encountered some fantasy before I set foot in the country thanks to Ms Sinisalo) definitely piqued my interest. Oh well, maybe year after this next one (since I may be temporarily gaffiating from concom for ’09 coz of Anticipation responsibilities, unless Louise gets her hooks in me). Ever thought about going to Readercon? Probably already have gone and I just didn’t know, I’m a relative newcomer.
Also a live blog of the Hugos sounds kickass!
Thanks for covering Denvention! Those of us who can’t be there hunger for news…I’ve been on IM and email with some folks there but everyones too overworked to say much coherent…
I’m not sure how the rumor got around that there wasn’t going to be a Chesley presentation at Denvention 3. For internal logistical reasons, ASFA was not able to hold the traditional Awards ceremony at Denvention, but it was always , ALWAYS planned to have a Chesley presentation, if nothing else at least of the nominees. Doubly irritating was the fact that the Denvention’s assigned technical staff wandered off before the Chesley presentation, and claiming that he was told the presentation was cancelled. . .
Val:
Covering Worldcon is something that I do. I’m just pleased that someone actually reads my work.
Jannie:
I’m not sure what rumor you are talking about. I for one wasn’t aware that the Chesley winners would not be announced at Worldcon until a couple of hours before the presentation. At that point it became much less important for me to be there, so I went and did other things instead. But I suspect that it would have been fairly easy for people to confuse “no Chesley results” with “no Chesley presentation”.
Yes, you’re right. I just had too many people come up and tell me that they would have gone to see the presentation, except that they had heard it was cancelled . . . Glad to see you are enjoying the con!