Yesterday I had just one panel, at 16:00. It seemed to go well. The morning was spent catching up on sleep and the afternoon on bagging interviews with people for a Worldcon special show on Ujima next week.

In the evening I attended the Dead Dog and the Old Pharts (former Worldcon Chairs) parties. I confess to having had a few tears hearing people who have chaired good conventions praising Jukka for his achievement. These days most Worldcons take place in cities, and even venues, that have held one before. To run a successful Worldcon in a country that has never had one before and where English is not the first language is an amazing achievement. I am so proud of Finnish fandom.

The final stats for Helsinki were as follows:

• 10516 total memberships of all types
• 7119 “warm bodies” on site
• over 2000 attendees were at their first Worldcon

The term “warm bodies” represents a formula for calculating memberships that takes into account facts like five people on one-day passes not being the same as one person on a full membership. If you need an explanation, ask Kevin.

In terms of total memberships, Helsinki is third behind Spokane (2015) with 11,742 and London (2014) with 10,718. Both of those conventions were boosted by high numbers of supporting members wanting to vote in the Hugos to counteract the Puppies. In terms of warm bodies it is second behind Los Angeles (1984) with 8365. That was boosted by being the first venue ever to show all three original Star Wars movies back to back. Helsinki was not boosted by anything other than a brilliant local fandom, and had they not had to start turning people away due to lack of space they might well have beaten LA’s record.