The program for Finncon 2012 has been published. You can check it out at their website. Here’s a quick rundown of what I’m doing.
Thursday 19th – The press conference in Helsinki
Friday 20th – The academic conference in Tampere
Saturday 21st
- 13:00 Panel on this year’s Hugo Award nominees
- 14:00 Translation Awards Ceremony
- 16:00 Ebook panel
- 17:00 Masquerade judging
Sunday 22nd
- 11:00 Liz Williams and I discuss various systems of magic
There are, of course, many other panels I want to go to, including Liz and Lois’s GoH events, Martha’s presentation on the work of N.K. Jemisin, and the Detectives in SF panel, but how much of them I can make time for is open to question.
There will, of course, be sauna.
Thanks for the mention. 🙂 I’m working hard on getting organised for that.
What is this Academic Conference?
Two things happen prior to Finncon. On the Friday there are various author-related panels involving the GoHs, and a meeting of the Finnish SF&F Writers Association. Most of that is in the public program. On Thursday and Friday there is a small academic conference at which students present papers and have them commented on gently-ish by Ipa, Markku, Merja and the other students. The usual format is for the Thursday papers to be in Finnish and Swedish, while the Friday papers are in English and the poor students get a GoH and me commenting on them too.
Press conference?? Is this something they do every year, or is there some special big announcement?
It happens every year. The Helsingin Sanomat normally sends someone along to interview any writers whose books are translated into Finnish. In a good year we get other papers too. It is held in Helsinki because the reporters for the national papers generally won’t travel. When Finncon is out of the city we do separate events for local papers.
That presentation of papers in English sounds very interesting. It is pretty standard practice up here. My tourism students all had to defend their final works in English, so I know how it goes.