Over the weekend April 18/19 Kevin and I attended a planning meeting for the 2009 World Science Fiction Convention, Anticipation, to be held in the Palais des congrès in Montréal. While I was there I took some video of the site, which I hope will help people get some idea of what to expect when they get to Montréal in August. With any luck I may even help sell a few more memberships (which you can buy here, ou ici en Français).

One word of warning before the actual video. Neither Kevin nor I is on the facilities team for Montréal. We don’t know everything about the location, and we may have got some things wrong. And given the economic climate it is possible that some of the businesses we videoed will be out of business by the time the convention happens. The object of this exercise is to get people talking about the site, not to be a 100% reliable guide (though I hope that any errors we have made will be pointed out and corrected).

My apologies for the wobbly nature of the video, and the rushed editing. It is hard to hold a small camera still when you are walking, and I still don’t have a really good video editing set-up. The audio may be a bit faint on a laptop, but it is fine on mine with headphones.

The first video is of the areas of the Palais that we will actually use. You may find it helpful to look at the floor plans of the Palais on the Anticipation web site before viewing the video. We start at the point on the ground floor marked 301 which is an entrance off the Place Jean-Paul-Riopelle. We then go up to the area marked 200B, which is where registration will be. I got a bit confused as to which floor was which. Kevin offers this helpful guide:

Floor 1: public area
Floor 2: Registration, Fixed Functions (Dealers/Art Show/Exhibits)
Floor 3: Mezzanine overlooking Exhibit Floor, Translation booths, tiny rooms, access by stairs only
Floor 4: VIP Rooms, not in use by us
Floor 5: Programming Rooms, Events

During the video you’ll see shots of a ground-level car park. I’m afraid I forgot to ask about access to it. Hopefully someone from the Anticipation committee has an answer to that. Also floor 5 is not as public as I thought when I made the video. There are security guards on the escalators.

Also since I shot the video I learned that the pre-Hugo party may be on Floor 7.

Our guides for the tour were Bruce Farr and John Harrold.