Conventions

CoNZealand – Day 3

~ Cheryl

Yesterday morning I was up early for a translations panel because I’d promised the moderator, Kalin from Bulgaria, that I’d be available. I went straight back to bed afterwards.

Much of the rest of the day was taken up with fannish drama, and trans drama. I’m not sure which is worse.

The big event of the day was the Site Selection results announcement. To the suprise of no one who knows anything about Worldcon, Chicago beat Jeddah by 517 votes to 33. Yasser Bahjatt has been taking the whole thing remarkably well, all things considered. He’s also announced that he’s rolling the bid forward to 2026. Currently that’s unopposed, but I don’t expect it to be for long. Yasser seems to think that a large part of the value of the bid is to draw attention to Arabic SF&F in translation, which is surely a good thing.

In other bid news Nice has formally postponed their bid. While their statement in the Question Time session this morning talked only about COVID-19, I understand that they have also lost their venue because the newly elected Mayor of Nice has vowed to demolish it and build a new convention centre.

But, as one bid vanishes, new ones take their place. A group of Australian fans has launched a bid for Brisbane in 2025 (opposing Seattle). I’m really sad for the Seattle folks, because I seem to end up opposing their bids all the time, but I can travel to Brisbane and I can’t go to Seattle so I know who I am supporting.

Recordings of panels are now starting to turn up on the CoNZealand website. I watched the Masquerade over breakfast (it is quite short) and the Modern Criticism panel over lunch. Those were both on the big screen TV (giant Gary Wolfe with giant wine glass). However, I have discovered a very easy way to watch panels. If you have an iPad, download the app for The Fantasy Network. Log in with your CoNZealand email address, and everything is there.

Well, not quite everything, because panels are slow appearing. I gather that the automatic system for saving and uploading panel recordings doesn’t work, and CoNZealand staff are having to do it manually, which is slow and labour-intensive. Much sympathy to them.

CoNZealand – Day 2

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

First up, we had a very successful party. Huge thanks to all who attended, and to Kristen and her team running the CoNZealand parties.

A lot of yesterday was taken up with preparing for the party, but I did get some time to see programme. The Representing the Other panel was very good, and led to some very lively discussion on Discord afterwards. I also watched the Conventions in the Age of COVID-19 panel, and the The Future is Female panel.

The big event last night was the Retro Hugo and Sir Julius Vogel Awards panel. Unfortunately there were major bandwidth issues with the stream and I bailed early on so as to reduce the load. Kevin stuck with it so as to be able to tweet from the official Hugo Awards feed.

This year’s Retro Hugo Award trophy is gorgeous. You can find out more about it here.

The results of the 1945 Retros can be found here. I was very pleased with the recognition for Margaret Brundage and Leigh Brackett. There has been anger expressed about the awards going to Campbell and Lovecraft, but results like this are inevitable with the Retros because most people don’t take an interest in them. According to the official statistics, only 120 people participated at the Nominations stage, and only 521 in the final ballot. If Worldcons can’t drum up more interest in the Retros then they should stop doing them (they are optional, after all).

Getting to the Wizard’s Tower Party

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

Now that I have had a chance to attend a party at CoNZealand, I know a lot more about how they will work. If you are planning to attend, here are some pointers.

The easiest way to find the party is through Grenadine. If you select the Schedule tab and then Thursday you will find us right at the top of the list. The title is “Parties: 30 July, party band #2”. It is at the top of the list because it starts at 7:00am on Thursday in New Zealand, even though it is still Wednesday for most of us.

If you click on that programme item you will find a Zoom link button. Go through the usual process of starting a Zoom event.

That will take you to a main room where the friendly CoNZealand party staff will direct you to the party you want to join. There are three other parties happening at the same time, so you need to get to the right one.

Zoom’s features for this sort of thing are not great, but CoNZealand has come up with a clever trick to help get people into party rooms quickly. Each party is assigned a number. You need to edit your name in Zoom to put that number in front of your name. We are party #1 (obviously). So if your name is “Kevin Standlee”, you would edit that to “1 Kevin Standlee”. Once you have done that, the party staff can press a magic button and you will be teleported into the Wizard’s Tower party room. You can edit your name back to normal once you have arrived.

As a reminder, the rough schedule (in UK times) is as follows:

  • 20:15 – Tate Hallaway (Lyda Morehouse) reads and does Q&A
  • 21:15 – Juliet McKenna reads and does Q&A, plus we reveal the cover of The Green Man’s Silence
  • 22:15 – I read from a forthcoming collection by Croatian author, Aleksandar Žiljak, which we wll be launching at the Eurocon in Rijeka in October

See you all soon.

One more thing. If you still can’t find us, Info Desk in Discord may be able to help, but in an emergency write something anywhere in Discord including @Parties and one of the party still should get pinged and come to help.

CoNZealand Fringe – Day 1

~ Cheryl

Fringe is underway as well. We don’t quite have 24-hour programming, but there is now something for people in Europe to watch. And you can too. Claire Rousseau has created a YouTube playlist of the panels we have had thus far. You can find it here.

I only had time to watch the Modern Fanzines panel, which I thought was excellent. Here it is.

By the way, links for watching future panels are not all available yet. They will go up in good time.

CoNZealand – Day 1

~ Cheryl

The first ever virtual Worldcon is now fully underway and fans all around the world are getting to grips with the technology. It is a massive learning curve for all involved, but it seems to be working quite well, and certainly much better than many people feared.

The big issue is that there simply isn’t a suitable software package to do the whole thing. It needs Grenadine to run the programme, it needs Zoom to run the actual meetings, it needs Discord for the social side, and a few other things as well. But we are learning. Hopefully I will be able to report back in more detail when the dust has settled.

In the meantime, we have had opening ceremonies, which Kelly and Norm did a fine job of hosting. That included the Hugo base reveals. I’m not sure if they are public yet, but they are gorgeous. New Zealand has done the Worldcon community proud there.

I have also watched a few panels, and attended a party. So far so good.

Welcome to CoNZealand Fringe

~ Cheryl

As promised, here’s details of the other thing I am doing for Worldcon. This year it has a Fringe. This is not organised by CoNZealand itself. Rather there is a bunch of European fans who offered to put on something in our daytime.

I got involved with this because I am very keen on developing online conventions so that we can make Worldcon truly international. I totally understand why CoNZealand isn’t doing 24-hour programming, but if people can help them do that then why not? Also Claire Rousseau, who is one of the organisers, has a lot of experience of streaming and has introduced us to some software I wish I had known about before I did the One25 fundraiser.

I gather than there has been some fulminating on File 770 about how WSFS and CoNZealand are going to sue us into oblivion for violating their trademarks. Kevin and I have had a good laugh about this. And given that the Fringe team have been in regular contact with CoNZealand’s programming team, I don’t expect Norm & Kelly to be upset either.

Anyway, the panel I am definitely doing is on sensitivity reading. That’s on Sunday at 3-4am NZST (next day); 4-5pm BST; 11am-12pm EDT; 8-9am PDT, with Mike Carey, iori Kusano, Yvonne Lin, Corinne Duyvis. I think that will be great.

I am also currently down for a panel on awards, but I will probably be making way for a PoC panelist because we are trying hard to have really diverse programming.

The full list of panels is here. Please note that panel line-ups may change.

Coronavirus – Day #134

~ Cheryl

I am now definitely into Worldcon mode. I might be still in the UK, but most of what I am doing is either online with New Zealand or doing prep of some sort.

That does incude the new Salon Futura, which I hope to get online tomorrow or Wednesday. It will probably ruffle a few feathers.

Combine that with the fact that there’s a silence protest on Twitter today and tomorrow, as a result of which I haven’t been checking it much, and I have no idea what is going on in the outside world. I can’t even comment on the cricket as today’s play was washed out.

But hey, Worldcon! Have at it.

Worldcon Schedule

~ Cheryl

Here we are again. Well, here we are virtually. I am signed into the CoNZealand web presence and Discord sever. Other people are arriving from all over the world, so I am doing the British thing of complaining about our weather.

But what will I be up to at Worldcon? Well, I am not on any panels. Huge thanks to Kalin from Bulgaria for heroic attempts to get me into a translations panel, but I entirely understand that with a virtual con people can’t easily be added to a panel at the last minute.

However, I am running a party. Believe it or not Wizard’s Tower Press is 10 years old. Also we have stuff to promote. The party will be in Band #2 on Thursday, which is 7:00-10:00 in the morning on Thursday in New Zealand. That means it is 20:00-23:00 on Wednesday in the UK. For my own sanity I’m going to use UK times from now on. Apologies to people elsewhere.

There will be entertainment. Here’s the approximate schedule:

  • 20:15 – Tate Hallaway (Lyda Morehouse) will read and answer questions about her work, in particular Unjust Cause.
  • 21:15 – We will reveal the cover for The Green Man’s Silence. Juliet McKenna will read and answer questions.
  • 22:15 – I will introduce a new short story collection by Croatian writer, Aleksandar Žiljak, which we will be publishing in October with a launch at Eurocon in Virual Rijeka

There should be plenty of time for general chat as well.

Pre-orders for The Green Man’s Silence should go live sometime this week, after the cover reveal.

There will be more Worldcon news soon, but lots of stuff is still in the works so I can’t post yet.

Coronavirus – Day #131

~ Cheryl

Doing your accounts is boring. Thankfully I had plenty of distractions in the form of email and social media stuff needing addressing. Worldcon stuff is taking shape nicely.

Talking of Worldcon, there has been a lot of discussion of late regarding the unsuitability of the sites for current bids. Lots of people no longer want to travel to the USA, and the likes of Saudi Arabia and China are not warm and friendly alternatives. It is all moot to me. I couldn’t even go to New Zealand. But this is a serious problem, and not one that can be solved by insisting that Worldcon only be held in nice countries. Anyone with a Muslim-sounding name can tell you how silly that is. There has to be another solution, though I suspect that people won’t like it.

Also there is cricket. No rain in Manchester today. I can’t see that lasting for 5 days, but you never know.

Doom Patrol continues to be excellent.

Coronavirus – Day #128

~ Cheryl

We got a first peek at the Worldcon schedule today. Most of it is on New Zealand time, which is entirely understandble, but a bit of a pain if you are on the opposite side of the planet. I’m hoping I can get to catch up with the likes of Glenda Larke and Catherine McMullen anyway.

What I can say is that I will be providing some entertainment in the evening UK time on the 30th. Wizard’s Tower is holding a party. There will be things happening. I’ll let you know more when I have a firm schedule.

Also I have finished my Hugo voting, which is a good job to have out of the way. Tomorrow is the last day, if you haven’t done yours yet.

I did my weekly shop at Tesco today, and also went into town as I had a couple of things to do at the Post Office. There are a few more people wearing masks these days, but still a minority and social distancing has pretty much disappeared, especially in coffee shops. This is a fairly low risk area of the country in which to live, but if someone infectious were to visit then the virus would rip through the town pretty quickly.

Lots of politics news in the UK today. Yesterday evening the House of Commons was voting on a trade bill. They voting for selling the NHS off to foreign corportations, for allowing foreign companies to import food that doesn’t meet UK environmental standards, and against the devolved assemblies, or even themselves, having any say in approving trade agreements. So much for “taking back control”.

Also the much hyped Russia Report was finally published. This was supposedly the in depth investigation into Russian influence on UK politics. Except it wasn’t. Basically what it said was that our glorious intelligence services are well aware that the Russians are targeting the UK, but they decided not to check on what they were doing because that might upset our government.

Which of course it would. The entire point of the current government is to sell off bits of the UK to the highest bidder and earn ministers enough money so that they can go and live elsewhere when the economy collapses.

Coronavirus – Day #120

~ Cheryl

It is Monday. Work happened. I’m very much settled in to a routine now. As the phrase goes, this is the new normal. Personally I’m OK with that.

Today I had the last of my possible in-person events for 2020 cancelled. It was something that had been due to happen in late March, and got postponed to October. Now it is planned for April next year. Goodness only knows if it will happen then.

If you missed Virtual Finncon, the panel that Mike Carey and I did will be available in due course, but July is holiday season in Finland and they are mostly out of Lockdown so I don’t expect anything to happen for a few weeks.

Welcome to Virtual Finncon

~ Cheryl

If international travel were possible this year, I would be in Finland by now. Finncon should have taken place in Tampere this year. Instead it will take place online. The full programme is here.

Several of the programme items are in English, including the Guest of Honour events with Mike Carey, Diane Duane and Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay.

Of particular interest (well, to me anyway) is the Mike Carey event which involves Mike and I chatting about The Book of Koli and how we worked together on it. That will be at 16:00 Finnish time on Saturday, which translates to 14:00 UK time.

Links to YouTube will be provided from the programme page on the Finncon website in due course. Anyone is welcome to watch.

Of course you won’t get the full Finncon experience, because virtual sauna is not really possible, but hopefully you’ll get something of the feeling of the event.

Coronavirus – Day #71

~ Cheryl

Today has been very busy.

I’ve made a start on an academic paper for an online conference that’s happening in 3 weeks time.

I’ve participated on what WE believe is the UK’s first — possibly the world’s first — socially distanced protest march. Thanks to everyone who shared the #PayProtectProtest hashtag on social media.

I watched the Formula E from Virtual Berlin (while doing the ironing).

And I have spent much of the day at Wiscon, which continues to be interesting. Today we saw some of the ways in which online conventions don’t work quite as well as face-to-face ones; or at least we haven’t developed the right techniques yet. Overall, however, I’m still very happy. You can expect a more detailed report in the new Salon Futura (which will be out next week).

On social media the Great British Public has morphed into the Very Angry British Public. Not that it is likley to come to anything, because the government has a majority of 80 and utter contempt for the electorate, but it is good to see that there is something that will get people riled up, and that it is not owning a donkey farm.

Coronavirus – Day #64

~ Cheryl

It has been another busy day at the fundraising coalface. So far so good, I think. I hope people are enjoying it.

There was also WiFi SciFi #3, for which I was a panelist. We had a great time. Thanks to Anne, Kevlin and all of the team.

As with yesterday, it has also been a busy day on social media. We’ve had the brilliant Guy Gavriel Kay’s #CocktailHour, where we all dress up and post selfies with a drink of our choice. And we’ve had #StayAtHomeDisco run by my lovely pal Laura Rawlings from BBC Radio Bristol. Conviently they were on at the same time so I was able to make one outfit do for both.

Out in the “real” world today there have been “anti-lockdown” protests in major British cities. No automatic weapons here, but doubtless the same far-right funders behind it all. Today was also the first day in around 3 weeks that the 7-day rolling average of deaths in the UK ticked significantly upwards. Cummings and his pals will doubtless be pleased with a job well done.

The Queer Britain #QBLockdownHunt Challenge

~ Cheryl

A quick break from Virtual Italy to note that there’s another charity campaign going on today. Queer Britain is a wonderful project that aims to create an actual bricks & mortar exhibition of LGBT+ life in the UK. Today my friend Dan Vo is running an awareness campaign on Twitter and is asking people to find t-shirts and fliers that relate to queer history and post about them. He’s also interviewing a whole bunch of fabulous people. I have rather a lot of material, so I decided to channel my inner Dan and make a video. This covers a lot of my work with OutStories Bristol, how I got involved in doing LGBT History Month Events (sorry Sue, you are stuck with me now), and a little bit about the tragedy of the UK’s lost trans history archives. The latter is an excellent example of why Queer Britain is so badly needed. There’s also a little bit of science fiction in there.

WiFi SciFi 3 is Coming

~ Cheryl

Yes, we are going to do it again. And I do mean “we”, because Anne has foolishly invited me to be on the panel this time. Said panel will also include, though not all at once, Gareth L Powell, Adrian Walker, Tim Lebbon, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Anne Corlett, Patrick Edwards, Jonathan Pinnock, Corry L Lee, Premee Mohamed, Kevlin Henney and Derek Kunsken. For more details and to reserve a place, click here.

It will be doubly weird for me because I will be in the middle of the One25 Funraiser (please pledge) and will be virtually in California that day. Thankfully it the convention starts at 8:00am California time so I’ll have plenty of day left.

While we are on the subject of virtual conventions, I’m pleased to say that I have signed up for Virtual Wiscon. I used to go every year when I was able to spend time in the USA, but I haven’t been able to go of late and it will be nice to catch up with people. I’m guessing that it is probably too late to get on programme, but you never know.

Coronavirus – Day #36

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

So, birthday under Lockdown turns out to be much the same as any other birthday, but with a lot more (virtual) company.

I began the day by doing a trans history talk for a local LGBT+ group (adults this time), which was fun.

I have a fair amount of work of various sorts to do, but I decided to goof off for the day and do some baking. I don’t have a usable oven, so for Christmas I bought myself one of these (cheap in a Clark’s Village outlet store). I’ve been so busy that I haven’t had a chance to use it before today.

I decided to make scones (for cream tea) as they are fairly easy. They turned out suprisingly well for a first attempt. They were a little over-done, but machines like this are very precise and now I know to reduce the heat setting next time.

I had sport! Formula E has launched a sim series with most of the actual drivers taking part, plus a side race for other folks. It was actually the side race that interested me most as it had a combination of amateurs, profesional esports players, and young drivers hoping to break in to the big time. Charlie Martin has a seat in the Techeetah team. Sadly she didn’t do very well, but everyone is learning right now so I hope she’ll perform better in later races.

And of course there was WiFi SciFi 2. Only one panel this time, and it devolved into discussion of the writing business which is less of interest to me, but probably more what the punters want.

Next up: dinner, wine, cheese, TV or movie.

World, what world?

WiFi SciFi 2 is Coming

~ Cheryl


Well, that was quick. Then again, WiFi SciFi is a very small convention, so doing multiple iterations is easy. Event 2 is due up this coming weekend. Hopefully I will see some of you there. Click here for instructions on how to reserve a place.

Fair warning: it is my birthday. I may have decided to dress up.