#norwescon 40

[norwescon]

NWC40 - Friday - Panels (142) by Norwescon Via Flickr: Comics and Kids’ Real Lives: Every day children in this country face horrible realities alone, including starvation, sexual and physical abuse, and bullying. They come to terms with their gender identities and sexual orientations, or the fact that they have to hide them. So why do we try to sanitize the media we let them consume, and how can we instead use comics to help them explore these topics? (Photo by Thom Walls for Norwescon)

[solarbird]

nwcMUSIC Saturday features the return of THE BIG BIG SHOW, the show so big they had to BIG it twice. See everybody - I hope - tomorrow!

[ragesharkbritain]

merle highchurch here to bring the word of pan at #norwescon40

[authorbettyadams]

Off to Norwescon 40! Whee!

[mahtlinnie]

Just hanging around poolside at NorWesCon 40 this year

[rolandscapes]

Safe Passage  © Mark Roland 2017

This painting will be part of my exhibit at NorWesCon 40, April 13-16 in SeaTac (Seattle, WA.)

http://www.norwescon.org

[bolthy]

I jotted some notes about my experiences from @norwescon. 

http://www.bolthy.com/2017/04/18/norwescon-40-come-and-gone/

[gamethyme]

Conventions

I keep cycling back to thinking about (and writing about) conventions. This weekend, I'm at NorWesCon 40, and we had a conversation with the front desk clerk that brought a couple of things into stark focus for me, and I feel the need to share these things with you. Notably: Growth. Conventions - by their very nature - want to succeed. And the most visible measure of success is their growth. Unfortunately, growth is not always a good thing. Remember a while back when GenCon left the Lake Geneva area and went to Indianapolis?  It's because the convention had outgrown Lake Geneva. There simply was not enough room to host everyone who wanted to attend. All of the hotels in town were full, all of the campgrounds and RV parks around town were full. There were long lines at restaurants and grocery stores and ... I wasn't there at the time. This is second-hand.  Either way, it was not a good scene. Conventions outgrowing hotels is nothing surprising. Hotels outgrowing regions, on the other hand ... So they moved to Indianapolis. A larger city with more hotels and a reasonably large convention center.  That appears to have been a good move, but GenCon has outgrown the convention center, too, and is now starting to expand into the stadium. Because it keeps growing. They also tried to split things up by adding GenCon SoCal. But that wound up not succeeding, because vendors didn't feel like paying for two GenCon events per year, one of which involved a great deal more travel for many of them. This meant that GenCon SoCal was treated as a lesser convention by the vendors, which means that gamers also treated it as second-class, and so on. But it did slightly relieve a bit of the pressure on Indy for the first year or two. PAX managed to expand without the same issue. There's PAX, PAX East, PAX South, PAX Australia ... and now PAX Unplugged, too. Which is a smart move, IMHO. Much as the various PAX conventions love having their board game contingent there, it's not an easy con for analog gaming folk, as video games are loud and flashy and showy. Which makes demos especially difficult. NorWesCon has outgrown its home. It's at the Doubletree Hotel that is right across from the airport. There is plenty of very good food within easy walking distance, but the passing periods between panels are nightmarishly packed. Getting from one end of one particular hallway to the other is ... not good. It's just a solid crush of people.  There can be a ten or fifteen minute wait for an elevator with space, too. When there are convention events going on that are in the penthouse lounge, that can be a problem. "It's true," said the clerk who was checking us in. "We're not big enough for this convention. But where else are they going to go?  Downtown Seattle isn't far, but it's triple the price, which triples the cost to attend. And that drops attendance back to the point where ... why did they move, anyway?"  There are other hotels nearby with convention rooms, and theoretically the convention could expand into one of them - but that still increases the price and adds the need to run shuttles between the various hotels. And any price increase reduces attendance numbers. Running the same weekend as NorWesCon is Sakuracon. Sakuracon is in downtown Seattle. Its pricing is about the same as NorWesCon's.  Sakuracon used to be held in the Seattle Center, but outgrew it and is now in the convention center.  When Sakuracon was just starting out, they worked out a reciprocal agreement with NorWesCon, so the two conventions honored one another's badges - which was a good idea. I sometimes wonder if the two should just work together a bit more. Host a shared convention space, honor one another's badges, and balance the cost of the convention center downtown in that way. I know I'd still attend ... Of course, most of the cost of moving downtown isn't the convention center itself. It's the hotels for guests. Here in SeaTac, I live about twenty minutes down the road, and we still get a room here for the weekend due to lack of parking. And it's a nice retreat from home.  If the con were to move downtown, I don't know if we'd get a room or not. Having a room is great when you've hit your limit of people and just want to hide for a bit. Change is scary. Growth is scary. As a regular attendee, I just need to assume that the ConCom knows what they're doing and is willing to embrace change when it becomes necessary. from Blogger http://ift.tt/2pBKcFQ via IFTTT

[norwescon]

NWC40 - Thursday - Opening Ceremonies (36) by Norwescon Via Flickr: The Norwescon 40 Opening Ceremonies: Science Guest of Honor Ethan Siegel. (Photo by Michael Hanscom for Norwescon)

[solarbird]

Friday concert block got moved to the afternoon! Except for a halftime mini-show by The PDX Broadsides at the burlesque.

[unigonpics]

NorwesCon 40, Day 1

NorwesCon 40, Day 1

Well, day 1 is over at NorwesCon 40.  To be clear, it’s technically day 2 of the Con, but for reasons that involve us taking a detour to Cafe Mox in Bellevue … I think we have ample reason that today is technically the start of our Con tour.

(more…)

[amazingstories]

A FAREWELL; MAR-APR F&SF; AND NORWESCON 40!

A FAREWELL; MAR-APR F&SF; AND NORWESCON 40!

Figure 1 – Vicki with some of her dogs On the 13th of this month, Vicki Mitchell Gustafson, who wrote SF—notably four Star Trek books, as V.E. Mitchell—and who was an avid fan and costumer, died peacefully at her home in Moscow, Idaho, surrounded by her dogs, which were part pet, part service animal. Ironically, Vicki died on the exact date of her late husband’s death 15 years ago. I have already…

[grtheron]

My thoughts on a Norwescon come and gone, and the great people I see there.

[wordharbour]

2017 Philip K. Dick Award Winner Announced

2017 Philip K. Dick Award Winner Announced

By Editor News from Norwescon: It was announced on Friday, April 14, 2017 at Norwescon 40, in SeaTac, Washington, that the winner for the distinguished original science fiction paperback published for the first time during 2016 in the U.S.A. is: THE MERCY JOURNALS by Claudia Casper (Arsenal Pulp Press) Special citation was given to: UNPRONOUNCEABLE by Susan diRende (Aqueduct Press) The Philip K.…

[sjmagner]

In Which I Am A Person of Interest

In Which I Am A Person of Interest

If you’re in the greater Seattle area next weekend, and are at all interested in hearing me speak, apparently NorWescon 40 is the place to be.

Behold, my convention panel schedule!

(Note: It’s more than reasonable to expect me to be in the bar at times not listed.)

Thursday, April 13 4-5 p.m. From Ink to Celluloid (Cascade 5 & 6)

There have been so many good and bad comic book related movies and…