We started on Wednesday afternoon with a tour of the CCD Auditorium, and had a chance to meet the professional staff. We verified our plans (made from afar with just drawings of the auditorium), and solidified our volunteer staff.

We got a chance to see how the auditorium would work and the views from the upper level on Thursday evening during the Opening Ceremonies and Retro Hugos. And were able to do some blocking work on the stage Friday morning as they were setting up for the evening’s orchestra/music event.

Contestant meeting, final tech prep, and then tech rehearsals all started before 10am on Saturday. We had four of the professional staff helping us, Stage Manager, Sound, Lights, and Video, alongside our volunteer crew. Rehearsal finished by 5:15pm, so we all had chance for a brief break and some dinner, before we opened the auditorium at 7:00pm, with two waves of seating. The show started on time at about 8:02pm.

We had a total of 35 entries cross the stage. About half were novices. A couple were folks who had first competed in Helsinki 2 years ago. The performance went very smoothly.

Our halftime entertainment was Pecha Kucha Karaoke, led by our MC, who has hosted many Pecha Kucha events featuring both prepared presentations and karaoke presentations. The audience was entertained while the judges deliberated.

More photos can be seen in this Flickr album.

We coordinated with several friends and opted to stay at an AirBnB in the Silicon Docks area, just across the River Liffey from the Convention Center Dublin (CCD) where the bulk of the convention was being held. It was an even better location than we realized when we booked. There were several local restaurants within a block or two as well as a grocery store and bank just a long block away.

Most of us were involved in running the Masquerade in some fashion. We wanted a bit of time to relax before we got started with the work, so we all traveled in the weekend before.

We learned how to work with the local transport system (TFI: Transport From Ireland) as we took the bus up to the office of Shamrock Rosettes to pick up the Masquerade ribbons. EPIC The Immigration Museum was just across the river on the way to the bus station. We did a day trip with Elegant Irish Tours down to Glendalough and Russborough Estate. (Thanks to Debbie for arranging it!)

More photos on Flickr here

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• having a chance to meet and work with all of the MexicanX Initiative participants.  They were universally friendly, professional, and willing to dive in wherever needed.
• watching my husband create his own Masquerade entry and enter his first Masquerade competition.  He’s now gotten the bug and understands why most costumers are still working on things until the very last minute.
• seeing N.K. Jemisin make history, winning her third consecutive Best Novel Hugo award, for The Stone Sky.

We had a Masquerade Show & Tell scheduled for 2pm.  The contestants all came and wore or brought their costumes from the night before.  Several spoke about how they had made this or that piece.  At least 2 had props that they were not taking back to the US, and offered them to the Finns.

The winner of the Best Recreation costume, Kerttu Vähänen, was also awarded a membership to Worldcon 76, for her Doctor Strange costume.  The Cloak of Levitation was totally hand-sewn, with 5 different fabrics.  And she absolutely nailed the attitude both on stage and in the convention halls.  

After that, we were off to Closing Ceremonies.  Jukka noted that final registration was 10,516 Members (full week and day passes), and 7119 people on-site.  This made us the second largest Worldcon ever (after Sasquan for 11,742 total members and Loncon 3 for 6,946 attending members).  See the Long List for more details and history about Worldcons.

Kevin was handed the gavel as Jukka transferred things to Worldcon 76.  We showed a short video about San Jose, done to a filk version of Do You Know The Way To San Jose, which had the crowd chuckling with the puns.  It will eventually be available to the public, but not yet.

And then we had a chance to rest before repacking for our next stop: Stockholm.

A Worldcon Masquerade is a major stage event, just like a play or musical.  Except that we have one day to rehearse everything, make sure that the lights and audio are set, that everyone knows how to work on the stage, that the crew have all of their cues, for our one big night.

Chris Doyle (as Jyn Erso), Karen Lord, Debi Chowdhury

After my initial concerns about a small entry list, we ended up with 25 entries, most of whom were novices under the International Costumers Guild (ICG) rules.  My Co-Director, Debi Chowdhury, convinced nearly everyone she saw wearing a costume to enter.  We set the run order on Friday afternoon, trying to get a balanced mix of experienced and new, dramatic and humorous, etc.  One of our two Young Fan entries withdrew, and the remaining Young Fan decided she wanted to participate as a Novice.  Good choice, as you’ll see later.

The day starts with a 10am meeting for all of the participants.  We go over the schedule for the day, walk through the stage and back stage areas, discuss missing audio files and other specific issues, and then break to start the tech rehearsal at 11am.  Except that the tech crew didn’t think they needed to be there until noon.  We hung around until we got someone who knew how to run the lights and audio board, but once we started, we moved along fairly quickly.

My biggest problem was differences in expectations.  Many anime conventions expect a full skit/presentation — more like a variety show with song/dance/etc.  A Worldcon Masquerade expects a 60 second or so presentation.  The only person with a microphone is the Toastmistress.  So folks need to record their script or provide it to the Toastmistress.  I ended up as Karen Lord’s surrogate as she was scheduled for several panels during the day.  Using my best stage voice, I introduced folks, read (and edited) scripts, made sure that everyone had some sort of audio to play in the background if they didn’t already have something, and helped them figure out their staging.  My absolutely invaluable helper was Lori Meltzer, who is an experienced Masquerade stage hand.  She coached participants on movement and attitude on stage and explained how we would help cue them during the actual event.

We planned to open the auditorium at 7pm, and start just after 7:30pm.  I got the Press Room to print out the revised script at about 6:30pm.  And then realized that I hadn’t print out the intro for Karen Lord.  Husband to the rescue — I e-mailed the file to the Press Room and got Stephen to pick it up for me.  And then when he walked in to give it to me, I grabbed him to become the “Voice of God” — the person behind the curtain who does opening announcements — because all of the Finns felt they had too much accent.

  Our judges included a mix of US, British and Finnish costumers.  Both workmanship and presentation judges complained that they had too many good costumes and costumers to pick from.  But in the end, they were able to make their awards.  Best in Show Workmanship went to Leena Peippo as Dwalin the Dwarf.  And Best in Show Presentation went to Olivia Flockhart (the Young Fan who switched to Novice) as When Halley Came to Jackson in 1910 (Halley’s Comet).

We handed out a total of 20 awards.  The full list along with links to lots more photos is here on the Worldcon 75 website.

This year, our friend Chuck Serface (aka “Two Buck Chuck”), was one of the finalists for Journey Planet, a fanzine he co-edited along with 6 other friends, including Christopher J. Garcia.  Chuck asked Stephen to be his designated acceptor, should they win.  This meant that we were invited to the Pre-Hugo reception.  We had an opportunity to talk with folks we knew, and folks we had just met.  We had a nice chat with Ada Palmer, who subsequently won the Campbell Award.  I was also talking to folks about Worldcon 76 next year, since I’m running the Program.

We ended up seated in front of Amal El-Mohtar (who won for her short story, see the post here), and Michi Trota and Julia Rios (who won along with co-editors Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas for Uncanny Magazine).  It was loud behind us.  But great fun.

We were also invited to the post-ceremony Loser’s Party.  Winners may attend, but will be mocked and made to wear silly hats.  Worldcon 76 co-hosted with George RR Martin at a local place Steam Hellsinki.  Great decorations, great food & drinks, great company.  Unfortunately, I had an early day with the Masquerade on Saturday, so we didn’t stay that late.

It got to the point where the convention Chairs made the decision to close membership and limit the number of day passes.  See the post here.  It generated a lot of discussion on-line, but generally folks were positive about the way it was handled.  The worst of the crowds died down around the Info Desk and Registration Desk, but the panel and presentation rooms were still packed.  The Ops staff ended up posting a sign on each door once the room was filled, so that folks wouldn’t keep trying to get in.

Our Outreach/Press Relations Area Head was actually a local news agency reporter, so had pre-existing connections into all of the Helsinki area outlets.  Here’s a permalink to her writeup in the JOF list on Facebook.  My suspicion is that her excellent PR skills lead to the tremendous local interest and the surge of attendees.

As I was busy with Masquerade prep, and in the midst of the crowding, I only got to see one event on Wednesday, but it was absolutely fabulous.  Tea and Jeopardy (Emma Newman and her husband Peter) did a live podcast recording with author George R.R. Martin.  Guests on the podcast get “a nice cup of tea, a cheeky bit of cake, and a spot of mild peril” as they visit the tea lair.  In this instance, after a delightful chat, GRRM drank the potion guaranteed to produce nightmares and the audience had to do their best death howls to wake him up.  Both Emma and Peter have pieces in the new Wild Cards book (which he is still editing).  And Emma avoided mentioning Game of Thrones completely.

As Debi Chowdhury and I were manning the Masquerade Sign-Up table, we kept seeing folks in some great costumes.  Debi was working the crowd and convinced many of them that they should enter the Masquerade.  My concerns about a small and short event became less and less as Wednesday became Thursday.

Worldcon 76 had a fan table and a display in the Exhibits hall.  We had several new pop-up banners, which we ordered from a printer in Estonia.  They did a great job and cost us about half what the same thing would have cost if printed in the US and shipped to Helsinki.  Kevin Roche, the Worldcon 76 chair, gave a great presentation at The Fannish Inquisition on Thursday afternoon.  He announced our two additional Guests of Honor, John Picacio (artist) and Frank Hayes (musician).  The Worldcon 76 crew also sponsored a party, along with several other potential future Worldcon sites, on Thursday evening.  We received pass-through funds from MidAmeriCon II and celebrated Andy’s birthday with cake.  And people started to see the green shirts we were all wearing during the week.

We researched flights, looked at the various hotels that had rooms associated with the convention, talked with our friends, and then made a plan.  The plan took us from San Jose to Helsinki to Stockholm to Chicago and then back home.

We arrived at Helsinki’s Vantaa Airport about 3pm EEST (5am Pacific), jet lagged and dehydrated.  We caught a cab at the airport, and were extremely impressed with the efficiency of the process.  Well placed signage, in multiple languages, and plenty of TaksiHelsinki vehicles to get us to our hotel, the Original Sokos Hotel Vaakuna.  The hotel was built for the 1952 Winter Olympics.  It’s been well kept over the years, and I would say it’s more of a European business hotel than a tourist hotel.  That said, we were warmly welcomed and felt quite comfortable there.  They had plenty of power outlets for our converters, and we had a balcony room, which was a wonderful way to help us conquer jet lag.  So was the sauna, which is an expected feature for Helsinki hotels.

Monday we decided to do a walking tour of sorts, and play Ingress.  The mission set “Explore Helsinki” started right outside our hotel and took us around the downtown area.  We took our time to see the sights along the way, stopped in for coffee at one place, lunch at another.  We saw an advertisement for Worldcon in front of the tram stop (more about that later).  Tuesday we went to visit GE’s Helsinki office and meet some of the folks behind our operating room monitors and anesthesia machines.  And learned about the efficient and inexpensive public transportation system, as we took a bus and tram to get to/from the hotel.

Wednesday was the first day of Worldcon75.  I was there early, to meet with a couple of folks about tech, and generally help out.  The Masquerade Sign Up desk was part of the Info Desk, so I was extra staff for them.  We were not prepared for the deluge of people who bought memberships, most of whom were attending their first worldcon.  Despite best-laid plans, our signs couldn’t be seen easily, and line management was a challenge.  One lady who was asking about the schedule was visiting from Colorado and was there just for the day — she had been traveling to Helsinki for a completely different reason, heard about the convention from someone on the plane and decided to drop in!