Remember that advertisement about Worldcon? \u00a0Our expectations had been for a convention of 3500-4000. \u00a0In the last week, though, memberships surged. \u00a0The crowds on Wednesday were so bad that many members couldn’t get in to see the panels and presentations. \u00a0The hallways were full of folks trying to get to the events.<\/p>\n

It got to the point where the convention Chairs made the decision to close membership and limit the number of day passes. \u00a0See the post here<\/a>. \u00a0It generated a lot of discussion on-line, but generally folks were positive about the way it was handled. \u00a0The worst of the crowds died down around the Info Desk and Registration Desk, but the panel and presentation rooms were still packed. \u00a0The 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.<\/p>\n

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. \u00a0Here’s a permalink to her writeup<\/a>\u00a0in the JOF list on Facebook. \u00a0My suspicion is that her excellent PR skills lead to the tremendous local interest and the surge of attendees.<\/p>\n

<\/a>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. \u00a0Tea and Jeopardy<\/em><\/a>\u00a0(Emma Newman and her husband Peter) did a live podcast recording with author George R.R. Martin. \u00a0Guests 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. \u00a0In 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. \u00a0Both Emma and Peter have pieces in the new Wild Cards book (which he is still editing). \u00a0And Emma avoided mentioning Game of Thrones completely.<\/p>\n

As Debi Chowdhury and I were manning the Masquerade Sign-Up table, we kept seeing folks in some great costumes. \u00a0Debi was working the crowd and convinced many of them that they should enter the Masquerade. \u00a0My concerns about a small and short event became less and less as Wednesday became Thursday.<\/p>\n

<\/a>Worldcon 76 had a fan table and a display in the Exhibits hall. \u00a0We had several new pop-up banners, which we ordered from a printer in Estonia. \u00a0They 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. \u00a0Kevin Roche, the Worldcon 76 chair, gave a great presentation at The Fannish Inquisition on Thursday afternoon. \u00a0He announced our two additional Guests of Honor, John Picacio (artist) and Frank Hayes (musician). \u00a0The Worldcon 76 crew also sponsored a party, along with several other potential future Worldcon sites, on Thursday evening. \u00a0We received pass-through funds from MidAmeriCon II and celebrated Andy’s birthday with cake. \u00a0And people started to see the green shirts we were all wearing during the week.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Remember that advertisement about Worldcon? \u00a0Our expectations had been for a convention of 3500-4000. \u00a0In the last week, though, memberships surged. \u00a0The crowds on Wednesday were so bad that many members couldn’t get in to see the panels… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1309,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42,56],"tags":[53,59],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monty-doyle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1268"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monty-doyle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monty-doyle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monty-doyle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monty-doyle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1268"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.monty-doyle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1268\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1322,"href":"https:\/\/www.monty-doyle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1268\/revisions\/1322"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monty-doyle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1309"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monty-doyle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monty-doyle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monty-doyle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}