Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

I spent much of today setting up Westercon 74's "booth" (virtual fan table) at Norwescon 43, which starts next Thursday afternoon. lindadee and I are hosting the booth at the virtual convention, and we got together at the booth this afternoon to make sure we had the settings right and that features such as screen sharing (useful for being able to show off pictures of Tonopah, maps of the convention center, etc.) worked. Assuming anyone comes to our table, we should be all set. Norwescon is using Airmeet, a system I've not used before, and the booths are quite elaborate. I'll say more about this later after I see how it works out. I have next Friday off, but Linda will have to "hold the fort" on Thursday afternoon until I can get free from Day Jobbe. It shouldn't be that hard.

The weather has turned warm again, which is good because we're nearly out of firewood. The box by the front door is full, but I think it can be refilled not more than about 1 1/2 more times. We would have gone to Big R and bought more, but they are unfortunately out, and they don't know when another shipment is due. I'll have to keep checking, because I'd rather not run out, and if we fill up the main box now, then we should be in good shape next autumn when the weather turns cold again.

Today was the first day we could take a walk after dinner without jackets this year. As we walked by the fire department on the way to the post office to collect Saturday's mail, I snapped a photo of what I consider a somewhat difficult to obey sign.

( Mysterious Advice )

Finally, just to get out of the house a bit more, we did a short drive down to Hazen and back, enlivened by a train coming through Fernley as we left, which we paced down to Hazen, where we reversed at the large tie-recovery yard there and drove home. Such excitement in our lives!

We, the San Jose Worldcon Committee, did indeed manage to pull off three nearly-simultaneous announcements of this year's Hugo Award finalists at three different sites.

( Linda and my show at Norwescon )

I obsess over technical issues, and deeply wish that I had been allowed an hour in the room so that I could make sure that every piece worked. My computer doesn't have an HDMI port, so I couldn't use the long cable to the head table to connect my computer to the data projector. There was a short VGA cable, and also an even shorter audio cable to connect to the headphone jack. The video connected first time, which was okay. Unfortunately, the audio connection only would carry the music soundtrack on the announcements, not the voice of the announcers reading the results. But the main effect of this (since the slides also had the finalists listed, of course) was that people talked among themselves during the presentation, which was not too big of a deal. I just wish I'd had time to experiment to see if there was some combination of settings or cables that would have carried all of the audio signal.

(As far as I know, the other two presentations had both channels of sound.)

After the presentations, I asked those newly-minted finalists who were present to stand. I wasn't quick enough to get a photo, but I think there were around ten of the finalists present. I'd been hoping that Galen Dara, who had been doing a panel just before us in the same room and is also a finalist, would stay, but she probably had another panel right after us or something like that.

The audience seemed happy with what we did. I heard good things from the other two venues. I understand that Eastercon merrily went on with an "Instant Analysis" panel right after the announcement.

The results were not immediately posted to The Hugo Awards web site. Linda and I needed to get lunch first, and then we returned to the San Jose Worldcon table, where I started putting the results online. But of course I did need to talk to people who were coming by the table. Few things are as offputting to people coming to an info table as the only person there having their head in a computer ignoring everyone. Consequently, it was after 6 PM before I got both the 2018 and 1943 Hugo Award pages updated and the headline announcement posted to the web site. Those news sources that had embargoed copies of the press release were of course able to go live at 1 PM as soon as the embargo lifted, not being constrained by having to run a convention info desk at a convention at the same time. That's okay. The Hugo Award web site is the "journal of record" and while we like to be timely with results, in the long term what's important is having them accurate.

Once I finally got the site updated, it was time to get going. I'd brought my luggage down with me from the Holiday Inn Express so I could catch a shuttle from the Doubletree directly to the airport. When I went to check in, Alaska Airlines kiosk asked if I would like to take the earlier available flight for $25 extra. I said yes. I'm not sure the kiosk should have offered that, because I very nearly did not make it. Between the Terrorization queue and catching the shuttle train out to the North Satellite, I got to the plane with less than five minutes before doors-closing. But I did make it. Even better, despite the seat map insisting that the flight was nearly full, I was directed to an aisle seat at the rear with the middle seat empty.

The result of the rushing through Sea-Tac was that I got to the hotel in Millbrae two hours earlier than planned. That means I get two extra hours of sleep before I drive home tomorrow. Assuming I make it all the way home. I spoke with Lisa as I was leaving SFO and she told me that if I did not feel up to getting the whole way home to stop somewhere overnight and work it out with the Day Jobbe, and I agree with her. Now I must get some of that extra sleep I paid $12.50/hour to get.

I don't feel as sick as I did the past two days, possibly because the stress of working up to the Hugo Finalist announcement is behind me.

I'm slowly emerging from "radio silence." The past week has been somewhat difficult and challenging in some ways for me, and I have only so much time I can spend on optional things like writing this journal. In this case, it had to be set aside in favor of me working as the WSFS division manager for Worldcon 76 San José and as a member of the Hugo Awards Administration Subcommittee. I'm not going to give anything way, but there were times when squeezing into a conference call wasn't easy. (It was harder for those on the US east coast and Europe!) But we're nearing that intermediate finish line.

I'm off work for today and tomorrow, and have arrived at Norwescon in SeaTac, Washington. This is one of the three places where Worldcon 76 will be doing a live announcement of the 2018 and 1943 Hugo Award Finalists. The other two events are an open-to-the-publin event at the 7 Stars Bar & Grill in San Jose, and an event at FollyCon/Eastercon 2018 in the UK. The announcements will be at Noon Pacific Daylight Time (8 PM British Summer Time) on Saturday, March 31, 2018. (Not April 1, although as others have pointed out, it will be April 1 at SF/F conventions in Australia and New Zealand.) I'm sorry we did not manage to find people to do similar live events at other SF/F conventions this weekend, and I'm partially to blame for not having beat the bushes better.

Shortly after the live events (probably round 1 PM PDT, but I wouldn't guarantee that to the second), the video and the finalist lists will also be posted on the Worldcon 76 web site and on TheHugoAwards.org.

Voting will open sometime in April. We're not going to commit to a specific date yet. You have to be a member of Worldcon 76 (and only Worldcon 76) as of when you vote. The deadline for joining is the same as the deadline for voting (unlike the nominating ballot), but if you are planning on voting on the final ballot, I encourage you to join as at least a supporting member now and not put if off to the last minute, where a computer failure could leave you in the lurch.

Many of you know that I founded and ran for more than five years the MythAdventures Fan Club, originally inspired by Phil Foglio's comic book adaptation of Robert Lynn Asprin's novels. One of our active club members was a fan by the name of Matt Youngmark. During the second half of Match Game SF at Norwescon, the name "Matt Youngmark" came up in the contestant draw (although he had left during the break and thus didn't make it on stage), and I wondered if it was the same person. The following afternoon, while I was checking e-mail in one of the alcoves where wi-fi reached, I heard a voice calling my name. It was Matt Youngmark, and he introduced himself as the fan who had indeed be introduced to fandom through the pages of MythInformation, our clubzine. He got actively involved with a number of things, and he thanked me for having helped introduce him to SF fandom. he even gave me a copy of his book, Zombocalypse Now, a "Choose-o-matic" book (think the "Choose Your Own Adventure" Books) where you have to face a Zombie Apocalypse with the added challenge of being a stuffed rabbit.

I was pleased to finally get to meet Matt after all these years, and even more pleased to learn that the work that I and the others who worked to make the MythAdventures Fan Club a success for more than five years had such good effects.

It may be the last day of Norwescon, but you might not have realized it from how busy the hallways are at the Sea-Tac Doubletree and from the length of the queue in the lobby Starbucks.

Kuma Bear alertly spotted that one of the fan table groups decided to skip Sunday, and he moved in to set up a bid table for Tonopah in 2012. Details and picture on his LJ. I set up next to him and Lisa and took advantage of being within range of the free lobby wi-fi to participate in an panel at Eastercon about Virtual Conventions. Appropriately, the event was happening online as well as in person, and you can see a replay of the CoverItLive coverage to get a feeling for what it was like.

In a few minutes, I plan to change into my Captain WSFS uniform in preparation for the Hugo Award live coverage happening at 2 PM PDT today. Cheryl is having hardware problems and the wi-fi at Eastercon is being flaky, but it does look like we'll still get the coverage working. I'll be up in Cascade 10, where if all goes well we also will have the coverage projected so that everyone can see the results even without a computer.

Match Game SF went really well, apart from an embarrassment gaffe by me accidentally answering a question when I was trying to pose it to the contestant. This was our first show using the Tsuki Systems wireless microphone connection with my ECM-51A, and overall I think it went quite well. The room we had was just the right size; neither too crowded nor too roomy. The audience was enthusiastic, and we gave away some prizes.

The internet works in this room -- it's the same one we'll be using for the Hugo Award Announcement on Sunday afternoon -- and I'm using it right now to post this. But I can't last very long -- Lisa is taking the gear back to the hotel room, and I'm worn out and exhausted. I'm so happy that I have no panels Saturday until 6 PM and no commitments until then. Not setting an alarm for Saturday morning.

My flight was a little late getting in, and right after checking in, Lisa and I went off to have dinner, so we missed the major events at Norwescon tonight, that being the Opening Ceremonies and the Zombie Walk, although several people on the Norwescon Twitter Tracker already have photos posted.

After getting back from dinner and unpacked, Lisa and I (with Kuma Bear's help) posted Match Game SF fliers around the hotel. We also got an opportunity to scope out the room in which the show will be on Friday night. I think we'll need to be sure to be there right at 7 PM when the hotel starts to reset the room so we can get them to make some minor tweaks to the current plan. This is much easier to do before the set up the riser and lock it into place. Everything else we can do.

Lisa has all of the tech gear, including 100' of heavy-gauge electrical extension cord, which we need because all of the power outlets are on the opposite wall from where we need to set up the Tech Desk. We ran into NWC's Michale Citrak, who escorted us to the Tech Room, where they were able to supply us with the one piece of kit we didn't have with us: gaffer tape, for taping down the cables safely.

Then it was time to find an internet signal, with an eye toward Sunday's Hugo Award Announcement. It turns out that Westercon 64 doesn't actually have a fan table up here after all -- I think we must have forgotten to ask this year. Whoops. But that also means that we don't have a default location for people to gather for the announcement. The upstairs lobby set with tables and chairs would be a good place, but the downstairs wi-fi does not appear to reach there, and I think the conference room internet connectivity is not free. (I haven't tried it yet.) However, maybe we'll be able to secure some space in the downstairs lounge, as long as we buy some coffee and such. I'll probably be in my WSFS Uniform to serve as a relatively easy-to-spot target for "come see the Hugo Announcements here."

And now, although it's late, Lisa and I may go move a bunch of the Match Game kit into the room because it should be a lot easier to get a bell cart at 12:30 AM than during the rest of the day. I'm sort of dreading how hard it will be to get a cart tomorrow afternoon. I may start trying around 5:30 so we might have it in time to get the gear from our room out in wing 5A into the main part of the hotel and down to Cascade 9/10 by 7 PM, which is when we get the room. Because of the layout of this hotel and because our room on wing 5A is on the ground floor, it's going to be three separate elevator trips to get moved -- up from 1 to 2 on wing 5A, then over the skybridge to wing 6, then back down to 1, then across to wing 1 (the tower), the up to 2 where the Cascade rooms are. There's not much that can be done about it, although if it's not raining tomorrow evening, it might be faster to just cut across the parking lot rather than to traverse the habitrails.

As far as I can tell, I have everything in place from my end for Match Game SF at Norwescon. I got the last of the new questions printed last night. (Most of the show will be re-using the SiliCon 2009 set, with some new Seattle-specific questions thrown in. Since none of the panelists were at the SiliCon show and the audience overlap consists of me, Lisa, and Kuma Bear, I think we'll be okay.) The show intro, closing, and commercials are done. I remembered at the last minute that Tonopah in 2012 needed a commercial, because T2012 is a prize sponsor: all Bonus Round prizes come with a pre-supporting membership in the Tonopah bid.

Now I need to pack for tomorrow's flight. Unfortunately, due to the big gap in train schedules, I have the choice of being more than three hours early for my flight or risk missing it if the slightest thing goes wrong, so I'm out of here at 12:30 tomorrow afternoon.

I turned in some required documentation to Norwescon today for our Match Game SF show planned for this year. We're in a room that's slightly smaller than last year but still much bigger than the tiny place we had to work the year before. I asked Lisa today what her technial requirements were, and she said, "Electrical outlets," because she's now managed to put together everything she needs to stage the show technically: microphones, speakers, mixer, cables, etc.

Now we need to put together the panel: Once I've managed to tie down the "returning regulars" (dinogrl, are you coming to NWC and do you want to be a panelist again?), I can ask NWC Programming to send me some panelists from the general participant pool.

We do have a promise of a membership to next year's Norwescon for the prizes, and we still have a lot of stuff from Night Shade Books, who have proven to be a wonderful sponsor. I guess we do need to look into refilling the BASFA Grab Bag o' Stuff, though, for Lovely Parting Gifts.

The most-urgent stuff for MGSF that I need to get done in the next couple of weeks is pack up the heavy, bulky stuff to carry up to Oregon with me when I drive up there on Feburary 13.

It's way too soon to know whether I'll be at Norwescon next year or if we'll be invited to do Match Game SF again there, but if it does happen and they put us in the same room (Evergreen 4), then we've now learned some lessons about how to lay out the room to make it work better.

Working from the floor plan, we had the panelists' risers set diagonally in one corner. The risers are of a size that if you only used one, panelists would have a good chance of falling off the back of the riser unless it were flush against the wall, and therefore they needed two risers. This, and the diagonal alignment, ate up two rows of seats.

If we do it again, I think we can manage to do it with only a single riser, flush against the black wall, and with the panelists thus facing straight toward the audience. We can set the contestant table at a slight angle, but because it's on the floor and not on a riser, it doesn't take up so much space.

I also learned that I need to make specific MGSF business cards to give to people after the shows, because people want to know how to contact me and find out where pictures and video of the shows are.

And there was the lesson I mentioned a couple of days ago: Lisa says we should never again agree to both host a party and do a show at the same convention. It takes too much out of us. Sitting a fan table isn't the same thing and doesn't require the amount of equipment and effort as a party does.