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Worldcon 75 and after
Aug. 16th, 2017 09:31 pmWell, I haven't posted for a week, but there was a Worldcon in that period.
My duties at the business meeting took up a fair chunk of my time. I had agreed to be the official timekeeper, something I'd never done before. For those that don't know, when a motion is brought before the business meeting, the first thing that is done is to decide how long is to be spent discussing it. That time is to be divided between those speaking for and those against. But some speakers are asking questions, etc., and that time has to be divided equally between both sides. I was told the easiest way to do this was to time each speaker with a stop-watch and keep running totals on a piece of paper. I got through several convention centre notepads during the course of the meeting.
By Sunday, I'd got the hang of it. But, as luck would have it, all the business on Sunday was non-contentious and there was little debate so I hardly used the stop-watch. The convention had set aside five hours for the final session just in case, but we only used 30 minutes. (It could have been longer. In 2015, I went straight from the business meeting to the closing ceremony.)
Others have mentioned the unexpectedly large size of the convention and the effect that had on room allocation. I got to little on the first two days, but surprisingly I was able to get to the iZombie discussion session, which was scheduled in a room with a capacity of just 16, set up boardroom style so the discussion resembled a Jomsthing. The door had been left open so that latecomers would know that there was room. At one point, someone mentioned an episode where a zombie character was in prison and was needing a supply of brains to survive. "How hard can it be to smuggle brains into a prison?" they asked, just as someone was walking past the door.
The convention was able to get more space by the convention centre partitioning off areas of an exhibit hall. I bumped into Martin Easterbrook outside one of these extra rooms. He was intrigued about the way that the partitions went all the way to the ceiling, so noise didn't bleed between items. "Not that I'm bitter," he said, remembering what happened at Glasgow in 1995.
That said, I found the large room in which the Hugos were presented had bad acoustics and I often couldn't hear what was being said. Alas, the subtitling was unable to keep up much of the time.
Since the end of the convention, it has been mostly museums. Everyone told me I had to visit Suomenlinna, the fortified islands to the south of Helsinki. The fortifications were built by the Swedes in the eighteenth century when Helsinki was just a small town of 1,500. Now there are several museums and restaurants and cafes on the island (and Helsinki has grown somewhat). There's even a submarine you can go around.
Every day I've been here, I've been walking past what I thought was a large church at the end of the street. Turns out it is actually the National Museum of Finland. I suppose that the street is called Museokatu - Museum Street - is a bit of a giveaway.
And today it was Seurasaari Open Air museum, a large number of preserved buildings from the last three hundred years or so. Lots of low doors, but I only hit my head once. Alas, the 1912 telephone kiosk marked on the map seemed not to be there.
On my way to the museum, I stopped for a snack at the Regatta Café next to the Sibelius Monument, sitting outdoors. As I sat there, a couple of sparrows landed on my table, eyeing my blueberry pie and vanilla sauce. One tried to take a bite before I scared it off. And when I was finished and sat back to check my map, about a dozen of the buggers landed on the table and attacked the remains on my plate.
It's not just the sparrows. Later, walking out of my hotel I saw a large gull land on the middle of the road clutching a paper bag in its beak. It then put it down and started trying to peck it open.
My duties at the business meeting took up a fair chunk of my time. I had agreed to be the official timekeeper, something I'd never done before. For those that don't know, when a motion is brought before the business meeting, the first thing that is done is to decide how long is to be spent discussing it. That time is to be divided between those speaking for and those against. But some speakers are asking questions, etc., and that time has to be divided equally between both sides. I was told the easiest way to do this was to time each speaker with a stop-watch and keep running totals on a piece of paper. I got through several convention centre notepads during the course of the meeting.
By Sunday, I'd got the hang of it. But, as luck would have it, all the business on Sunday was non-contentious and there was little debate so I hardly used the stop-watch. The convention had set aside five hours for the final session just in case, but we only used 30 minutes. (It could have been longer. In 2015, I went straight from the business meeting to the closing ceremony.)
Others have mentioned the unexpectedly large size of the convention and the effect that had on room allocation. I got to little on the first two days, but surprisingly I was able to get to the iZombie discussion session, which was scheduled in a room with a capacity of just 16, set up boardroom style so the discussion resembled a Jomsthing. The door had been left open so that latecomers would know that there was room. At one point, someone mentioned an episode where a zombie character was in prison and was needing a supply of brains to survive. "How hard can it be to smuggle brains into a prison?" they asked, just as someone was walking past the door.
The convention was able to get more space by the convention centre partitioning off areas of an exhibit hall. I bumped into Martin Easterbrook outside one of these extra rooms. He was intrigued about the way that the partitions went all the way to the ceiling, so noise didn't bleed between items. "Not that I'm bitter," he said, remembering what happened at Glasgow in 1995.
That said, I found the large room in which the Hugos were presented had bad acoustics and I often couldn't hear what was being said. Alas, the subtitling was unable to keep up much of the time.
Since the end of the convention, it has been mostly museums. Everyone told me I had to visit Suomenlinna, the fortified islands to the south of Helsinki. The fortifications were built by the Swedes in the eighteenth century when Helsinki was just a small town of 1,500. Now there are several museums and restaurants and cafes on the island (and Helsinki has grown somewhat). There's even a submarine you can go around.
Every day I've been here, I've been walking past what I thought was a large church at the end of the street. Turns out it is actually the National Museum of Finland. I suppose that the street is called Museokatu - Museum Street - is a bit of a giveaway.
And today it was Seurasaari Open Air museum, a large number of preserved buildings from the last three hundred years or so. Lots of low doors, but I only hit my head once. Alas, the 1912 telephone kiosk marked on the map seemed not to be there.
On my way to the museum, I stopped for a snack at the Regatta Café next to the Sibelius Monument, sitting outdoors. As I sat there, a couple of sparrows landed on my table, eyeing my blueberry pie and vanilla sauce. One tried to take a bite before I scared it off. And when I was finished and sat back to check my map, about a dozen of the buggers landed on the table and attacked the remains on my plate.
It's not just the sparrows. Later, walking out of my hotel I saw a large gull land on the middle of the road clutching a paper bag in its beak. It then put it down and started trying to peck it open.
