Swag and OmensContext XVI keeps receiving what I interpret as good omens.
Baen Books, Eric Flint's publisher, sent along a box of swag, including enough Advance Reader Copies of Crown of Slaves that we'll be giving one out with each paid adult membership. Also a few caps and t-shirts, some promotional DVDs and other goodies for the Art/Charity auction Saturday night.
Eric made it in to town for the pre-convention dinner, and brought a couple of books and some uncorrected page proofs to be autographed and auctioned. It's great to see both publisher and writer doing the little things to help make a convention successful. Meta-gratitude to both.
Eric strikes me as interesting guy and a good conversationalist, with strong opinions on a lot of subjects, so I look forward to seeing him interacting with the fans. He's also a smoker, so if you can handle the athmosphere and hang out in the Smoker's ConSuite, there's a good chance you'll meet him.
Catherine Asaro wasn't able to get free for tonight, so she won't be in town until tomorrow. I'm looking forward to meeting her.
We all have our fingers crossed for a good turn-out. Attendence numbers have been declining gradually in recent years (a theme common throughout fandom) and there are serious questions about the future beyond next year. Getting up near the break-even point would help stabilize things greatly.
I really think the omens for XVI are good - the Writer's Workshop is almost full (and Charlie has already put them to work reading and critiquing - Rock On, Mr. Finlay!), the dealer' s room is full (actually Full+), our block of rooms at the Ramada is full, Craig reports a large amount of work received for the Art Show, pre-registrations are ahead of last year by a decent percentage. All good signs.
Even the frantic last-minute scurrying (which I had been warned about) is more about taking advantage of opportunities than staving off disaster. Dan Young (of the Midwest Anime Guys) says there's a chance we can get the use of a popcorn-maker for the weekend, free. Since this is the first time we've done video programming in recent memory, it would be a perfect addition.
But we can't put it in the video room without paying the hotel a corkage charge, and if we put it in a private room we'll have to nag everybody about leaving a trail of popcorn on the way to the video room.
We're all very conscious of being considerate of the hotel. They took us in at the last minute, the location and facilities are a good match for what we're doing, and we've already booked them for next year. So nobody wants to sour the relationship.
Popcorn is a definite maybe. Stay tuned.
Labels: con reports
BlogThis!
<< Home
