Thoughts about attending this year’s Worldcon in Helsinki, Finland

[vivdunstan]

Earlier I blogged my thoughts about attending this year's Worldcon science-fiction convention in Helsinki. Since they may be of interested to some of my friends here who've attended Worldcons in the past I thought I'd link to them from here too.

Comments

[a_cubed]

Sorry I didn't manage to catch up with your or Martin there.

Just one quibble with your post. Worldcons in non-English language places are so rare (70, 90, 07, 17) and 90 and 17 only barely count since the English of the locals is so good and so ubiquitous, that you can't generalise from it in any way. Each of them was also the first Worldcon in that country (none of them have had a second). It's been getting harder to predict Worldcon membership sizes and the budgetting is similarly hard. While Helsinki made some mistakes, they did quite well under the circumstances. Dublin has to look very hard at contingency plans for expanding space or clear ahead of time limiting attendance, I think.

[vivdunstan]

Thanks! That's really interesting stuff, and helps explain things for me.

You weren't there were you? I didn't think you were going to be, but as we waited outside 208 at one point (business meeting in progress) I thought I saw you go down the stairs. But the person was wearing a blue shirt. Didn't look quite dark enough for you! And we didn't see them again ...

[a_cubed]

It almost certainly was me. I was wearing a blue shirt at least one day and was in the BM every day except Sunday.

[vivdunstan]

Botheration! I only realised it might be you - even though last I'd heard you weren't going - as you were starting to walk down the steps. Saw you from behind only! Too far to call out, and I was stuck in place with wheelchair. Martin doubted it was you.

We peeked into the business meeting a few times, including Martin after site selection result was announced. He was waiting for the next talk there, and emailing me photos of Jocelyn Bell Burnell as I was reverse emailing him - from hotel room, in one of my brief awake times that day - tweets saying the same stuff!

So yes, we nearly caught up :) I hope you had a good time at the con.

[a_cubed]

Sorry, I forgot I'd told you I probably wouldn't make it once I sorted out being able to go.

[vivdunstan]

That's ok, no worries! Amazing that we almost ran into you anyway :)