ConAdian memories - scavenger hunt

With all the surpluses we all had, after a few days we were making some odd trades. “Okay, we will take a box of oranges, but then you have to take two cases of pop.” We ended up finding out what everyone had as surpluses, and put together a scavenger hunt list that included many of those items. We also included a lot of the guests – we figured that if we weren’t able to see them at the con, maybe someone would bring them by to see us. When we went to get copies of the list printed off, we ran into grief from the publications department – who were being all proprietary about the photocopiers. This is how we met Shannon and Kim who were with the publications department.

Eventually we were able to sort out our differences and had a small stack printed up. It went pretty well, and led to us running scavenger hunts at the next few Keycons – again, mostly for our amusement. Kim helped out by being a co-judge for the Keycon hunts. We always had bribes for the judges built in for bonus points and usually included the guests as well.

Since he was being overly precious, we also had Carey on the list as ‘Victor’s evil son’ and later gave bonus point for having him gagged. He really enjoyed the notoriety and even headed up a team at one of the last ones we ran. Eventually, we had kids and stopped going to Keycon nearly as much.

ConAdian memories - part 4

For ConAdian, there were lots of meetings. There were mini meetings with our department and then the big meeting with everyone. I have fond memories of one big meeting near the end, close to the convention itself. Paul and I had decided to show up in trench coats and fedoras. We listened as the other groups droned on about the minutia of their departments. A few of the groups made an impression on us - the publications department, the tech ops, etc. Publications went on at length in great detail about all aspects of their daily newsletter.

The people who were in charge of the Hugo award droned on about how the spaceship was going to be made from metal that had been shot into near space from the rocket range in Churchill and how it would be mounted on a laser-cut base that had been cut by a laser into the shape of a maple leaf – with a laser. The edges of the base would be black because of having been cut by the laser. He kept going on and on about the laser-cut base. It’s more common now, but in the early 90s it was still on the cutting edge. This phrase has long since entered my vocabulary as something that is overly keen to the person describing it – “y’know, it was laser-cut - by a laser”.



When it came to our turn, Paul and I basically stood up, said that we were going to have themes and badges for each day as well as actually food for the gophers instead of just chips and pop. Then we sat down. Short and quick was our presentation. Then they started to ask all kinds of questions about the details. We had all the information – we just didn’t want to be another group going on and on about it.

ConAdian memories - part 3

We had come up with a name for the volunteer hospitality suite. We decided to call it the Gopher Hole. I believe the ConAdian mascot was a either a beaver or a maple leaf. Ours was a gopher.
We came up with a theme for each day and made badges for each of them. I drew them and Paul scanned them into the computer to clean them up and add text.
I remember we had a gopher in an old sci-fi bubble suit for the classic sci-fi day and a gopher in a hockey mask and machete for the horror day. I also remember a picture of a gopher with shades floating in an inner tube.

I have them all packed away and will dig them out someday to post.

ConAdian memories - part 2

Originally, we had been thinking of carbohydrates and caffeine (chips and pop) for munchies but we were told that our budget was a bit more involved. We ended up with coffee service, cold cuts and bread for sandwiches, fruit, as well as some pop.

We had one of those large coffee urns and found out that we could basically use regular coffee and add a small amount of premium coffee and let it brew. We would start it in the morning and were always getting comments on how good it was. It seemed the longer it brewed, the better the comments about it’s quality.

For food, we had worked out a certain amount of food each hour and had bought ham, salami, roast beef, and chicken in presliced packages. We had fridges rented to store all the food before using. What we hadn’t counted on was that if people didn’t show up, we didn’t have to take out the food for that hour. We had budgeted food replacement for each hour and didn’t need to replace nearly as much – we were on the second floor and the Concom hospitality suite was on the main floor. A lot of the volunteers didn’t make it upstairs.
We ended up putting out a few puzzles and had a few people working away at them over the week.

The original idea was to allow in volunteers for a snack after a certain amount of hours worked. After a day or two we were a lot less picky about volunteers having fulfilled their requirements and were looking to keep them fed and happy. The times that we were out of the room, we were always trying to send volunteers back to make sure they had food and drinks as needed.

ConAdian memories - part 1

It was the early 90s. Christine was in charge of the Services division (and deputy Chair) for ConAdian – which was the ‘94 WorldCon held up here in the geographic center of North America. She went to the people she knew for help on her committee. Being in that group, I ended up being in charge of the Volunteer hospitality suite for ConAdian. It involved a certain amount of pre-con prep work and (hopefully) a lesser amount of at-con time.

I got my fencing buddy Paul Obirek (future PM of Canada) to help as my co-conspirator. We were responsible for the care and feeding of the volunteers. Space was booked for us in the hotel across from the convention centre and we had to make sure there were people in charge of the room, and that there was food, refreshments, and a quiet place for volunteers to unwind after they had put in some actual volunteer time.

We ended up being at the suite more than we had hoped. We were able to get away for a panel or two and were able to find some great volunteers to leave in charge here and there but we didn’t get to see much of the convention at all.

GEnie network memories

GEnie network - Mosaic
Back in the early 90s, I was on the Worldcon committee when it was up here and one of the things we had to do was be able to access the message board online. This was back in the day when you would log into specific bulletin boards instead of the world wide web as it is now. DOS was still being used for IBM PCs and I was connecting online with my Apple IIc with its monochrome green 9” monitor. It did have a dip switch so I could type in Dvorak while Crystal (who was sharing my connection) could touch type in Qwerty.

We were connecting into the GE network – GEnie. After peak hours, the connection was free so a lot of science fiction groups had boards on it. After a while, it proved too busy for them and they started billing for all connections. Eventually the web overtook them, Windows overpowered DOS, Mosaic came out and was subverted by Microsoft into Internet Explorer which eventually wore down the Netscape Navigator connection to which we had upgraded. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosaic_(web_browser) )

One of the sysops I recall the most from back then was YogSysop. He stood out because of the name (a play on Yog-Sothoth – from the Cthulhu mythos) and because he always had a wry sense of humor. Thanks to google, it seems he is James Macdonald, a writer.
http://www.sff.net/people/yog/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_D._Macdonald
He has some good advice for writers – mostly how to watch out for unscrupulous publishers. Good reading.