impressed
rwrylsin and I went to an "interested persons" meeting for the 2005 WorldCon, which will, of course, be held in Glasgow. We started at the SECC, which was also used for the 1995 WorldCon (which I wasn't at, alas), and wandered around various halls and rooms which will be used for the Con. Apparently, last time around, panel sessions were held in a large hall which had been partitioned into a number of sections, leading to a very noisy area. This time around, they will be held in various small and large rooms in the "Loch Suite" and parts of the Clyde Auditorium ("The Armadillo") nearby, thus the motto used in bidding, "Once More, With Ceiling". The Cldye auditorium itself has a very large stage and can seat about 3000, so it'll be used for the masquerade and Hugo awards ceremony. The dealers room and artshow will be held in a very large hall. I forsee myself spending far too much time and money in that area ... Now to imagine the place filled with somewhere between 4000 and 5000 fans. Eeek !After that, we grabbed some lunch and headed in to a seminar room at the Hilton hotel near the city centre, where we got an overview of what cons and WorldCons are about (some of the people there had never been to a con before, amazingly), then some details of the plans for next year. The con chair was also involved in the 1995 con, (to which he attributes his hair loss), and it sounds like there's an experienced team working on planning and running the event. There will be a number of hotels and hostels lined up for accomodation covering most budgets, and possibly some sort of pass for cheap public transport for the duration of the event.
Meanwhile,
rwrylsin and I have booked our places for the 2004 Discworld Convention. Woohoo !(don't know if we'll make it back down under for the Australian Discworld Con in 2006, but it sounds cool)
