Michael Lee's Train of Thought

From this year's closing ceremonies at CONvergence. I'm not in it. [I haven't seen any of the things I was in yet either...]

Labels: convergence, cvg2009, youtube

One of our panels at CONvergence this year is Is our President a Geek?. Of course, one of the challenges of putting together a schedule months ahead of time is that events can pass it up.

And while Wil Wheaton may have won Paul and Storm's bracket, we now clearly have the *real* Secretary of Geek Affairs, John Hodgman:

Labels: cvg2009, geek, hodgman, politics

However, since many fans enjoy both literary and media fiction, it seems ridiculous not to pool our resources in protecting one another.

There is a very interesting article about some of the recent national SF convention failures.

As we come across our final pre-registration cut off for CONvergence, something like the above article is very sobering. Not every convention *is* run well. CONvergence, which tries to run things as professionally as possible, is still a fan-run affair that is being run for fun.

One thing that is nice today is that technology makes conventions more open -- you can find out about CONvergence by searching for Minnesota Sci Fi Convention on Google; you don't need to find out about it only by going to the right book store, or knowing the right person.

The thirteen year old kid who had his or her mind blown away by Star Trek last weekend deserves the same rich community and opportunity that the Science Fiction Community has given me.

And another piece of setting up that legacy is the very interesting copy of Argentus dealing with convention runnnig. There are some things that are Worldcon specific (which doesn't really interest me) but different sorts of advice are always good to read and take on.

And don't forget -- preregistration for CONvergence ends tomorrow!

Labels: convergence, cvg2009, fandom, scifi

It's the time of year where attention now really focuses on CONvergence in July. Events are getting scheduled, PR2 will be in the mail soon, and we get everything else going.

One of the exciting things is that we have this year is schedule.convergence-con.org. It'll help you plan your schedule for the event, and let you slice and dice the many events we have planned -- and we're going to be able to list more things than ever before.


We still have panels left unscheduled though, and you can review that list and contact programming@convergence-con.org if you have a panel that you want to sign up for.

Labels: convergence, cvg2009, fandom

I'm intrigued by 6 Ways To Utilize Twitter At Your Next Conference -- we've thought a little bit about how we could use Twitter for CONvergence recently, and one of the things that we are already encouraging is for people to tag their entries with #cvg2009, so you'll be able to search for all of those results using Twitter's search capabilities.

Labels: cvg2009, twitter

We're using a different system for CONvergence programming this year. As a part of that, we now have our list of programming items on Google Docs as a spreadsheet.

I'm aware that the google gadget is sometimes a little awkward -- so you can certainly also access it on Google directly.



All programming requests -- like if you're interested in sitting on a panel -- should go to programming@convergence-con.org

Also, I recently did a presentation about the underlying technology that I'm building for the Twin Cities Salesforce.com User Group. The slides are here:

Labels: convergence, cvg2009, google, salesforce

It's Halloween season, which is certainly a High Holiday for people that like to dress up in costumes, or attend science fiction conventions like CONvergence. So perhaps it's not surprising to see a reference to the convention show up in the St Paul Pioneer Press.

And seeing this sort of thing is exactly why we have this event -- to provide an environment that lets people do things like this, and not just for one weekend in July, but all year around.

And speaking of CONvergence....

It's official. We are going ahead with CONvergence beings a four day event permanently starting next year. We're very appreciative of all of the feedback and comments that we have -- so we can identify ways to make the four day convention as successful as possible, and make CONvergence continue to serve as a gathering point for our community.

We're looking for new concom members and volunteers -- ane one of the goals for our first concom meeting, on November 2nd, at 2:00 PM at the Sheraton Bloomington -- is to get new people engaged and involved. The organization lives and depend on excited and committed volunteers. So if you're interested, please join us.

There's a Facebook Event if you want a reminder and use Facebook.

Labels: convergence, cvg2009, fandom