Minicon 50 this weekend!

The Minicon blimpAs so often seems to be the case, with all of Con of the North written up, I already have another con coming. Minicon 50 is this weekend.

This isn’t the 50th anniversary of Minicon, because in early years the Mnstf fallcon was often called Minicon and there were therefore a fair number of years with two Minicons. But it’s still a nice big round number. We are going to have twice the usual number of Guests of Honor, the con will start officially on Thursday, and projected attendance is about double what it usually is — currently, we’re predicting somewhere around 1000 members.

I spent most of this last weekend creating the pocket program, and documenting the process on the Mnstf wiki, and then a part of last night getting it printed. M50 promises to be a great weekend of geeky fun. You can already see the full programming schedule on the Minicon website.

Here’s my full programming schedule:

The Art & Business of Gaming

There are many manufacturers of games, small and large. What are their art directors looking for, and how do they choose the art for their products?

Friday, 2:30 PM, Veranda 3/4

Lindsey was superb on a similar panel last year. I’m quite looking forward to this one.

My First Time

Many of us (obviously) were not at Minicon 1, but we all have our “first” Minicon – what was yours? What was it like? How has the con changed, how is it still the same?
Saturday, 5:30 PM, Veranda 3/4

It’ll be fun sharing stories of how we started with Minicon. I’m hoping it doesn’t become either “you young whippersnappers” or “regurgitating old fannish arguments part seven million and two”, but I also don’t think there’s much real danger of that.

Build a World!

Starting with some general categories (atmosphere, geography, economics, etc.), we’ll take our ideas — loopy or logical — then brainstorm an amazing world together, in just 75 minutes. Come see what materializes!
Saturday, 10:00pm Veranda 3/4

This continues to be a lot of fun. I still want to see if Build a World can be non-gonzo, but of course it’s also all about audience contributions, so I’ll go with whatever the folks there actually want.

IAIN (m) BANKS

Need we say more? An appreciation of the under-appreciated British writer we lost last year.
Sunday, 1:00pm, Krushenko’s

Why wasn’t Banks more famous in the US? He’s quite huge in the UK, from what I can tell. Maybe because he refused to come to the US, post-Iraq War. Maybe because his societies didn’t appeal to US tastes. Maybe because giant, weirdly daring space opera doesn’t appeal so much to US audiences these days. Not sure. In any case, I wish more people in US fandom were into his work. I’m not sure exactly what we’ll end up talking about on this panel, but Greg is always a great panelist, with lots of insight. I’m sure we’ll find some aspect of Banks’ work that we haven’t explored yet.

There are lots of other things I’m looking forward to at the con, including many other cool-sounding panels, some great movies and the usual gaming fun. I’ve already gotten in a game of Star Traders. Hopefully there’ll be some good Moneyducking, and there’s the aforementioned Build a World, and I’m sure there will be more unplanned stuff.

Mostly, Minicon is about hanging out with a bunch of cool folks and making our own fun. Going to Minicon isn’t about buying a “ticket”; it’s about membership. Minicon is not a place where you get passively spoon-fed entertainment by big companies and famous people. It’s a community gathering, based around the amazingness that already exists in fandom, even before media conglomerates and “content producers” decide that we are worthy of giving them money. Oops, did I rant there? Sorry.

Anyway, I’m looking forward to Minicon. Maybe see you there?


Comments

Minicon 50 this weekend! — 2 Comments

  1. re: Iain Banks
    Well some of us really liked him! In fact he was one of the GoHs at the 1990 WisCon. And yes, he did very well in the UK. I’ve assumed that his work was too thinky and maybe left-ish to go really, really big in the US markets. If only someone had made a pay-cable TV series of one of his books!

    I won’t be at Minicon, so please be sure to have some of my fun too….
    KB

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