In keeping with our current style, Progress Report 3 from SwanCon will be chopped up, rearranged slightly, and served in bite-sized chunks across a number of posts. This first post starts at the cover (minimalist, with con name at the top, brief summary of necessary information at the bottom, stylish/stylized line drawing of turtle in white on an attractive black rectangle), skips straight past the inside front cover (standard convention information, hotels, publications schedule, etc – this was one of the years where ‘child’ was defined as ‘aged 5-15’ plus extra detail ‘on 8/4/93’), and settles on page 3:
Welcome!
SwanCon 18 is coming together together quite well: the program is shaping up before our very eyes, there’s some interesting comix action planned, and the video strand should be quite off-beat. Sadly, our Programming coordinator, Sally Beasley has had to withdraw from her committee activities due to other commitments. The committee would like to take this opportunity to thank her for working so hard to help make SwanCon 18 a success.
The core committee and the subcommittees are bearing up well under the load, and we’re expecting to have the biggest Con that WA has ever seen.
The gaming subcommittee is working hard at getting prizes organised for the many and varied tournaments that will be running, so if you’re at all interested make sure that you play in at least one during the Con. At least two freeforms will be offered at SwanCon 18 – ‘Master of Xenophobia’ by Stefen Brazil who has been responsible for extremely successful freeforms at previous SwanCons, and ‘Pirates’ by Julian Ackermann which will feature (weather permitting) an authentic plank. Shadow Laser Games will be demonstrating their new Zone 3 packs, and there’ll be several organised sessions per evening.
In addition to Terry Pratchett who is our Guest of Honour, and Craig Hilton as Fan Guest of Honour, it looks like we’ll be lucky enough to have Robert Jordan join us for at least part of the weekend. We expect the following invited guests to attend: Terry Dowling, Nick Stathopoulos, Lewis Morley, Marilyn Pride, and Paul Kidd.
Memberships are currently set at $60, but are expected to rise on the 1st of January. It seems unlikely at this time that the venue will suffer overcrowding, but the Con committee have resolved to limit memberships before that nebulous point is reached.
There will be another SwanCon 19 Quiz Night in late January, organised by that paragon of questions, Gigi Boudville. She says: same place, same questions! Stay tuned for more information.
For those who know Tim and Narelle, you may enjoy hearing that during their stay in Cairo, they almost missed the earthquake. Apparently they were in a taxi, and their driver was certain that all the shuddering was a flat tyre.
SwanCon. It’s more than just a state of mind.
Have fun.
Hotel Blurb
The primary venue for SwanCon 18 is the Ascot Convention Centre in Belmont. It’s on the banks of the Swan River, on a quiet side street, just down the street from Great Eastern Highway (where there’s some fast food and so forth).
The venues are a cheerful place to be. They’ve got elbow room Shelob would enjoy, without being so enormous that you need native bearers for your trek to the video lounge.
The accomodations [sic], comfortable as they are, form two blocks overlooking the pool. One block has sweeping river views. The other doesn’t.
If you missed out on the Convention Centre rooms, you’ve only got a short walk up to the conveniently located overflow motel.
Enjoy.
and here ends page three