Eastercon 2011

Empire of Earth

2011-04-25T10:50:57Z

I've put the talk I gave on Saturday on line

Empire of Earth - The evolution of Victorian and Edwardian military SF

Programme volunteers

2011-04-11T11:07:51Z

If you have volunteered to help with programme and haven't heard from me but would still like to take part then please contact me at nik.programme@gmail.com and I'll try to fit you into some items.

Programme participants?

2011-04-09T19:14:58Z

Way back in the dawn of time I volunteered for a few things on the Illustrious site - I've yet to hear if I'm actually supposed to be participating in any program items. Is there any way to find out what I'm scheduled for, if anything?

Sad news

2010-12-06T12:45:54Z

Sad news has just reached me from Belfast. Last night Al Darragh passed away. He was a fan well-known throughout Ireland and, prior to his illness, a regular attendee at conventions on the mainland.

Our thoughts and prayers are with Al's family and particularly his wife Joanne at this time.

A Book of Condolences is being held in the house. Anyone unable to attend in person can e-mail lannie@kimphieland.fsworld.co.uk who will include it on your behalf. Details of the funeral will be posted as soon as they have been finalised.

[I was asked to pass the word out to fandom, hence the posting here.]

News from TAFF

2010-12-01T11:58:34Z

News from Steve Green at TAFF:

For nearly sixty years, the TransAtlantic Fan Fund has enabled European sf fans to visit and establish contacts with North America fandom, and vice versa.

Nominations for the 2011 TAFF race (Europe > North America) must be in by 18 December and the race itself will run until 12 March 2011, with the winner attending Renovation, the 69th World SF Convention, in Reno, Nevada, 17-21 August 2011.

You can read more about the history, philosophy and rules of TAFF at www.taff.org.uk. Anyone interested in standing should contact me via stevegreen

Delay in rise in membership cost

2010-11-30T17:09:18Z

Here at Illustrious HQ we're happy to be able to announce that, thanks to some careful budgeting and a desire to help keep your costs down as far as possible, we can delay the price rise that was supposed to happen tomorrow until the end of January. The prices will therefore remain at

Adult: £55
Adult (unwaged): £30
Young Adult (under 25): £30
Junior (under 18): £20
Child (under 12): £10
Infant (under 5): £1
Apocryphal: £1

until February 1st 2011.

So if you haven't joined yet you have another two months to do so before the price goes up. You can join directly online via the website at www.illustrious.org.uk or by printing out the membership form and sending it to:

Illustrious c/o John & Fran Dowd, 4 Burnside Avenue, Sheffield, S8 9FR, England.

New hotel liaison

2010-10-22T11:50:12Z

Nik here again.

I'm happy to announce that Richard Cranshaw has agreed to take over as our hotel liaison. He will be handling our future contact with the hotel, and can be contacted at hotel@illustrious2011.org.uk.

I'd like to thank Hayley, our outgoing hotel liaison, for all the work she has put into Illustrious. We wouldn't have been able to set up the convention without her.

Eastercon Poet Laureate

2010-10-05T19:59:40Z

Nik here again.

I am delighted to announce that Illustrious has appointed its own Poet Laureate, Roz Kaveney (rozk), as a Guest of Honour.

Roz is increasingly known for her poetry - her first artistic love to which she returned after a long absence a couple of years ago. A chapbook of her THE ABIGAIL SONNETS has been available in the UK for some time, and an expanded version with other shorter poems is pending from White House in Canada. She is also well-known in sf circles as a critic - a contributing editor on the Encyclopaedia of Fantasy, editor of READING THE VAMPIRE SLAYER and BATTLESTAR GALACTICA - INVESTIGATING FLESH, STEEL AND SPIRIT, and author of SUPERHEROES and FROM ALIEN TO THE MATRIX - and as anthologist - TALES FROM THE FORBIDDEN PLANET and THE WEERDE and VILLAINS (with Mary Gentle and Neil Gaiman). Her short stories have received a reasonable amount of praise and she has yet to sell a novel...

In the mundane world, she is known as a critic of things that are not sf, as a cultural commentator, and as an activist on issues around trans, censorship and civil liberties. She is a former deputy chair of Liberty.

Roz will be taking part in a number of poetry-related items and has promised to produce some original work to celebrate the Eastercon.

An apology from the chair

2010-10-05T19:59:29Z

Nik here. I am afraid we made a mistake. I have looked at the contract and we agreed a price without VAT. As Chair, this is my fault, and I apologise for it. I have spoken to the event manager at the hotel, who has assured me that she will look into the situation of rooms being sold cheaper elsewhere but that any room sold cheaper elsewhere will not include breakfast and will require full pre-payment rather than being payable at-con. She has also assured me that they will increase the number of rooms available at the con rate for Thursday and Monday and will address the other issues that have been raised. We'll update the website to make the costs clear, and I'll be checking with the hotel later this week to find out what progress they've made.

Once again, I apologise for the confusion that my mistake has caused, and assure you that we're all working hard to try to put together a very enjoyable convention.

(EDIT: This went out to Facebook yesterday. I'm posting it here to make sure it gets out as widely as possible.)

Hotel Issues

2010-09-27T15:57:42Z

Sorry to take so long to get back to you all, but as you can realise, the relevant people have been dealing with individual queries and also talking to the hotel.

A face-to-face meeting with the hotel staff is taking place shortly. They are aware of the problems we've identified with their booking system, and we're all working to resolve them. We are also working on reducing the published room rates, but as Hayley said, our original negotiators who understood more about convention economics are both on maternity leave.

Meanwhile, I can confirm that car parking costs will be £3.00 inc vat per 24hrs.

Internet access is confusing. Gaspodex wrote a useful LJ piece about how it worked for DiscWorld http://community.livejournal.com/eastercon2011/804.html . The wifi for the public areas is run by BTOpenWorld and the hotel have no control over their pricing, so cannot reduce the rates for us. However I understand it is possible to get deals for this by purchasing in advance, and we've got someone researching this.

PLEASE NOTE - this is a duplicate of an entry on http://community.livejournal.com/2011illustrious. Comments are enabled there BUT NOT HERE to make sure that discussion is coherent and we don't miss any crucial comments.

Which is the Illustrious LJ?

2010-09-27T15:31:58Z

Sorry, this is my fault. Two LJs were set up originally for two different purposes, and I had posting access to the wrong one.

In future, the LJ community eastercon2011 http://community.livejournal.com/eastercon2011 will be for members, potential members, friends of Illustrious to talk to each other about things like room-share, travel arrangements, etc.

The LJ community 2011illustrious http://community.livejournal.com/2011illustrious is the more formal communications route, where announcements from the convention will be made. If you have comments, questions or feedback, please make them here if possible.

These announcements will be linked to from the eastercon2011 community, also from Twitter, and will be duplicated on the convention Facebook page.

I shall be monitoring all these channels on a regular basis, and am passing concerns and issues raised onto relevant members of the committee.

Thanks, and sorry again for the misunderstanding.

Hotel Bookings

2010-09-20T08:36:34Z

With apologies for the delay, Illustrious (Eastercon) 2011 is pleased to announce that hotel booking is now open.

The hotel will be handling bookings direct via this link:

http://www.hilton.com/en/hi/groups/personalized/BHXMETW-GEASA-20110422/index.jhtml?WT.mc_id=POG

PLEASE NOTE if you book directly with the hotel's regular reservation system instead of using the link, you may not get the discounts for children, also breakfast is not included in all their quoted room rates, and is charged at £20.

If you have any problems, please contact us on hotel@illustrious.org.uk

We have negotiated special convention rates, for members only, on bedrooms,drinks and food:

Single room:
£60 per person per night

Double and Twin:
£50 per person per night

plus VAT.

Under 15s accommodation is free if they are sharing with an adult. If they are in a connecting or separate room there is a 50% discount off the adult rate.

Catering for ages 0-4 is free, 5-15 is 50% off the adult rate.

Food and beverage prices will be published at a later date.

Internets at the Metropole ...

2010-08-27T21:52:32Z

So ... Currently at Discworld and have made a bit of a discovery re:internets at the Metropole which should probably be kept in mind for Illustrious next year.

Basically - wifi is ground floor (Bt Openzone) and 5th Floor executive lounge (Ibahn Wifi) only not generally available elsewhere. Rooms are wired internet. All connections are MacAddress bound.

None of the networks are interchangeable.

I.E. to use Wifi downstairs and have a connection in your room is £25 per day (£10 for the openzone in the lobby/bar/con rooms, 15 for the wired connection in the room. If you want to use wifi in the executive lounge thats another £15 a day - although there are two PC's in there which are free to use. and due to MAC address binding (yes - i know there are ways round it, thats not the point) that is the cost per device

Even the hotel staff think this is stupid and are very appologetic about it but say there are no plans to change things.

Ironically this must be more trouble to maintain than its worth. I was completely boggled when I was talking to the duty manager - its probably the most insane system i've come across in a hotel.

Illustrious - A bid for Eastercon 2011

2009-11-15T12:44:18Z

At the Novacon opening ceremony on Friday it was announced that there is at least one definite bid for Eastercon 2011 - Illustrious.

This is brought to you by a committee comprising Chris O'Shea (the_magician), Nik Whitehead (sharikkamur), John Dowd, Fran Dowd (frandowdsofa), John Harrold, David Mansfield, and Hayley Fazzani (quasi_hayley), aided and abetted by several others and would be held at the Hilton Metropole at the NEC in Birmingham (the DiscworldCon hotel).

It will have the normal wide-ranging programme (organised by Dave) but will have two themed streams - SF through the decades and Military SF.

There is a eastercon2011 community where discussions about the Eastercon 2011 (not just about the Illustrious bid) occasionally take place. The bid website is at www.illustrious.org.uk, and there is also a Facebook event (Illustrious2011) for the bid.

We are NOT taking pre-supporting memberships (it just makes the book-keeping complicated) so memberships will only be available if we win the bid at Odyssey next year. Nevertheless, if you want to get involved then please come and join the discussions on the eastercon2011. More news, ideas and discussions will occur when the rest of the bid committee get back from Novacon.

Cheers,

Nik (Co-chair)

Welcome to the Eastercon 2011 bid

2009-04-15T15:17:30Z

Hi,

this conference is for people to discuss Eastercon 2011, to offer to help with the bid and the convention organisation, to suggest programme ideas, to look for room shares and car sharing and anything else specific to Eastercon 2011 - The British National SF Convention.

If you want to discuss eastercons in general, then there's eastercon though you are welcome to post here also.