Denvention!
Aug. 12th, 2008 10:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stickmakerHad fun, but it felt more like a NASFiC than a WorldCon. Saw many people I kne.w, and met some new ones, but strangely had little opportunity to just sit and talk. Only went to two panels. (Would have gone to more, but the first day there were three I wanted to see in the same slot. How do they _know_?!)
The room I had at the Crowne Plaza was okay. Bed was firm and had an assortment of pillows, and a couple were pretty good for me. Space was a bit cramped, due to layout being determined by corner of building. Bathroom was large enough, but bad sink counter design wasted much of it and toilet was just _too small_! Ethernet connection died second day, came back third, then died fourth and stayed dead. Both Ethernet and desk phone plugged into same box on wall, and both were out. Box was actually warm to touch. Reported problem to concierge who promised to have it fixed. Not only was it still out the day I left, but I had to learn on my own that the hotel also had wireless. That worked fine from when I discovered it (Saturday) to when I left (Monday). Still, wasn't in room enough to seriously miss Internet.
Facilities were a bit spread out, but not as bad as at some WorldCons I've attended. I didn't have much problem with the altitude, in spite of fighting a sinus infection. The weather was nice except for one evening of prolonged rain and another with an impressive storm. The employees were competent and mannerly, even pleasant, with one exception. Returning from lunch a small group of us discovered that the doors we had left the convention center through were no-return, even though they were not marked as such. There was an intercom, but the guard refused to buzz us through, even though one guy had a pacemaker and another was using a cane. We had to walk about half a klick to find doors which would actually open from the outside, back around at the front of the building. We passed several doors which had automatic-open buttons for the disabled, but though the mechanism was on and made a noise, the door was locked. I think that's a violation of several access laws.
The facilities were much bigger than we needed. I've heard the suggestion that WorldCons need to move away from major cities and focus on mid-sized ones. They would still have facilities plenty big enough for us and would probably be cheaper, both for the con and the attendees.
The room I had at the Crowne Plaza was okay. Bed was firm and had an assortment of pillows, and a couple were pretty good for me. Space was a bit cramped, due to layout being determined by corner of building. Bathroom was large enough, but bad sink counter design wasted much of it and toilet was just _too small_! Ethernet connection died second day, came back third, then died fourth and stayed dead. Both Ethernet and desk phone plugged into same box on wall, and both were out. Box was actually warm to touch. Reported problem to concierge who promised to have it fixed. Not only was it still out the day I left, but I had to learn on my own that the hotel also had wireless. That worked fine from when I discovered it (Saturday) to when I left (Monday). Still, wasn't in room enough to seriously miss Internet.
Facilities were a bit spread out, but not as bad as at some WorldCons I've attended. I didn't have much problem with the altitude, in spite of fighting a sinus infection. The weather was nice except for one evening of prolonged rain and another with an impressive storm. The employees were competent and mannerly, even pleasant, with one exception. Returning from lunch a small group of us discovered that the doors we had left the convention center through were no-return, even though they were not marked as such. There was an intercom, but the guard refused to buzz us through, even though one guy had a pacemaker and another was using a cane. We had to walk about half a klick to find doors which would actually open from the outside, back around at the front of the building. We passed several doors which had automatic-open buttons for the disabled, but though the mechanism was on and made a noise, the door was locked. I think that's a violation of several access laws.
The facilities were much bigger than we needed. I've heard the suggestion that WorldCons need to move away from major cities and focus on mid-sized ones. They would still have facilities plenty big enough for us and would probably be cheaper, both for the con and the attendees.
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no subject
Date: 2008-08-12 03:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-21 09:11 pm (UTC)Denvention 3 appears to have been about the same size as ConAdian in Winnipeg in 1994; however, I don't think the convention seemed so much like a pea in a barrel because we used the entire convention center and downtown hotel space. Indeed, I put ConAdian on my top five all-time best Worldcons, and not just because I was deputy Chairman.
But transportation was a real challenge. Winnipeg is nobody's hub, and there were apparently a lot of people who gave up on coming simply because they couldn't get a flight. And Northwest, ignoring advice on overbooking, had to bump lots of people for several days post-con. This worked well for me because I got an extra day in Winnipeg, a free hotel room, and a $400 tragvel voucher, but was probably more of an inconvenience for others.
Worldcons work best when they are the only event and when they're using all of the avaialble space, or at least appear to be doing so. Heck, if we'd been in the "front" halls up closer to the entrance, it would probably have seemed better even with the same attendance.
I'm starting to think that, much as I hate crowding and queues, that we actually need to book slightly less space than we really need because unless there are crowds and queues, people will think the event wasn't successful. I hear that, for instance, anime cons are happy to see long queues, and that their members have "line fandom" and will even queue up for the Dealers Room. Worldcon members have tended to regard long queues as failures and designed to try and avoid them whenever possible, with the unexpected side effect that people assume that nobody is attending because "of course there will be lines" if the event is popular.