SMOFcon 29

Let me take the opportunity, as we archive the SMOFcon 29 website to smofcon.com with thanks to Laurie Mann and James Shields, to round-out the site with a final chair's report and thanks to all who helped.

The Amsterdam SMOFcon started life as an idea in the period following the Glasgow Worldcon in 2005. A number of us were keen to build on the energy of fans across Europe, and bringing SMOFcon to The Netherlands would offer the chance to exchange experience and ideas with many fans from the rest of the World. After announcing the idea and eventually settling on 2011 as the ideal year - well in advance of the 2014 London Worldcon bid, and the tenth anniversary of the York SMOFcon - Paul van Oven and I started looking for sites and we were surprised to find a suitable hotel in the most central of locations in Amsterdam, next to the main railway station, and in fact the hotel we had used as our initial meeting place to discuss the con. I was delighted with the level of support we got at the bidding session and in the end we had 110 attendees at the convention, out of 130 advanced registrations, representing over a dozen nationalities. The convention itself largely ran smoothly, breaking even financially, and with a very high level of participation, mixing nationalities, age groups and levels of conrunning experience, and generating activity which lasted long afterwards. I recall particularly the hilarious Mariehamn in 2016 presentation by Eemeli Aro, which was the spark for the eventually successful Helsinki Worldcon bid.

Congratulations to the committee of SMOFcon 30, the 2012 SMOFcon, which was selected at the Fannish Inquisition on Saturday.

The convention will be held in Philadelphia over the weekend of 30th November - 2nd December 2012.

Details at the SMOFcon 30 website.

SMOFcon 29  

2-4 December 2011

Taking advantage of the fact that so many North American SMOFs will be on this side of the Atlantic at the same time, and knowing the interest many have in ExCeL, (the proposed new Worldcon venue for London 2014), the London bid committee have organised a tour of the site on Thursday 1st December 2011, the day before SMOFcon.

A group of approximately 16 SMOFs will be touring ExCeL with the the bid co-chairs Mike Scott and Steve Cooper, meeting at 1:30pm at the reception desk at the East end of the venue, for a tour starting at 2pm.

The reception desk is on level-1 of th

It's that time of year again. We've started adding suggested programme items to the web site.

We are pleased to announce that the convention hotel, the Park Plaza Victoria Amsterdam, have extended the hotel booking deadline until 27th October. Details of how to book a room are on our Hotel page.

We encourage SMOFcon members, (and those who still intend to join), to book your hotel room before the deadline, as we cannot guarantee the convention rate thereafter.

SMOFcon 29 is pleased to announce we will run a Masterclass on the afternoon of Friday 2nd December (exact start-time to be confirmed, but after lunch). Details of the topic and how to sign up will appear on our website soon.

We are delighted that CanSMOF have offered two sponsorships of 1000 CAD to assist convention runners wishing to attend this year's SMOFcon in Amsterdam.

One is open to Canadian citizens or residents, while the other is open to any convention runner.

SMOFcon 29 is very grateful to CanSMOF for offering these scholarships, helping to make SMOFcon as inclusive as possible.

For further details, see the scholarships page.

Many SMOFcon 29 attendees will likely spend a few extra days around the convention travelling and exploring the city. Here are a few interesting recent articles that might give some  insights into possible things to do:

File 770: 'The Heart of a City, Amsterdam' by James Bacon (Page 40-44 - links to a PDF)

NY Times: '36 Hours in Amsterdam'

NY Times: 'The Dutch Way: Bicycles and Fresh Bread'

CNN: 'Schiphol airport: A day in the life'

The current list of members of SMOFcon 29 is now online and also accessible as a sub-menu under our registration page. We currently have 84 members from 10 countries!