Blog Posts and Writeups

• Chooseomatic Books: Norwescon wrapup! “Norwescon is a weird, wonderful convention, people.”
• Crime and the Forces of Evil: seriously is it wednesday already? “The Saturday night concert set – that was pretty epic.”
• Dennis R. Upkins: Norwescon Interview “So at Norwescon, Triple J and I had just finished lunch and I was in between panels so we decided to do an impromptu interview.”
• Diana Pharaoh Francis: Finally, a Norwescon report “I saw some of the masquerade costumes and many were just stunning. I would have loved to go and see more.”
• Dorkadia: Running 13th Age Demos at Norwescon “The combat was fast and furious, most of the players immediately grasped their class powers in a matter of a single round of combat. The cleric buffed, the barbarian smashed, paladin smote with impunity. Huge success.”
• Fanboy News Network: Norwescon recap “Ran Cards Against Humanity every night in the Gaming area after it went to uncensored play at 10 PM. Most memorable hand: The question was ‘What is Batman’s guilty pleasure?’ the winning card was ‘dead parents.’”
• Speculative Friction: Post Norwescon Blues “As usual, the convention rocked. The panels were awesome, the parties were fun and the crowds were awe inspiring. [...] It’s a great con with lots of great people and perks.”
• Out of the Mouths of Gamers’ Babes: Ambassador to the Norms “There are always fabulous outfits at these things, and this year was no exception. I saw a realistic Xena and a tiny Rainbow Brite, and a giant Totoro, and the YipYip Martians were back. But there was one costume that I felt was so perfectly done it deserved special mention.”
• Geek’s Dream Girl: Pointers for Panel Audiences “I had a whirlwind Norwescon this year, moderating panels and a Q&A with Lee Moyer. It was my first time moderating at a con, and my first time doing a live Q&A interview.”
• Geek Girls Rule!: Podcast #34 — Norwescon Wrap Up! “Ok, so I did Norwescon this last weekend. And this podcast talks about how it went, how much fun I had, and one or two little road bumps that were all me. So, I hope you enjoy it.”
• GeekyLibrary: Norwescon 36 “I had never been to a science fiction convention — there I said it — before this past weekend. I’m a little sad about that, I had no idea what I was missing.”
• Heroines of Fantasy: Norwescon, Seattle “…in the end I would say my experience was a qualified success. The con is GREAT with something for everyone. It has a long history and supports local writers. I will be back.”
• Iron Head Jane: NorWesCon, Dragonlance, and the Awesomeness of Fan-generated Media “If there’s one thing that I have taken away from NorWesCon this weekend, it is that fan fiction and fan art is legitimate and important, and should not be minimized.”
• Jay Lake: Still at Norwescon: fell on my face, must be having fun “My reading yesterday was Standing Room Only. That was fun. I’ve seen a lot of old friends and new and had some really good conversations.”
• Jay Lake: Norwescon and me “Yesterday was a good day. Hugo nominations, yay! Plus lots of time with friends and associates and whatnot.”
• Kevin J. Anderson’s Blog: HELLHOLE AWAKENING–Seattle, Norwescon, and Atlanta “Normally, I wouldn’t consider working the weekend as a guest speaker and panelist at a major science fiction convention to be the RELAXING part of the tour, but it was great just to stay in one place for a couple of days, unpack my suitcase, sleep in the same bed.”
• Mark Andrew Edwards: Norwescon 36 review “Some years, you have a really great Con. This was one of the better ones for me.”
• Michael Tinker Pearce and Linda Pearce: Norwescon- Survived. Barely. “All in all we reconnected with old friends, met some fantastic new ones and certainly did our budding career as writers no harm.”
• Off the Written Path: Norwescon: Roses, Onions, and Assorted Vegetation “Each year I know more people at Norwescon, and each year I make more friends and strengthen previous ones. [...] If I ever leave Seattle, I think the writing and fan community would be the thing I miss the most.”
• Red Harp Arts: Norwescon “I spent nearly all of this beautiful, Spring weekend indoors at Norwescon. [...] There were lots of interesting panels, many people in excellent costumes and a bit of good shopping.”
• Pharyngula: How I spent the last few days “People give me weird looks when I say I’m going to a con as a scientist/educator — but really, this is another example of stepping out of our comfort zones and reaching out to a different population of people…and SF people are a very receptive audience for science talks.”
• Seattle Geeky Girls: Seattle Geeky Girls Visits Norwescon 36 “From the moment we entered, we felt that we were home. There were many familiar faces as well as many new ones.”
• Suvudu: Norwescon 36 Video: Terry Brooks “While at Norwescon 36 in Seattle, WA last weekend, Terry Brooks sat down with Pierce Watters and talked about [the beginning of the Shanarra series].”
• Suburban Fantasy and Science Fiction: Norwescon I “I went to Norwescon in Seattle again this year.”
• Suburban Fantasy and Science Fiction: Norwescon II “Catherine Asaro, among other things, is a chemical physicist, a rock singer, a dance instructor, and a member of a think tank that advises the government on national security. I attended a mini-concert of hers at the convention.”
• Schrodinger’s Stories: Notes from NorWesCon: Big Press, Small Press, or Self-Publishing? Where to Publish Your Book “I had a great time at NorWesCon 2013, and took copious notes of all of the panels I attended. Over the next few weeks, I’ll let you know what I found out.”
• Schrodinger’s Stories: Notes from NorWesCon: What to Look for in a Small Press “This year’s NorWesCon featured a lot of panels that included representatives from regional small presses. With the rise of e-publishing, the role of the small press has also changed. Here are the points I took from these discussions.”
• Missing Worlds Media – The Phoenix Project: The Phoenix Project Update: Monday, April 1, 2013 “Obviously, the biggest event for us was our first ever panel which took place on Friday at the Seattle-based convention. We’re grateful to everyone who came along to spend some time with us and to find out more about what we’re trying to do.”
• These Other Realms: Norwescon 36 – Masquerade! Workshops! Awards! “I had the pleasure of attending Norwescon 36 in the Sea-Tac area of Washington state, a spare 30 minute drive from my home. It was great to discover such a rich and varied convention for fans of science fiction and fantasy right under my nose!”
• ars ludi: Norwescon 2013: GMless RPG talk “…imagine me standing in front of a room full of people, talking about GMless role-playing games for an hour. Too hard? No problem! Like magic you can just listen in as though you were there….”
• Jeremy Zimmerman: Norwescon 2013: After Action Report “All told, I had an awesome time. The volume of things to sit in and hear about was awesome, and I constantly ran into people I know that I felt comfortable around. Really the best fan convention I’ve been to this year.”

Photosets

• Jon Lavinder: Norwescon 36
• artvixn: Norwescon 2013
• corwyn1: Norwescon 36
• Handsomejimfrommaryland: Norwescon 36 in Seatac, Washington 2013
• EMP Museum: Norwescon 2013
• Xavier_Sword_of_Humakt: Norwescon 36 Thursday and Friday
• Xavier_Sword_of_Humakt: Norwescon 36 Saturday
• Thom Walls: Norwescon 36 2013-03-29
• Merchants of Deva (NPO): OPEN THE DOOR: Norwescon 2013
• Ed Matuskey: Norwescon 2013
• Ed Matuskey: Norwescon 2013 MoD Doctor Who party
• Luke Wesson: NorweCon 2013
• Dethcon: Dethcon 9: Supernatural Hunters

Official photos by the Norwescon photography team should start appearing soon — keep an eye out on our official Flickr page!

Video

And finally, here is a YouTube playlist of Norwescon 36 videos! We’ve found ten videos so far, and we’ll add more to the playlist as we come across them.

• Leave a comment on this post,
• leave a comment on our Facebook page,
• send comments via Twitter by including the #nwconion (for improvements) or #nwcrose (for kudos) hashtags,
• use the “Feedback” link that we just added to our Guidebook app with the latest update,
• or email us directly at info@norwescon.org.

We’re on the lookout for your blog posts and write-ups about your experiences at con. We’ll be posting a selection of links in a week or so, and while we’ll do our best to find as many as we can, please feel free to get in touch with us through any of the above mentioned methods with any links you might find.

We’re also looking forward to seeing this year’s convention through your eyes! Upload your photos to Flickr and add them to this year’s Norwescon 36 photo group! Our official photographs will start to appear on our Flickr and Facebook accounts in the next few weeks, after our photography crew has had time to sort through the thousands of photos they took over the course of the weekend (not to mention catch up on sleep)!

Thanks from all of us on the Norwescon 36 ConCom to all of you who attended, our volunteers, the pros and panelists, dealers and artists, the hotel, and of course, our wonderful Guests of Honor. We’ll see you again next year for Norwescon 37!

Guidebook

Norwescon has once again partnered with Guidebook to provide our online convention schedule.

For iPad, iPhone/iPod Touch, Android 2.1+, Kindle Fire, or Blackberry Playbook: Just visit this link to install the Guidebook app and download the Norwescon 36 (2013) guide!

For Blackberry or Windows phone, or other web-enabled device: Go directly to the web version of our Guidebook guide to browse through our entire schedule day-by-day! (The web version does not include custom schedules or to-do lists.)

While the interactive Guidebook will be the most up-to-date version of our schedule, we are happy to provide web-based guides as well:

Norwescon 36 Schedule

Select a day below to view the basic schedule:

Poster locations eligible for this contest are in Seattle, the eastside, and Tacoma and are managed by Keep Posted. If you see a poster display in another location that includes our Norwescon poster please submit that information too. Alternate locations will be eligible for a reward if all 250 Keep Posted locations are not found.

This contest is now closed. Good luck to all those who entered!

The Fine Print

1. All entries must be submitted by midnight of Sunday, March 24th.

2. You may enter more than once. However, only one badge ribbon will be awarded per winner.

   1. If you are the first person to enter for more than one location, you will win for only the first location. The next person to enter for each location will win the ribbon (unless they have already won for another location, at which point the next person wins…and so on).

3. Each winner will receive one (1) badge ribbon, to be distributed at a time and place of Norwescon’s choosing during Norwescon 36, March 28-31, 2013.

4. Only entries for specific locations will be accepted. In other words, printing one of the flyers on this page, slapping it on a wall, and submitting that as your entry is a no-go. (Alternate locations will be eligible for a reward if all 250 Keep Posted locations are not found.)

Back in April of 2011 – my husband Ivan and I decided we wanted to attend our very first Sci Fi convention, so he got to work on creating our costumes for the event. Ivan decided he wanted to make functional Mechanical hands and after studying how the human fingers work and taking a few lessons from a crab leg..he figured it out.

His hand was a hit at NORWESCON and within weeks, the silly little Youtube video he had created to share his awesomeness was getting thousands of views a day.

Little did we know that this would not only lead him to getting numerous orders for pairs of these mechanical hands from fellow goofballs that love to dress up and be a little crazy too, for a director of a play, a plastic version for a team of scientists at UCLA and a major Robotics company…but that one day he would get an email from a man named Rich in South Africa who was curious to see if Ivan could help him find a way to figure out the design he had been working on to restore two of the 4 fingers he had recently lost on his right hand due to a woodworking accident…after looking into a few prosthetics and researching the Xfinger design and being told it would cost him up to $10,000 (US Dollars) per finger…he knew he would never be able to afford this and wanted to design something on his own.

This was no longer a “Silly project” Ivan had been doing for a few extra bucks once in awhile…this now had purpose. It had possibilities. It could…change lives.

You can read more about this incredible project at coming up short handed, and Norwescon is proud to have such dedicated people in our membership. Congratulations and best wishes to Ivan Owen and Richard Van As!

[Katrina] Marier is the editor of Westwind, the magazine of the Northwest Science Fiction Society. Shawn just finished a multiyear stint as chair of the Northwest’s largest science-fiction convention, Norwescon….

Thousands were at the annual Norwescon here in April….

Fandom is very tolerant of differences, she said. At a convention you’ll see someone in a Star Trek uniform walking down the hallway with ladies in ball gowns, going to discuss interstellar travel.

“Some you’ll like and some not. Some you’ll agree with and some not,” she said. “You all can occupy the same space for the course of a weekend. That is very important, and we could use a lot more of that in our national discourse.”

Thank you for your patience,

Felice Nightengale, Publications and Promotions Director, Norwescon 36

Adventure TV was filming on Saturday at this year’s Norwescon 35, so we can look forward to another feature in the future!