• First off, our full Schedule of Events is posted! Every panel and event scheduled for Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday of the convention is now ready for your eager little eyes. Get your pens and highlighters ready, download the grids, print off the webpages, and plan your convention weekend! We will also be using the Guidebook mobile app again this year and expect to have it available for you soon!

• Along with the full schedule, we now also have our nwcMUSIC lineup, including workshops and the full concert lineup, complete with previews from the artists. There are also more nwcMUSIC panels in the daily schedule listings, so there will be plenty of ways to get your music geeking on!

• And finally, registration for the Norwescon Masquerade is now open! This year we are handling Masquerade registration entirely online through this website, and costumers may sign up until 11:30am on Saturday of the convention (April 19).

That covers this update. One month and counting!

For example, we have the overnight play opportunities known as Open Filk, starting each night at 11pm. Those can go on for hours and hours and hours, particularly if they’re going well. If late nights aren’t your thing, we have the daytime instructional circle at 1pm on Friday, for two hours.

We have the 2pm Saturday hands-on “Find Your Instrument” workshop – where you actually get shown instruments and a shot at playing with them, courtesy our musical pros. We have Cascadia’s Got Talent!, our terrible talent show, where you get up and strut your stuff in front of our panel of celebrity judges, some of whom may be sober! (You just never know!)

We have KidsFilk on Friday afternoon, at 5:30, for all the kids out there who want a shot at sing-along. And last year’s experimental workshop, Introduction to the Irish Session, returns on Sunday for extra time to round off the set. You can find a PDF of some popular Irish tunes – for advance practice, if you can read music – downloadable here (1.3MB .pdf).

Plus, we have panels! What the Frak is Filk? introduces you to the oldest extant form of geekmusic. Constrained Writing: Writing in Hard Mode is about creativity and simulating it through restriction. Making Art with Someone Else’s Art speaks to collaboration and derivative works of all kinds. And we have not one, but two panels on recording at home – and on a fannish budget: Home Recording I (Saturday) and II (Sunday).

Really, that only scratches the surface. To dig deeper, check out the official programming site, right here!

Nerdcore comes out of gamer and internet culture. It was ushered in by acts like MC Hawking and MC Frontalot, who gave it its name. This is hiphop, but hiphop about hobbits, about robots taking over the world, about videogames – basically, about geek life. It’s the kind of musical poetry we all would write, if we weren’t too introverted to speak in front of a crowd.

And that’s not to forget the rest of our concert series this year, which we think is exceptional.

Thursday has Rai Kamishiro doing her J-pop stylings, Jonny Nero Action Hero’s first appearance at Norwescon with his chiptunes rock, and nwcMUSIC regular Electric Children’s high-energy chiptunes dance music. Friday evening: Hello, the Future! sings about the intersections of fandom and reality, Leannan Sidhe have their long-awaited CD release show, and Starlight returns with a new lineup to bring their filk-rock to the foreground again.

And Saturday – oh man, Saturday is kicked off by Filk Hall of Famer Steve Savitzky, followed by the one-and-only HeyLasFas! and his pony progrock. Then Cascadian favourite Alexander James Adams gives one of his very limited number of concerts this year, and we finish off with ukelele-playing geekmusic favourite Molly Lewis, backed by special guests Vixy & Tony, at 10pm.

Our performers have samples you can play of their music, all collected on the Norwescon website! Check those out right here!

And see you at the shows!

Guests in this pilot episode: Nicole Dieker of HELLO, THE FUTURE!, Nerdcore Monstarrs Death*Star and Klopfenpop, J-pop performer Rai Kamishiro, and filker Stephanie Weippert of Starlight. Find the pilot episode here!

If there’s interest, they’ll make more. They already have enough material for episode two, so drop by and listen in!