Re: once upon a time, there was a con... -Reply

On Fri, 22 Nov 1996, Julia Taylor wrote:
> Speaking up from lurkerland here, this
> filking convention business seems a bit
> precipitous to me,

What? Fen, impulsive and spontaneous? Plunging perilously proximate to precipices?

Nah.

> what with trying to organise a concom already.

You'd rather we organized it *after* the con was held? (hey, maybe *that* explains why Silicon was such a disaster last year--they decided to use this principle to organize it...*teasegrin*)

I think people are mostly just checking to see if there is a potential concom, since that's the first step in forming any convention. Yes?

reply> What exactly is a filk convention?

A convention where there's a focus on filking, lots of filking, or nothing but filking, depending on who you ask.

replyI'm envisioning:

1. ongoing concerts, with sign-up sheets for the whole weekend.
2. several guests of honor (Cecilia Eng, Heather Alexander) doing one or two shows each
3. panels on songwriting, performance skills, tuning lyrics, original vs. parody songs, humor in filking, the ose motif, etc.
4. impromptu song circles springing up all over the hotel
5. a small dealer's room with instruments, music, tapes, etc.
6. each night, a bardic circle, a chaos circle, and a performer's circle
7. a "coffee-house", possibly taking over the hotel restaurant during the early morning hours.

And *that*, my friend, is my idea of a filking con. I'd go.

> How feasible would this proposed convention be?

Depends. Let's give it a shot and find out (I guarantee one thing--it'll be totally unfeasible until we have a concom, some contacts with various hotels, and some discussion with the local SF authorities wherever we decide to situate it).

reply> Would enough northwest people be interested in attending to make it work?

I'll bring up at least four people from down here, so there's 0.5% of the necessary attendees...

reply> The exact location seems a rather secondary consideration.

Oh, true, but it can't hurt to be thinking about everything from the start.  Any people want to add anything to my list of "this is a filking con" above?

Take care,

Mickey. Received on 11/22/96