A Tourist's Tale: NADWcon 2011
Going west across the ocean, your intrepid Chairman visited a ...
Read more...
Latest post of 2011-06-12: Is that reservations? We'd like to book a convention...
Posted by Naomi Jacobs on June 12, 2011, 10:08 p.m.
What exactly is involved in getting the Discworld Convention rolling? The Hotel Team's perspective...
So now that our membership quota is over half full, we thought we would bring you up to date on some of the things your committee have been up to since August last year!
Your Hotel Liaison Team (Naomi and Beki) are back again for the 2012 Discworld Convention and have been working hard behind the scenes for the last 9 months or so along with the rest of the committee. Our first priority? To make sure we have somewhere to stage the convention! Once that’s sorted, we need to make sure that you are all comfortable and well fed and watered during the weekend.
Ok, so what exactly have we been doing? After taking all your feedback from the 2010 Discworld Convention, we had a debrief meeting with the Hilton where we discussed what went right and what went wrong. We had a list of changes that we wanted to agree to before we agreed to use them as a venue again. We also looked some alternatives should we decide to move locations. But there are only so many hotels in the United Kingdom that are large enough to host us! We have lots of very specific requirements which include a room big enough for all members to be in at once for the main events, lots of smaller rooms for other fun things to happen in, easy access by air, rail and road (don’t forget we have members from all over the world!) and most importantly, staff who won’t run screaming when a barbarian orders a drink or someone painted blue asks for extra towels.
As you know we are indeed returning to the Hilton; they satisfied us they'd try harder this time around, and the contract was agreed and signed by our esteemed Chairman Brian earlier this year. There was lots of to-ing and fro-ing to get all the fine details worked out and down in black and white*, including what we hope you will agree is an excellent discount on bedrooms of all types during the weekend and also on drinks bought at the bar. All of these things, and many other strange and arcane non-hotel plannings, were discussed and agreed at meetings of the Committee, held both in person and via mystical devices.**
Other more boring things also had to be agreed, such as financial arrangements and details of the conference rooms we can use. The Hilton was pretty impressed with us last time, so we have also managed to procure a few extra function rooms for our wonderful Programme Team to have their way with. We also have a few other changes and surprises in store for you all next year, some of which you may be hearing about over the coming months. Some of these changes might just be related to our theme for 2012…
So, what’s next? We still have a long way to go until August 2012 and have a lot of work to keep us busy! One of the most important things we will be sorting out is the special menus and drink to be consumed at the convention. We’ll also be working in conjunction with the Gala Dinner team on the oh-so-onerous task of meal tastings. Maybe this year’s Gala team will let us come along too? Please…
*we wanted some small print in octarine but the hotel wasn’t convinced
**Internet relay chat
