About a week and a half again, as I try to get back on a regular schedule after wrapping up Worldcon. And even this is getting posted a day late and backdated, because I had some Worldcon work come up yesterday evening that I had to pay attention to. Even when Worldcon is done, Worldcon isn’t done….
The past week really was about just getting back into the regular routine after vacation. Work was busy but uneventful, and at home, we were just relaxing and trying to stay as cool as we could during a late summer heat wave.
We did spend a day at the Point Defiance Zoo this past Sunday, which is always a fun thing to do, especially when they have a lot of new youngsters to see!
📸 Photos
The baby tapir isn’t a tiny tapir anymore, but it’s still quite cute, and one of my wife’s favorites.Pedro the penguin chick is almost the same size as the rest, but is still more of a silvery tone without the traditional black and white coloring.I got these anemone just as clouds of food was pumped into the tank; I love the otherworldly, alien look that I got by chance.Playing with long exposures and water, and like the way the running water almost looks like frozen ice.
I don’t know exactly when this happened, but at some point in the not-too-distant past, Google Docs has started including accessibility tags in downloaded PDFs. And while not perfect, they don’t suck!
📚 Reading
Got through a few books, making up for the lack of reading during Worldcon.
This week’s link list includes some that I found during Worldcon week, but as I didn’t include a link list there, they get rolled into this week’s post.
Matt Wedel at Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week: Review: Dougal Dixon’s The New Dinosaurs, 2025 edition: “The New Dinosaurs is a stone classic, one of the foundational documents of speculative evolution, and almost four decades on it still has the power to delight, astonish, and provoke.”
How to Leave Substack: “You Should Probably Leave Substack. Unfortunately, Substack willingly platforms, and allows bad actors to monetize, hate speech and misinformation.”
Mike Montiero: How to not build the Torment Nexus: “You cannot keep your soul intact while building the Torment Nexus. The Torment Nexus is, by definition, a machine that brings torment onto others. It destroys souls. And a soul cannot take a soul and remain whole. It will leave a mark. A memory. A scar.”
John Scalzi: Poking the Discourse Bear Re: “Classic” Science Fiction: “I’m 56 now, and if you’re recommending the same science fiction books to a ten-year-old today that would have been recommended to me when I was a ten-year-old — and were old and kinda dated even then — I think you should seriously reconsider recommending science fiction books to young readers.”
Tactile Maps Automated Production (TMAP): “TMAP is a screen reader-friendly tool for creating tactile street maps. Map files can be visually previewed, downloaded or emailed, then are ready to emboss.”
Olav Rokne and Amanda Wakaruk at the Unofficial Hugo Book Club Blog: Hot Take: The Abstraction of Science Fiction: “The impact of technological changes on the consumption of speculative fiction should not be understated. We think its impacts have brought a broader public under the wing of fandom, prompting inevitable and uncomfortable splits within the subculture. Much as technological advances in the early 20th Century inspired a reactionary movement among painters and labour writ large, similar technological advances in the past 30 years have been at play in the formation of a reactionary movement amongst some groups of speculative fiction creators.”
Joshua Barnes at the Sydney Review of Books: Just a Little Longer: “Why did books start being divided into chapters? Joshua Barnes reviews Nicholas Dames’ history of literary segmentation, a study that slices through and pauses over what chapters have always told us about the times we live in.”
Contrast Grid: Creates a color grid with contrast ratios based on colors you input.
Anthology of dark, noir-ish fiction inspired by the music (and memories) of the ’90s alternative scene. My favorites were Veronica Schanoes’s “Wendy, Growing Up”, Alex Jennings’s “We’ve Been Had”, Brian Francis Slattery’s “Never Let Me Down”, Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s “Superstition”, and Cyan Katz’s “The Show Must Go On”.
Two additional notes: This is the debut publication for Cyan, whom I’ve known since we were both running around in the 90’s alternative scene in Anchorage, Alaska, and I’m thrilled for them; and I’m sorely tempted to make a playlist/”mixtape” of the inspirational tracks for all the stories in this anthology.
I don’t know exactly when this happened (my best guess is maybe sometime in April, based on this YouTube video; if you watch it, be aware that the output seems to have improved since it was made), but at some point in the not-too-distant past, Google Docs has started including accessibility tags in downloaded PDFs. And while not perfect, they don’t suck!
For PDFs to be compatible with assistive technology and readable by people with various disabilities, including but not at all limited to visually disabled people who use screen readers like VoiceOver, JAWS, NVDA, and ORCA, PDFs must include accessibility tags. These are not visible to most users, but are embedded in the “behind the scenes” document information, and define the various parts of the document. Assistive technology, rather than having to try to interpret the visual presentation of a PDF, is able to read the accessibility tags and use those to voice the document, assist with navigation, and other features.
However, until recently, Google Docs has not included this information when exporting a PDF using the File > Download > PDF Document (.pdf) option. PDFs downloaded from Google Docs, even if designed with accessibility features such as headings, alt text on images, and so on, were exported in an inaccessible format (as if they had been created with a “print to PDF” function). The only way around this was to either use other software to tag the PDF or to export the document as a Microsoft Word .docx file and export to PDF from Word.
But that’s no longer the case! I first realized this a couple months ago when I was sent a PDF generated from Google Docs and was surprised to see tags already there. I’ve recently had the chance to dig into this a little bit more, and I’m rather pleasantly surprised by what I’m seeing. It’s not perfect, but it doesn’t suck.
Important note
I’m not a PDF expert! I’ve been working in the digital accessibility space for a bit over three years now, but I’m learning more stuff all the time, and I’m sure there’s still a lot I don’t know. There are likely other people in this space who could dig into this a lot more comprehensively than I can, and I invite them to do so (heck, that’s part of why I’m making this post). But I’m also not a total neophyte, and given how little information on this change I could find out there, I figured I’d put what knowledge I do have to some use.
Testing process
Very simple, quick-and-dirty: I created a test Google Doc from scratch, making sure to include the basics (headings, descriptive links, images with alt text) and some more advanced bits (horizontal rules, a table, a multi-column section, an equation, a drawing, and a chart). I then downloaded that document as a PDF and dug into the accessibility tags to see what I found. As I reviewed the tags, I updated the document with my findings, and downloaded a new version of the PDF with my findings included (338 KB .pdf).
Findings
More details are in the PDF, but in brief:
Paragraphs are tagged correctly as <P>.
Heading are tagged correctly as <H1> (or whatever level is appropriate).
Links are tagged correctly as a <Link> with a <Link - OBJR> tag. Link text is wrapped in a <Span>, and the link underline ends up as a non-artifacted <Path>.
Images are tagged correctly as a <Figure> with alt text included. However, images on their own lines end up wrapped inside a <P> tag and are followed by a <Span> containing an empty object (likely the carriage return).
Lists are pretty good. If a <LI> list item includes a subsidiary list, that list is outside of the <LBody> tag, and I’m not sure if that’s correct, incorrect, or indifferent. Additionally, list markers such as bullets or ordinals are not wrapped in <LBL> tags but are included as part of the <LBody> text object. However, this isn’t unusual (I believe Microsoft Word also does this), and doesn’t seem to cause difficulties.
Tables are mostly correct, including tagging the header row cells with <TH> if the header row is pinned (which is the only way I could find to define a header row within Google Docs). However, the column scope is not defined (row scope is moot, as there doesn’t seem to be a way to define row header cells within Google Docs; the table options are fairly limited).
Horizontal lines are properly artifacted, but do produce a <P> containing an empty object (presumably the carriage return, just as with images).
Using columns didn’t affect the proper paragraph tagging; columned content will be read in the proper order.
Inserted drawings and charts are output as images, including any defined alt text.
Equations are just output as plain text, without using MathML, and may drop characters or have some symbols rendered as “Path” within the text string. STEM documents will continue to have issues.
Conclusion
So, not perfect…but an impressive change from just a few months ago, and really, the output doesn’t suck! For your basic, everyday document, if you need to distribute it as a PDF instead of some other more accessible native format, PDFs downloaded from Google Does now seem to be a not-horrible option. (My base recommendation is still to distribute native documents whenever possible, as they give the user agency over the presentation, such as being able to adjust font face, size, and color based on their needs. However, since PDFs are so ubiquitous, it’s heartening to see Google improving things.)
If you’ve ever struggled with writing alt text for images, especially for photos that seem difficult to describe, here are six excellent tips from a visually impaired person, posted to Mastodon by @hello@makary.online:
Tell me about the colours, because of all the people who need an alt text, some of us see a little bit, or we used to, so we know what colours are. Even those of us who were born blind, we know intellectually what green is and that it’s the colour of grass, and leaves, and people usually bring it up in the context of life, and hope, and so on. Just because you haven’t seen an atom doesn’t mean that the concept is unthinkable for you, right?
I know what shapes and textures are, if you tell me that something is smooth, I know what smooth is, if you tell me that something is made of cloth, I know how that feels, if you tell me it has sharp edges, I know how sharp edges feel and how they are different from soft, rounded corners.
Give me the context. If it is a character from a book or a series, tell me their name and the title, maybe I know them! I listen to audiobooks and series all the time! If it’s a comic and the people interacting are a couple, it is important, and means something else than if they are siblings, or a parent with a child, or an owner and their dog. If someone on the photo makes an awkward or unhappy face, or grins like crazy, that’s information that helps me get it.
Give me vibes. Describe it to me the way you see it. If you think the drawing of a doll is creepy, say ‘it seems creepy to me’. If the picture of a sunrise makes you feel at peace, tell me ‘It looks really peaceful to me’. Tell me how it makes you feel, be evocative, because that’s what experiencing stuff is, you know, experiencing. If you don’t feel sure about it, also tell me. ‘It feels off and eerie for some reason, but I can’t put my finger on it’ is a very interesting description.
Be a person. AI image descriptions not only sometimes get stuff wrong, but also miss all the context. A robot will not know which part of the picture is important. I am not a robot, neither are you. Just think about ‘how would I describe it to a friend who cannot see it for whatever reason’ and do that. You are not my external eyes, because that’s not possible, you are a person describing stuff to me.
Do as much or as little as you can. You don’t have to write an essay about every meme. Write as much or as little as you can, have time and feel comfortable with. If you give a short or a bad description, I can see that, and that’s what happens in life lol. But if you don’t put ANY description. the whole thing that you thought was important enough for you to share, doesn’t exist at all for me and people like me, and that’s just low-key sad.
Ordered this just after it won the Best Graphic Novel Hugo award this year. The combination of choose-your-own-adventure plotting and Lower Decks humor works really well. Lots of humor and various Trek callbacks, but with some surprisingly dark moments as well, all leading to a fittingly Trek-ish end. Much fun!
My favorites this month were “Missing Helen” by Tia Tashiro, “The Walled Garden” by Fiona Moore (another of her excellent Morag stories), “Welcome to Kearney” by Gary Kloster, and “Hunter Harvester” by Bam Bruin.
Deviating from the format this time, because this was Worldcon week! Which means this post will actually cover a bit over a week, and that it makes more sense to go day-by-day than the usually subject summary blocks. So! What did I do this past week?
Worldcon!
So, so much….
(This one is going to be long and photo-heavy.)
Monday was packing and putting the final touches on prepping to be away for a week, making sure the house was clean and ready for our eventual return. Necessary, but not the most exciting part.
Time to go! Normally we’d light rail our way to downtown Seattle, but this time we had enough luggage that we decided to use Lyft instead.
Our traditional kicking-off-vacation selfie.
We got to the hotel about noon, expecting to have to drop our luggage off until check-in time at 4 p.m., but they were able to check us in right away, which was great! We ended up on the 11th floor, with a nice view of downtown Seattle (though on the wrong side of the building to see the convention center).
The view from our room. Fun fact: I used to work in the basement of the building visible on the far left, when I was running a FedEx Kinko’s print shop there (before FedEx finally dropped the Kinko’s name…and I used to work for Kinko’s up in Anchorage, before FedEx bought them out).
We started with some food shopping at Whole Foods to make sure we had some reasonably healthy options in our hotel room, then headed over to the convention center to get our badges. Once we had those, it was up to the exhibit hall, so I could set up the display I was responsible for (about the Philip K. Dick award ceremony held at Norwescon each year) and drop off some material for another display that I have been assisting with (about the 1961 Seacon, the last Worldcon held in Seattle).
I hadn’t really realized just how many posters we had until I saw them all stacked up on that push cart. Thanks to my wife for this and the other photos of me doing things throughout this post!The only way to have any hope of displaying the posters was to put them both on the easels and on the floor leaning against the legs of the easels.Even doubling up, we had the posters stacked three and four deep, so I came through every day of the con and rotated the stacks so that all the posters were shown at least once.
Once my setup was done, it was back to the hotel with us. We had some dinner from the food we’d picked up earlier, and then my wife settled in for an evening on her own, and I walked from our hotel down to the Seattle Center’s Climate Pledge Arena to meet up with some friends and see Nine Inch Nails.
I’m wearing a shirt which I haven’t actually worn in 15 or 20 years, as it was getting too worn out to wear regularly. It dates from the mid-’90s; here’s what I wrote about it sometime before 1996: “A shirt created by Robin the Mad Photographer, one of alt.music.nin‘s regular denizens. The front is a collage of Reznor industrial heaters, with “hey, trent…is it me, or is it hot in here?” below. The back says, “alt.music.nin burning this whole world down.” Very cool, only available through Robin on the ‘net. According to a note I got from Robin along with the shirt, this is only one of two reznor heater shirts in Anchorage…and the other belongs to her sister! Woo…”
Now, friends and long-time readers may know that I’ve been a nin fan since shortly after pretty hate machine came out. However, this was the first chance I’d had to see them…and it was absolutely worth the thirty-something (oof) year wait.
We were way up in the stands, but still had an excellent view.
I’m not quite the rabid fan I used to be, having drifted away a bit over the years, and the set list was great for my tastes — lighter on more recent stuff (The Fragile and on), and heavy on the Broken/The Downward Spiral era, while still including really recent stuff like “As Alive As You Need Me To Be” from the upcoming TRON sequel, and of course, pretty hate machine classics.
More of the show.
I’m really hoping that there’s an official recording of the show released at some point, or that one of the many audience-shot recordings showing up on YouTube have good audio. While the whole show was good, they did a heavily reworked and modernized version of “Sin” that was incredible and that I’d love to add to my collection.
This wasn’t meant to last. This was for right now.
The show ended, I walked my friends to their car, and then walked back up the hill to our hotel, had some late night cake with my wife, and it was time for bed. (Did I mention that this was on one of Seattle’s occasional 90º+ days? Well, I know I hadn’t mentioned that, but now I have. Oof!)
Wednesday was day one of Worldcon, and it set the trend for the rest of the con, where I spent the morning tucked away in the Publications office making sure that the website schedule was up to date with the latest changes and that the daily ‘zine was uploaded. Once that was done…well, it was time for lunch, so back to the hotel we went for food and an afternoon nap.
The Seacon 1961 display.
After the nap, we went back to the convention center for a bit, and I found time to stop by the Seacon 1961 exhibit. This was a lot of fun to see completely put together. The whole thing started after I was asked to write a short article about the 1961 Seacon for our program book. After I turned in my copy along with a list of sources that I’d used, one of our editors realized that we were already in contact with Dr. Mary Cummins, who works at U. C. Riverside, home of the Eaton Collection of Science Fiction and Fantasy. We reached out to her, and she spent much of the next few weeks curating an incredible collection of Seacon memorabilia for this display. From reproductions of attendee badges from F.M. and Elinor Busby, the Seacon program book, recollections of the convention, and much more, to original items like a surviving copy of Hugo award-winning fanzine Who Killed Science Fiction, an Analog magazine with the Poul Anderson’s Hugo-winning short story “The Longest Voyage”, and even Anderson’s Hugo award for that story (his first Hugo) loaned to us by his daughter, Astrid Anderson Bear, Mary did an incredible job finding all of this and curating the exhibit. Many thanks to Mary and Seattle Worldcon editor Ella Kliger for their work on this and allowing me to help inspire and participate!
The Amazing Stories magazine and the Hugo are the actual items; the copy of A Canticle for Liebowitz is a reproduction cover jacket.
Soon it was time for dinner, and then we headed over to the Sheraton Grand, home of Worldcon’s After Dark evening and nighttime programming, so I could set up for the opening night dance. I’ve been doing Norwescon’s Thursday night dances for a few years, so it seemed pretty natural for me to do Worldcon’s Wednesday night dance — I get another chance to relive my DJing days, I have the rest of my evenings free to attend other things, and my ego is fine with taking on one of the less attended dances. Setup was smooth (props to the team from Encore that handled our staging, lights, and event A/V needs), and about ten minutes after walking in, I was ready to go, with speakers making the right thumpy noises and the video screen behind me showing my graphic setup. I may not have the busiest dances, but I do have fun doing what I can to make sure I’ve got a good looking custom setup!
I’m really happy with my video backdrop. The main video in the background is a collection of sci-fi looking video loops I found. Layered over that at the bottom left is my DJ Wüdi logo, the Seattle Worldcon 2025 logo, and the QR code to allow people to send in requests. On the bottom right (partially obscured in this photo) is a cute “chibi” drawing of me in my kilt, standing with one leg up on a box, next to a penguin. Lil’ me is wearing a black t-shirt, with images that randomly change every 15 seconds. The graphics overlaid at the top are all pulled from the djay Pro software that I use, allowing me to display the cover art (which rotates as if on a turntable) and live audio waveforms for whatever songs are active, and the title and artist for the currently playing track displayed just under that.
People showed up right when the music started (sure, it was three to start with, but you’ve gotta start somewhere, and they went right to the dance floor), and I was able to keep a reasonably decent night going until just after midnight, when I decided I was tired enough to make my apologies to the five people left and call things done for the night. I had fun, and I got a number of nice comments that night and then off and on through the rest of the weekend from others, so I’d certainly call it a successful night.
Dance! Dance for me!
I did make some changes to my setup for this dance, and after reviewing how things went, have some ideas to adjust them for next year’s Norwescon (assuming I get asked back to DJ again, of course). I’m in the habit of creating some way of letting people send in requests before the dance, so I can be sure to have the right music on hand for the night. For this dance, I used the Lime DJ service, which on the whole, worked great — it’s entirely web-based, allowed people to send in all sorts of requests beforehand, and then on the night I locked it down so people could only request songs that I had with me, which they could do from a QR code I had printed on flyers scattered around the room. However, I found that I ended up with a 250+ song, 14-hour list of requests for a scheduled six-hour dance that only ended up going for four hours, and I had no real way of knowing if any of the people that sent requests in beforehand were actually there. It also made it difficult to see when new requests were added in the moment, since the list was so long. Next time, I’ll split the event into two forms: one for before the dance to collect “I’d like to be able to request this” suggestions, and one for at the dance, so I can more easily keep track of what’s actually being requested in the moment.
Additionally, Lime DJ allows people to vote up or down on other people’s requests. Up I’m fine with (“more people want to hear this, I should play it soon”); but voting someone else’s request down just seems like a dick move. I’m going to send in a feature request asking that it be possible to allow up-voting but disallow down-voting.
As always, I recorded my set so you can listen to all four hours of it if you’d like! It’s not perfect (they never are), it’s a bit poppier and less EMB/goth/angst-y than many of the sets I record for myself, and hopefully people enjoy popping it on in the background from time to time.
The first part of Thursday was much the same as the first part of Wednesday: Most of my time was spent in the publications office, making sure the schedule was up to date and getting the daily ‘zine remediated and uploaded, with breaks for food and afternoon nap time.
The evening presented two things that we were interested in seeing: The Head!!! That Wouldn’t DIE! and the masquerade ball and late-night dance.
Before the show started and during intermission, they played trailers for cheesy B-movies.
The Head!!! That Wouldn’t DIE! was a lot of very silly fun. It’s a musical send-up of the early ’60s sci-fi/horror B-movie The Brain (or Head) That Wouldn’t Die, and was a blast. A minimal stage enhanced by a video screen to provide virtual sets and a hilariously effective car crash scene, and lots of clever lines and laughs throughout. I don’t know if it will be playing anywhere locally or otherwise anytime soon, but if you happen to get a chance to see it, go forth and enjoy!
We may have missed the masquerade ball, but we were dressed for it and looked great!
The one minor downside was that the play ran longer than we expected, so by the time we got over to the Sheraton ballroom, the masquerade ball had wrapped up. But it was only a few minutes of changeover before DJ #CSharp got the late-night dance going, and we stuck around there until a bit after midnight. Besides, we were all dressed up for the evening’s festivities, so we had to spend some time out and socializing before going to bed!
The first part of Friday was much the same as the first part of Wednesday and Thursday: Most of my time was spent in the publications office, making sure the schedule was up to date and getting the daily ‘zine remediated and uploaded, with breaks for food and afternoon nap time.
Best part of Friday morning: Taking a moment to sit out on the main staircase by the windows, when I heard, “…Woody?!?” Months ago my old friend Cyan had mentioned that they’d be at Worldcon, but in all the run-up, I’d totally forgotten, so this was an incredibly fun reunion moment. We’ve known each other for 30-some years, since we were both running around in the ’90s alternative scene up in Anchorage, and it had been probably at least 15 years since we’d crossed paths in the real world. We each had Things What Needed To Get Done, so it was a brief hello, but we figured we’d have more chances to catch up later on in the convention.
So glad I’m still in touch with this wonderful person.
Friday night was the Masqeurade and John Scalzi’s dance. Though we’d originally planned to go to both, my wife had hit a bit of convention overload (lots of people, and we’re normally in bed at 8 p.m. and asleep by 9, so pushing past midnight for several nights in a row was taking its toll), so she took an evening enjoying a quiet hotel room on her own and I went off to the Sheraton on my own. I spent about an hour up at one of the room parties for the release of a ‘zine (Billions vs. Billionaires) and anthology (120 Murders: Dark Fiction Inspired by the Alternative Era) that Cyan had pieces in, and got to spend about an hour chatting and catching up with them more thoroughly than our earlier drive-by encounters had allowed, which was wonderful. Hopefully it won’t be another 15 years before we get to do that again! Eventually, I wandered down to Scalzi’s dance, found some friends, hung out, danced, and then made it back to my hotel to fall asleep just a bit before midnight.
Thanks to Michelle for this great shot of me and Crystal chatting during the dance!
The first part of Saturday was much the same as the first part of…well, you get the idea by now. :)
Conventions are getting more used to considering the physical accessibility of their hotels and convention centers, but how are we doing with digital accessibility? Ensuring that websites and web applications, email marketing, and distributed documents are set up to be compatible with assistive technology keeps our members with disabilities included throughout the year. Learn about the basics of document accessibility and get a grounding of what your publications and marketing volunteers should be aware of in order to make sure your convention’s materials are accessible to everyone. Handout: Digital Accessibility Basics for Conventions (407 KB .pdf) or Digital Accessibility Basics Google Drive folder with more material.
Even though every room had its own captioning display (not visible in this shot), I made sure that I provided my own on-screen captions as well.
Since digital accessibility is my day job, I’ve been working on improving the accessibility of electronic materials for both Norwescon and the Seattle Worldcon, and this presentation was part of that outreach project. I go over the basics of why digital accessibility is important, give a brief demonstration of the NVDA screen reader, and then go over some of the basics of creating accessible documents. I think the presentation went well; only a few people were there, but those that were there that were interested and engaged, with good questions and comments. While it would have been nice if more conrunners had joined, this is only the second time I’ve done this presentation in the con environment (the first being last winter’s SMOFcon), and I know that more outreach along these lines is needed — and hey, it wasn’t an empty room, so I’ll still count it as a success!
I even had a good few minutes of post-presentation questions from the attendees afterwards.
Saturday evening, of course, was the Hugo awards ceremony and another chance to play dress-up! We found a group of friends to wait in line with and sit with (though we did get split across a couple rows), and had a good time at the ceremony.
We looked great!Thanks to Jon for this photo of my wife, me, Crystal, Eric, Teya, and Zerelina as we waited in line.
The ballroom looked great, and on the whole, as an audience member there in the moment, felt like it went pretty well. That said, there were a few hiccups, most egregious being that though most nominees with a large list of team members had their full team read out, the team for khōréō, which had a lot of non-Western names, was just clumsily read as “the khōréō team”…and apparently, this was the second time this happened to them. In an otherwise good ceremony, this stood out to me in the moment as an unfortunate choice. Should the khōréō team be nominated again in the future, I hope they get the full recognition they deserve, just as the rest of the group nominees did.
The stage shortly before the ceremony began.
The highlight for me, of course, was seeing Star Trek get its first Hugo award in 30-some years, for the Star Trek: Lower Decks episode “The New Next Generation”…and then just a little later, its second of the night, for the Star Trek: Lower Decks choose-your-own-adventure style graphic novel, Warp Your Own Way! Star Trek has often been nominated for awards but rarely wins, and to have it win twice in one night, and for its half-hour animated comedy incarnation (which really is both excellent comedy and excellent Star Trek) was a real treat.
Hosts K. Tempest Bradford and Nisi Shawl, Seanan McGuire, Catherine McManamon, Cecilia Eng, and musical guest of honor Alexander James Adams opened the ceremony with a performance of “Down the Hugo Road”, a filk parody of “Down the Witches Road” from Agatha All Along.
After the Hugo awards, it was back over to the Sheraton for the Saturday night dance with DJ Dancin’ Dan, who used to be one of Norwescon’s regular DJs. It was good to see him doing his thing again, and as with the other dance nights, much fun was had bouncing around on the dance floor. My most amusing moment was having Taylor come get me when the Rasputin came on, suggest we go out into the center of the circle, and then say, “Okay, you lead!” “I lead? You asked me!” was my response, but we managed to pull it off for a few moments. :)
Taylor was dressed as Lucifer from Hazbin Hotel, which I know nothing about, but she looked great!
And then, back to the hotel so we could crash.
The first part of Saturday was…you know the drill.
Caitlin, Shelley, someone who I didn’t catch the name of, and myself; this year’s “’zine team”!
At least by this point, there were far fewer updates to make to the schedule, since we were down to the last day of the con, so we were able to find some time to wander through the exhibit hall (first my wife on her own as I worked, and then the two of us together) and do a little bit of geeky shopping, picking up t-shirts for both of us, some stickers and bookmarks, and some nice jewelry for my wife (including some great Star Trek delta logo earrings). I also stopped by the Seacon exhibit as Mary was disassembling it and was quite tickled to have her ask me to autograph my Seacon article in the program book.
Founded in 1978, Norwescon (NWC) draws thousands of Pacific Northwest SFF creators and fans each spring. But did you know that NWC grew out of a desire to bring Worldcon back to Seattle? Well, we’ve finally done it, so come hear how we got here… and what’s next!
Wm Salt Hale (M), Michael Hanscom, Taylor Tomblin, Tim Bennett
Tim, Taylor, Me, and Salt, ready to talk about Norwescon.
For the next hour, Salt, Taylor, Tim and I (along with help from other Norwescon people in the audience, including Don, Doug, Pat, Rob, Peggy, Sarah, and I may be forgetting some) talked about Norwescon’s history, where we’ve been, where we are now, and extrapolated a bit into where we hope Norwescon goes as we approach our 50th year and beyond. It was fun to do, and the audience seemed to be a nice mix of people who were familiar with Norwescon and people who didn’t know much about us.
I think I had two favorite moments from this panel. One was hearing from Sarah, who is relatively new to Norwescon, as she talked about how she found us and appreciated how we welcomed her in and how much that meant to her. The other was from a younger person in the audience who, after hearing stories from Tim (who attended several of Norwescon’s earliest years) about how as a teen he’d skipped out on his job at Jack in the Box to attend Norwescon with no budget, room, or parental knowledge, crashing with friends and figuring things out on a fly, responded with a heartfelt but very amusing, “I’m seventeen, and I just want to know how you got away with doing all that!” The ’80s were a very different time…. (It was also very nice to see Sarah immediately head over to them to talk to them and, I assume, extend a personal invitation on ways to attend and maybe get involved.)
The image on the screen is the cover of the very first Norwescon program book from 1978.
One thing that I didn’t think to mention during the panel that in retrospect that I wish I had: One of the things I’ve found I really value about Norwescon over the years has been how many of our guests of honor have become regular (or semi-regular) attendees and panelists in following years. While we are able to provide travel and lodging for our invited headlining guests of honor, we can’t do that for all of our attending pros and panelists, and I think it’s wonderful how many have such a good time as guests that they then volunteer to spend their own time and money attending and participating afterwards. I think it says a lot about how well run and welcoming the convention is.
Seattle Worldcon Chair Kathy behind the podium in the middle, with the department heads lined up behind her.
And not long after that wrapped up, we were off to closing ceremonies. I got to see a lot of friends up on stage, the convention wrapped up, and the gavel was passed off to next year’s LAcon V. We don’t know yet whether that will work into our travel plans, but whether we’re there or not, if you’re at all into the SFF fan world and have been to a Worldcon before or have yet to give it a shot, I recommend going if you’re able.
Happily, we’d been clever enough to save the protective cardboard sheets after unpacking all of these, so we could easily pack them all up again.
Of course, when you’re part of the organizing committee, the con doesn’t end when the con ends! Once closing ceremonies wrapped up, we headed down to the exhibition hall and packed up all of the Philip K. Dick award posters so they could go back into Norwescon storage. It just wouldn’t have been right to leave that for someone else (but I do have to thank Jeanine for getting started on that before we showed up).
So many posters! But really, it didn’t take terribly long to get them all packed back up.
After closing ceremonies, my wife went back to the hotel to relax, and I headed off to the dead dog party to have a couple hours of collective “oh my god, we actually did this thing” decompression with many of the on-site staff before heading back to the hotel and getting to bed.
And finally, it was time to pack up our stuff and head back home, with a very successful Worldcon behind us.
So many people put so much work into this, and I really think that while there were some stumbles here and there along the way, in the end, we put on a damn good show.
Though I wasn’t directly involved, I was thrilled with the captioning solution our team came up with. We had live, real-time captioning available in every panel room for the full convention. While we used CART (human) captioning for big events, most of the rooms used self-contained auto captioning systems that used Google software running on a Raspberry Pi, all on-device with no network access required. While not perfect (as with any automated captioning system), it worked well enough, and its very prevalence got a lot of compliments throughout the weekend.
My staff badge for the weekend.
Sometime on Friday or Saturday (at this point I’ve forgotten exactly when), Kathy found me and presented me with a “Hero of Worldcon” pin in thanks for the work I’ve done on the website and in various other ways over the past couple years. Apparently my name was put forward by a few people, too! Thanks to Kathy and to whomever suggested me for this — it means a lot to have gotten this.
On the one hand, I just do what I think needs to be done. On the other, it is really nice to get this kind of recognition.
There are so many people and friends to thank and recognize (and this won’t be nearly everyone; I’m just concentrating on those I worked most closely with over the past couple years, and may have forgotten some): Kathy for chairing this and herding all the cats, SunnyJim for handling programming and herding all the other cats, Michelle for her incredible work in heading up exhibits, Keith for the tech work and coming up with a great in-room captioning solution, Gail for handling the virtual side and being willing to work with me on making sure that her side of things tied into the main website and keeping accessibility in mind during all of it, Kathryn (and her predecessor) and Jesi for working with me on the accessibility of WSFS materials, and — last, but definitely not least (which always seems like a weird phrase to me, because it begs the question of who is least, but whatever…) — the Publications team: Kevin at the head, Caitlin and Shelley with the ‘zine, BE heading up editing the blog and all of our excellent contributors, Cheryl handling the newsletter, Tabby’s signs, Dawn taking on social media, and Cee for providing very appreciated help with the website. All of you are wonderful and contributed to a great experience.
Not a bad collection of ribbons, especially given how much time I spent locked away in the publications office!
From dance clubs in Alaska in the ’90s to being a recent regular DJ at Norwescon, DJ Wüdi spins an eclectic mix of dance tracks from across the decades. Pop, electronica/dance, wave, disco, goth/EBM/industrial, convention classics, mashups… (almost) anything goes!
I may not have the most attended dances, but I have fun trying to make them look good.
The opening night’s dance at Seattle Worldcon 2025, recorded live at the Sheraton Grand hotel in downtown Seattle where the Worldcon After Dark programming was held, just a few blocks away from the Convention Center Summit building that was home to the daytime programming. Because this is an unedited live recording, there are a few flubs (some subtle, but some notable train wrecks right off the bat)…but hey, that’s just proof that I’m a real human and not genAI. ;) Pop it on in the background and enjoy four hours of the Seattle Worldcon nightlife!
