Norwescon

Norwescon is the Seattle-area SF/F convention I’ve been volunteering at since roughly 2010. Once a year, I go get geeky with about 2,500 of my closest friends at a local hotel for a weekend.

Norwescon 32 Wrapup

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It took roughly a week to get here, but really, I don’t figure that’s too bad, given my usual photowhoreish ways. Trust me, if I’d been employed (i can haz job now, plz? kthkxbye) it would have taken a lot longer than a week.

Still and all, just a few minutes ago, the last of my shots from Norwescon made it up to Flickr. There are three sets, one each for Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, and, of course, there are many more pictures from other attendees in the Norwescon Flickr group.

Thursday

Weapon Policy, Norwescon 32

Thursday was a nice, low-key start. I hadn’t actually figured on going at all on Thursday this year, but seeing as how I have a lot more free time than usual right now, I figured I might as well swing by. I dropped Prairie off at work in the morning so I could have the car, and headed over to the hotel about noon. Thursday definitely feels like the “slow day” of the ‘con, and I didn’t end up taking very many pictures. Mostly just wandered around, checked things out, poked my head into a panel or two, and that was it. Five o’clock rolled around and I bailed out to go get Prairie from work and head home.

Friday

Group Shot, Steampunk Fashion Show, Norwescon 32

Friday I arrived just in time for my one planned ‘event’ of the day, the Steampunk Fashion Show, hosted by the devious minds behind the upcoming Steamcon. Lots of great outfits! Unfortunately, I felt like I was struggling a bit with the photos, as the lighting in the ballroom was horrid. I still managed to at least get decent shots of nearly everyone who made it onstage, so it’s not a failure at all…I’m just my own harshest critic, as always.

After the fashion show it was back to wandering, grabbing a few shots of hall costumes, and sitting in on a couple of panels. I jokingly tweeted that the “What is Goth?” panel turned into “Hey, we’re not at the clubs and can hear each other without yelling!”…which wasn’t entirely untrue, as there was much amusement that nearly everyone in the room already knew each other to some degree from the scene. We did manage to turn it into more of a discussion about how people found the goth scene, how it’s changed over the years, and where it may be going as the ‘elder goths’ give way to a new generation.

Seven o’clock was my self-imposed curfew that night, so out the door I went to rest at home and ensure that I’d have as much energy as possible for the next day.

Saturday

Jack and Lilly, Norwescon 32

This was the big day: rolling in around noon, rolling out whenever I was exhausted and had to disappear before I fell over. No panels for me today, Saturday is all about the costumes — and as always, such incredible costumes!

Featured above is one of my three favorites from this year. I’ve long blamed thanked Ridley Scott’s 1985 fantasy movie Legend, and specifically the scene where Darkness tempts Lilly with food, dance, and that incredible dress, for being one of my first proto-goth influences. I have absolutely no compunctions at admitting that as soon as I saw Jack and Lilly wandering around, I got a total con-crush on her!

My other two favorite outfits: Firefly/Senrenity’s Wash, impaled on the ship support beam and sporting a “Screw You, Whedon” sign; and the bounty hunter sporting Jar-Jar Binks’ head on a pike.

Screw You, Whedon, Norwescon 32 Jar Jar Hunter, Norwescon 32

Since I’ve been running the @norwescon Twitter account, at the suggestion of @empsfm, I’d kinda-sorta-not-very-competently organized a joint ‘tweetup’ for @norwescon, @empsfm, and @seattlegeekly. Since I hadn’t even thought ahead enough to have some sort of sign announcing our presence, a few people couldn’t find us, and it ended up being kind of sparsely attended, but I still had a good time chatting with Shannon and Matt from Seattle Geekly, @ghouligan (Barry), and @jacinda. Sorry to anyone who missed us, I’ll do better at this whole “organizing” thing next year!

After the tweetup and another few hours of hall costume hunting, it came time to stake out my spot for the post-Masquerade photo area. There’s always a limited amount of space and a lot of people who want to take pictures, so I’ve found that it’s best to start hovering in the lobby area around 6pm-ish. Sure enough, it wasn’t long before the t-shirt vendor started packing up and the official photography team started setting things up. My (not-so-)nefarious plan worked, and I was able to get a choice spot just left of the centerline behind the official photographers’ line of chairs.

And there I stood for the next three hours, as costume after costume paraded in front of us. So much great work on them all, from the hall costumes that were shanghai’d into posing to the Masquerade entrants posing for us after their time on stage. Of course, three hours is a long time to stand in one place and hold a camera up, so once the final Masquerade costume made it through, I stumbled away to sit and recover for a bit.

After some time to regain feeling in my arm, I started wandering, and spent some time running around with artvixn, helix90, and their friend Nell, who were on a quest to visit some of the hall parties. We made a swing through the Merchants of Deva party, then they all went off to find a rumored scotch tasting while I went down to the Saturday Night Hoedown, as I knew I had to drive home in a bit (oh, and I’m a total wuss drinker) and didn’t have much interest in the scotch.

The Hoedown kicked off (a little late, but I believe that’s par for the course), the floor filled pretty quickly, and I spent a good hour or so making laps around the outside of the dance floor with my camera. It wasn’t terribly long, though, before I really started to realize just how tired I was, and decided it was time to head home. Not long after midnight, then, I packed up, took one last look at the revelers, and bade another Norwescon goodnight.

Hello Fellow Utilikiltarians!

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The sketch that Shari did of me in one of my Utilikilts was just featured in this month’s anti-catalogue newsletter!

Here’s the relevant excerpt, off of page four, which also shows off some sketches done of fellow kilted photographer Joe Hunt, a.k.a. Photognome:

Next up, we have a certain Mr. Michael Hanscom, a ponytailed (but maybe not for long!) Seattle resident with a penchant for Star Trek. Michael’s most recent contact with us included an idea for a custom Utilikilt* (one which unfortunately, due to a number of reasons, didn’t get off the ground). After chatting for a bit back and forth, he shared the following sketch that he commissioned of himself (Artwork by Shari Chankhamma.)

(Sketch redacted because, well, it is plastered all over this website…)

His only requirement for the sketch was that he be wearing his Utilikilt*. What a fabulous piece of art!

Michael was in attendance at the recent Norwescon here in Seattle, and you can see his pictures and read more about his adventures here.

Nice! I’d originally dropped Jenneviere a line via Facebook to let her know about the sketch, and we ended up having a nice little chat. Apparently she’s been keeping tabs on me since then, as evidenced by the mentions of Norwescon (of which I’m still processing photographs from, but you can see what’s up so far in a few sets in my Cons and Conventions collection) and the soon-to-be-disappearing ponytail. ;)

If there’s anyone stopping by thanks to the mention in the Anti-Catalogue…howdy! Some of you local to the Seattle area may have seen me around from time to time, and if you’re hosting photographs on Flickr, you may have had me bug you to contribute photos to the Utilikilts fans Flickr group, which I’ve been moderating for a couple years now.

Good to (virtually) “meet” all of you, and thanks to Jenneviere and the rest of the crew at Utilikilts for the kind mention and the awesome clothing!

Norwescon 32: My (Preliminary) Schedule

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While I’m not at all happy to be unemployed, I have to admit that it does make some things pretty convenient. I’m making a decent houseboy, dealing with the dishes and housecleaning, which Prairie appreciates. Since Prairie and I are both here in the mornings, we’ve been really enjoying having nice leisurely breakfasts together. And this weekend, it means that for the first time, I’ll be hitting three days of Norwescon, adding a few hours today (Thursday) to my usual Friday/Saturday run.

My basic plan:

  • Thursday: drive in, arrive sometime around noonish, leave around 5:30 to pick Prairie up from work.
  • Friday: bus in, arrive sometime around noonish, leave and bus home sometime in the evening (probably sometime between 6-8pm or so).
  • Saturday: drive in, arrive sometime around noonish, stay until I get exhausted. This counts as my “going out” night for the month.

I’ve gone through the Norwescon programming grid and identified the panels that I’m most interested in possibly checking out. What follows is a rough idea of where I might be over the next few days, though for most of these, there’s no way I can guarantee exactly where I’ll be at any given moment. Since a lot of the fun I have is grabbing photos and socializing, there’s a lot of mutability in my schedule.

Click through to see where I may (or may not) end up over the next few days…

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Norwescon Tweetup

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A couple months ago, I started up an (unofficial) @norwescon Twitter account as another avenue for disseminating Norwescon info to the masses. The account is mostly automated, mirroring links to anything that pops up in the norwescon LiveJournal community or in the Flickr group, but I’ll occasionally toss things in that seem to be on-topic and of interest.

Earlier this week, @EMPSFM asked if I was planning any sort of ‘tweetup’ during the ‘con. I hadn’t thought about it, but it seems like a good idea.

So, barring any unforeseen complications, I’m tentatively choosing 3pm on Saturday afternoon as a good time — early enough in the day that it won’t interfere with any of the big evening activities, late enough that most congoers should have arrived. The location is still to be determined: unless someone out there has a good spot in mind (somewhere in the public areas, this is far too last-minute, unofficial and slapdash to have an actual room available), I’ll scope out the common areas on Friday to find a decent place.

If you’re a congoer and already following @norwescon, you’re welcome to show up! If you’re on Twitter but not following @norwescon, follow and show up! If you’re not on Twitter…either sign up and show up, or just show up. It’s not like we can stop you. :)

  • 1st Annual Norwescon Tweetup
  • Saturday, April 11
  • 3 PM
  • Location to be determined

Questions, comments, words of wisdom? Fire ’em at me!

The Norwescon Outfit I Didn’t Make

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…because I have been short on time, money, initiative, know-how, or various combinations of all of the above.

What I wanted to do: prove that Starfleet’s more advanced mindset extended to sexual discrimination and choices in clothing. Just because all we’ve seen so far is slacks for men and women and (mini)skirts on women, I’m sure that doesn’t mean that that’s all there is.

(Note: actually, in first season TNG, there were a few men in unbifurcated uniforms, as evidenced by this Wikipedia mention and this slightly confused fan. However, these ‘skant‘ uniforms pretty much disappeared by the second season.)

The USS Utilikilt
The USS Utilikilt
The plan: customize a TOS Starfleet tunic and an Original Utilikilt (or even Workman’s or Survival, but those were even further out of my theoretical budget) with the logo you see to the right.

In order to find a way to work in the Utilikilts logo, I figured the uniform would have to be TOS style, when the insignia within the delta shield changed depending on the ship the crewmember was assigned to and before the standardization on the Enterprise’s ‘starburst’ central insignia. I wanted to use this design to create a custom patch in color (with the traditional gold background) for the tunic, plus one in black and white to go on the rear pocket of the Utilikilt.

Unfortunately, a number of things got in the way of completing (or even starting on) this project, from simply not having the money to drop on the tunic, a new Utilikilt, or having the custom patches made (and this was before I got laid off), to the Utilikilts people being swamped with work and unable to work on a custom kilt request at that time.

Still, this is what I wanted to do for this year’s Norwescon…and, to be honest, I still think it’d be fun to do it at some point in the future. I don’t know (and, to be honest, kind of doubt) if I’ll ever get around to it, but it’s fun to have it rattling around in my head.

Good Twitter Marketing is Communication

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I’ve been having fun over the past couple of weeks playing with a bit of unofficial marketing via Twitter for a couple of the local conventions. I’ve been using Twitter (djwudi, if you didn’t know already) for some time now, and I’ve been seeing a number of different companies and organizations picking up Twitter accounts, some of whom seemed to use it successfully…some of whom, less so.

To me, possibly the single most important aspect to marketing successfully on Twitter — and keep in mind that I’m not a marketing wonk in any way, I’m just an opinionated geek with a Twitter account — is having a real person behind the account. Just as people prefer to call a business and speak to a person rather than an automated machine, I like to know that there’s a real set of eyeballs paying attention to a Twitter account, and it’s not merely an automated receptacle echoing an RSS feed. Many companies seem to see Twitter as little more than an RSS reader for people who don’t grok RSS readers, and that’s a rather sad outlook.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with feeding RSS feeds into Twitter accounts. I’m doing that very thing myself, in fact. However, that shouldn’t be all that is done with the account.

Right now, I’m managing two Twitter accounts for local conventions: norwescon (for Norwescon) and steamcon (for Steamcon). Both of these are unofficial (i.e., I’m not actually involved with the production of either ‘con, but just do this because I can and because it’s fun to play with this stuff), but the Steamcon account is slightly less unofficial…that is, I’ve received a nice thanks from the Steamcon Powers-That-Be along with a link on their homepage to the Twitter account. Both accounts are somewhat automated, using Twitterfeed to pipe in RSS feeds. However, I also take care to make sure that neither account is a simple infodump.

Here’s the steps I’ve taken so far:

  1. Use multiple sources.

    Each account actually has multiple RSS feeds contributing content. For Norwescon, that’s the LiveJournal group, the Flickr group photo pool, and the Flickr group discussions; likewise, Steamcon gets their LiveJournal group, their Flickr group photo pool, and their Flickr group discussions. At the moment, there’s very little activity on Flickr, and most of the posts come from announcements on LiveJournal, but the Flickr feeds will come in handy post-con.

  2. Find the people that might be interested.

    I knew that since these weren’t official accounts, the chances of people stumbling across them were pretty slim. So, rather than just set them up and toss them into the electronic wind of the ‘net to see if they caught anyone’s eye, I set up two Twitter searches and subscribed to the RSS feeds. I use the same syntax for each search, just changing the name of the ‘con: norwescon -from:norwescon. This shows me any Tweets mentioning the ‘con, while excluding those sent by the Norwescon Twitter account (I originally also appended -"@norwescon" to exclude reply Tweets, as those have their own tab in the Twitter interface, but I’m finding it handy to have those included in the RSS feed as well). When I see someone’s tweet pop up, I take a look at their Twitter account, and if they look like they’re interested, I follow them.

  3. Interact!

    As evidenced by how I started this post out, I think this is the most important of the three. Rather than letting the RSS feeds take care of everything, I check in on the accounts myself off and on when I can. Admittedly, it’s not as often as I check my personal Twitter account, but it’s often enough that I can catch mentions, reply to any Tweets directed to the account, and so on. I also post Tweets myself when I find something interesting or worth sharing that fits the theme (such as Star Trek corsets or steampunk Lego). Any indication that there’s a real personality behind the account handle is good, and is more likely to get not just subscribers, but active subscribers. Twitter should be a conversation, not a lecture.

In the end, I’m having a lot of fun with this little experiment. It seems to be working well enough — the Norwescon account is up to 40 followers just through my dinking around and word-of-tweet, while the Steamcon account is now up to 38, most of whom have just shown up in the past two days after the Twitter logo and link hit the Steamcon website. Not huge numbers by many estimations, but both accounts are relatively new, and I’m sure both will continue to grow as the cons get closer and as word continues to spread.

Now if only I could figure out how to get paid for this kind of stuff full-time, instead of doing it for free during lunch breaks and evenings at home! ;)

Norwescon 30: Saturday

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Rennifer, Norwescon 30

Finally. After nearly one month and almost six hundred photos uploaded, I’m done with this year’s Norwescon! As fun as it is, as much as I enjoy being there and playing photographer, and as great as it is to get comments from people as they find themselves in the photos…man, this took a while! Ah, well — good-natured grousing aside, it’s well worth it, and I’m looking forward to next year’s.

I’d already mentioned finishing up Friday’s photos a couple weeks ago. Last night, I finally uploaded the last of my photos from Saturday, the only other day I was there.

Saturday’s shots are pretty obviously divided into three sections:

Of course, that’s just a small (well, okay, not that small) selection of what was at Con. I did my best to get the best shots I could of everyone I could, and had a lot of fun doing it.

Also (and especially important for those people I got photos of): because I release my shots under a Creative Commons by-nc-sa license (attribution/non-commercial/sharealike), you may share (copy, re-post, distribute, or transmit) the photos, provided that you give me credit as photographer (preferably by linking back to the photo’s page on Flickr, or at least to my Flickr, LiveJournal, or personal pages, but simply by name — Michael Hanscom or djwudi — will work in a pinch). Thanks very much for respecting this — since I’m not trying to make money off this photography thing*, what little recognition I can get is very appreciated!

Thanks much, everyone — enjoy the photos, and I’ll run into you again next year (if not sooner)!

  • Though, if anyone would like to purchase high-quality prints of their shots, I wouldn’t be averse to discussing it… ;)

The Time Warp, Hoedown in Space (Saturday Night Dance), Norwescon 30

Norwescon 30: Friday

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Stardance, Norwescon 30

Finally — all my shots from Friday of this year’s Norwescon are processed and uploaded (some shots are mildly NSFW — no outright nudity, some panties-and-pasties). There’s a few random hall costumes to start off with, and shots from the Stardance towards the end. However, the majority of Friday’s shots are from the Fannish Fetish Fashion Show: fashion sets from Notorious Curves and Fetishwear.net; burlesque performances by The Von Foxies‘ Heidi Von Haught and Pidgeon Von Tramp, Miz Ginger Snapz, and Estella E’Strange; plus Project Fetishway and Fannish Idol; all hosted by the lovely Betty Rage.

I’ll be the first to admit that, try as I might, my shots likely aren’t going to be winning any photography awards. ;) Still, I do the best I can, I don’t think they came out too horribly, and every time I do something like this I figure out a few more things to make things better the next time. Many thanks to spitkitten for giving me the opportunity to shoot the show!

Meanwhile, work continues on Saturday’s shots — and since Saturday has the post-Masquerade costume photoshoot, there’s many more photos yet to come!

Random Updates

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A few random things, since I haven’t updated anything here for a little bit…

  • Last quarter’s grades: 
    WIN07    ENG   120         CONTEMPORARY WORLD LIT         3.7          5.0     
         HUM   200         READING THE MEDIA              3.7          5.0     
         MAT   102         COLLEGE ALGEBRA                3.5          5.0     

Qtrly:     Gpa Cr  15.0  Cr Earn  15.0  P/S Cr   0.0  Grpts   54.5  GPA 3.63   

Cum:       Gpa Cr  45.0  Cr Earn  50.0  P/S Cr   5.0  Grpts  167.0  GPA 3.71   
Clvl:      Gpa Cr  40.0  Cr Earn  40.0  P/S Cr   0.0  Grpts  152.5  GPA 3.81

    No Dean’s List anymore, but I thought that might happen. I’m just thrilled I managed to pull a 3.5 in my Algebra class!

  • Prairie and I did our version of going to the beach for Spring Break last week. In our case, it was meeting up with her dad Lon down at Long Beach, on the Washington coast. Grey and windy, so this wasn’t exactly MTV’s Spring Break Miami (or whatever), but it was gorgeous, and we had a good few days. I’m still working my way through the pictures, but everything I’ve posted so far is in this photoset. More pictures will be appearing as I find time to work through them.

  • I went to the last night of Confessional with camera in hand, intending to take photos. However, lighting both within and without the Mercury is damn near nonexistent, and since I didn’t feel like lugging the flash around, I just put the camera away and enjoyed the night. Evidence of my appearance has popped up here, thanks to gravesme.

  • I was going to go get pictures of the Utilikilts 7th Birthday Bash down in Pioneer Square last Saturday night, but a head cold kept me at home instead. A bummer, but since school started on Monday, I figured staying home and resting was the better plan.

  • Spring quarter has started. This quarter I’m in PHI101 (Introduction to Philosophy), CHE101 (Chemistry), and CSC142 (Programming). Looks to be a fun (if busy) quarter.

  • This upcoming weekend is Norwescon. I’ll be heading down there as soon as classes get out on Friday, and spending Friday afternoon/evening and all day Saturday at the ‘con. I’ve also been asked by spitkitten to shoot the Fannish Fetish Fashion Show on Friday evening — really looking forward to that! Of course, I’ll have camera in hand the rest of the time I’m wandering around down there as well.

And…yeah, I think that about brings me up to date.

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