Book oriented SF conventions in Canada

[james_davis_nicoll]

I am appallingly ignorant of conventions in my own nation. If I were looking for something roughly equivilent to Minicon or Boskone, preferably in the urban corridor, what cons should I be looking at?

Comments

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

I'm not opposed to helping out but I don't have any idea what I could do that would be helpful.

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

Something cons sometimes seem to need more help with than they get: Checking when people say they can appear on programs against when they're scheduled. So that the person who says "I can't be there till Saturday at 2 pm; and I'm never awake before 11 am" doesn't get scheduled on a panel at 10 am on Friday.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

When I stage-managed, I planned rehearsals by finding every conflict between people's schedules. Doesn't everyone do it that way? There must be software for this but a sheet of paper will do as well.

[boywhocantsayno.livejournal.com]

For Toronto Trek, dx4 developed software that does this for us, and we use that in combination with a manual check. Works pretty well. We can also make sure that A/V equipment isn't scheduled to be in opposite ends of the hotel from one timeslot to the next, and the same with panelists; we set things up last year so that all of Derwin Mak's panels were in one part of the hotel because he'd recently had heart surgery, for example.

It's not difficult. Someone just has to make the time to do it.