Blogging about conventions
is SMOFcon 42 was my second in person Smofcon. It took me eight years to come back to this con, and my experience this time was quite different. Over the course of those years I learned a lot, and I met many people. Not to mention that the world itself has changed a lot too!
Continue reading “SMOFcon 42 – Don’t Panic and Appreciate Your Towel”
My second con this year was KON_gres 2025. It is a conrunning convention that I attend every year. This time it came back to it’s cradle – Wrocław. Yet instead of being held in the library on the Main Square, it took place in the conference centre at the city stadium.
Continue reading “KON_gres 2025 – Socializing with a touch of learning”
I already wrote a report covering my Glasgow 2024 experience. In short, I found the convention superb but mine is a very subjective opinion. In the report I promised to cover one more topic – how it was to run a Worldcon. This is not a trivial question but here I try to answer it.
Those of you involved in conrunning know that from time to time organizers need to meet in person. In theory doing everything online is possible but there are many advantages to meeting in the physical space. Worldcon is not different – and at the end of May we had the Glasgow 2024 All Staff Weekend. It was not the first in person gathering but the first I managed to attend it in person.
Continue reading “Glasgow 2024 All Staff Weekend and Why I enjoyed It”
KON_gres 2024 was held in Gniezno. On one hand I was unhappy as it was quite far from Krakow. On the other hand it meant I was finally able to attend a convention by Fantasmagoria society. I wanted to attend their flagship con – Fantasmagoria for years. Yet it was always held in the dates when I couldn’t attend.
It was known that this will come – the time of hybrid conventions. I am not sure which one was the first – it is possible I missed something. Yet for sure SMOFCon Europe was one of the first. I had the chance to work on it. It was an interesting endeavour. I made some mistakes, I learned a lot and I had a good time.
I wrote quite a few posts about the conventions during pandemic. I visited 25 such events before KONgres and I posted about almost every single one of them. Yet KONgres is a bit special. It is a convention for conrunners. I attended it in 2017, 2018, and 2019 but I missed it in 2020. This year it was obviously held online.
Continue reading “KONgres 2021 – Conrunning in the Global Pandemic”
In 2017, the first Polish conrunning convention took place. It happened that this year I chaired the third KONgres. I had the opportunity to publish the reports from both first and second KONgreses. The third one, however, is a different story. I cannot look the same way at the convention I chaired. I decided to provide some remarks about it here, but please remember that I am not able to impartially assess how good or bad the con was.
Smofcon 35 was an important experience for me. It was the first time that I was able to attend a convention in the USA. The nature of the con was, however, not typical for US, as Smofcon is a convention dedicated to conrunners and the programme is circling around conrunning and not any SF/F issues. Still, it was a great opportunity for me and I am really, really happy I was able to attend it.
Continue reading “Smofcon 35 or what do you do when you are not organizing a con”
In February I have attended Conrunner 4. My first convention in March was KONgres – the first ever Polish convention created for conrunners. Comparing those two events is simply inevitable. Still my perception of KONgres is deeper than of Conrunner – I am deeply involved with Polish fandom and hence I knew much more people there and I was more involved in the programme. Continue reading “KONgres 2017 – first Polish convention for conrunners”