Is it wrong for a potential Worldcon Chair to already be thinking past the Worldcon they hope to help bring together? In this case, I hope not.

I was very pleased to hear the European Science Fiction Society announcement that TitanCon 2019, the Belfast based bid, won the right to host the Eurcon in 2019 just last month in June.

As a hopeful chair of a Worldcon Science Fiction Convention, I feel it is incumbent upon me to be welcoming and open to working with whatever bid wins the Eurocon. Belfast was uncontested in their efforts but even so, it is proper to be impartial.
Now that Belfast has won their bid, I can hope and be excited about the prospect of a huge number of fans going from the Dublin Worldcon up to Belfast as the TitanCon 2019 is the weekend after Dublin 2019.

This is hugely exciting for me.

I was heavily involved in Loncon 3 in 2014 and helped with Shamrokon, the Dublin based Eurocon that occurred the weekend after Loncon 3. It was fabulous to be able to take so many fans to Dublin, and we brought a Double Decker bus load around the Convention Centre Dublin. The weekend was a great relaxation for all who had just worked a Worldcon and for fans from across the world it allowed a level of co-ordination that was spectacular.

And now we have that fabulous opportunity with Dublin and Belfast, all going well for our bid.

Hosting a Worldcon in Ireland, is motivated by many thoughts and feelings, but showing fans from across the world the country, its beauty, the wonderful scenery, and indeed the now famous sights, be it from Game of Thrones, Excalibur, Star Wars or The Eliminator*. I truly hope that fans take the time to see how heart stoppingly beautiful the country is. Here is just a short video of some of the Game of Thrones locations.

Jo Playford and Phil Lowles have been working hard. The SF community on these islands is small enough, that it becomes obvious when hard graft and serious efforts are being made, and I congratulate them on their success.

I look forward to seeing their plans evolve and come to fruition.

The venue for the convention, the Belfast Waterfront is a modern convention centre with considerable flexibility and their hotel is right next door, linked physically by a covered walkway. On the bank of the River Lagan, the venue is in the City Centre of Belfast, and indeed, less than 400 metres from Belfast Central railway station, which has a direct link to Connolly Station in Dublin which is itself a kilometre away from the Convention centre Dublin, so, well you only have to walk a mile between both venues.

I could talk much more about the wonderful history of the ‘Enterprise’ service between Dublin and Belfast, the trains and stock, and the nice bar in Connolly station, over a coffee maybe. Feel free to geek out at the current stock here.

There will be other plans for ways to get between both venues, and we will work with TitanCon to ensure our members have all the options available.

I understand that TitanCon will kick off on Thursday 22 running until Saturday 24 August 2019 and then run their traditional TitanCon Coach Tour on Sunday 25 August visiting beautiful locations around Northern Ireland that have been used as filming locations in HBO’s Game of Thrones. This optional extra is highly recommended, again giving fans that opportunity to visit the country, and for those who are on a tight schedule, the chance to fully enjoy the convention and fly long distance home on Sunday. That would be some trip.

Lots of information on TitanCon here.

Best as always

James

*The Eliminator is Enda Hughes and Mik Duffy’s wonderful crazy 1997 SF film, filmed and set in a future Northern Ireland. A computer genius, a military super car, a man with a huge cyborg-ish wrench for a hand, car chases in tiny fiats from the 80’s, Zombies, and the ultimate Zombie, a resurrected St Patrick. It’s beautifully chaotic, and passionately made, true dedication and effort, but copies are impossible to find. Can we find a copy I wonder?

(Editor’s note: I came up empty after several hours search, but you’d make James very happy if you have better luck! Let us know!)

The post Congratulations to TitanCon 2019: A Message from the Chair’s Desk appeared first on Dublin 2019.

Please vote for Dublin 2019. It is so important to us and we need and want your support.

We have worked very hard over some six years now to get the bid to where we are, and incredibly we are unopposed. But your vote is still important to us and we need and want your support. Funds from the Advance Supporting Membership you purchase when you vote will provide important start-up funding to the convention. Also, if you are one of our over 1200 pre-supporters, your vote will also help you convert to an attending member of the convention (see below for more about that).

It is unusual to be unopposed, given that in recent times up to four cities have bid in prior Site Selections. The Worldcon is really in demand, and we are proud to say that we feel we did a decent job of promoting Ireland and Dublin and the idea of a World Science fiction convention in Dublin.

Voting is an unusual element when it comes to conventions. Obviously we all vote with our hearts, minds, pockets and feet when we go to cons and have a great time. To host a World Science Fiction convention, there is a lengthy process that really begins with Site Selection. But you know what.

It’s Really Worth It.

Getting the largest gathering of science fiction, fantasy and fantastic fiction fans in one venue for a colossal weekend of books, comics, film, TV and so much more is an incredible aspiration. Now in its seventy-fifth year, the Worldcon is a celebration of things that we love, and welcoming people from dozens of countries to Ireland will be an amazing opportunity.

It is beyond belief how much work and effort goes into it, but we have hundreds of people – from Shanghai to San Francisco, from Galway to Wexford, from Belfast to Cork – all keen to see it happen and working to make it so.

Our commitment is measured in those who believe in us, and right now we have over 1,300 bid supporters who have paid us their hard-earned cash to support us winning the right to hold the 2019 Worldcon in Dublin. It is amazing, and we are so grateful for you and your part in making this happen.

If you are a Friend, Young Friend or Super Friend of the Dublin Bid and then vote in Site Selection, you will automatically become a Full Attending member of the Dublin Worldcon, if we win. The more, the better – if we have hundreds of Full Attending members at the end of Site Selection, it puts us in a strong position. The more secure we are and the more who join, the sooner we can plan and budget for the extras and make it a phenomenal five days in 2019.

We would like you to be a member of our Worldcon at the start. We have worked long and hard to ensure that Dublin 2019 is a viable convention, but we need to get thousands of people to support us by joining and coming along, and we want to start that strongly and continue strongly.

Now through 11:00 GMT on 11 August, you can upgrade to Friend, Young Friend or Super Friend by emailing registrar@dublin2019.com. Young Friends must be born between 15 August 2006 and 14 August 1994 inclusive.

Right now the fees are

Chara/Friend €120 + Vote €40 = membership

Chara Iontach/Super Friend €250 + Vote €40 = membership

Cara Og Young Friend €60 + Vote €40 = Youth Membership.

So please become a friend and please vote.

If you are going to Helsinki Worldcon 75 there will be a desk in exhibits that will be open until 4 p.m. EEST on Friday 11th August where you will be able to vote. Hand carried votes are welcomed, with the appropriate funds.

You can also mail in a ballot by paying for an electronic coupon.

And US fans can mail their ballot with a US cheque to an address in Minnesota. The deadline is a week away for that, (29th July) so you can choose whether to use a Disney Villain or Eclipse stamps to send your ballot and cheque in, if you are in the US.

Details about site selection and how to vote are available at www.worldcon.fi/wsfs/site-selection/.

For Irish fans not attending Worldcon 75, ballot collection parties and social meetups will be held on the 29th of July at the Franciscan Well Brew Pub, 14B North Mall, Cork, and then on the 5th of August, we will have a meet up in Dublin.

More details on these are on our Facebook page.

Voting helps us, if we win, we will get those voting funds and we’d welcome that, working to bring you the first ever Irish Worldcon. Now there’s a thing worth voting for.

very best,
James

The post Vote Early, Vote any way you like, but please VOTE appeared first on Dublin 2019.

Our bid-chair James Bacon had a meeting on the 3rd of May 2012, first with Tom McPherson at the Convention Centre Dublin and then with Donna Brogan and her team at Failte Ireland, it marked a point in the history of the bid.

Today marks the fifth anniversary of what could be considered a formal beginning of the bid, a point when ideas and discussion turned into external meetings and actions.

The Convention Centre Dublin (CCD) had been opened in September 2010 and by May 2011 when the Queen of England’s visit marked the 250th event, it had made a definite mark in many people’s minds as a spectacular venue. A world class venue, just right for a world class event.

It is hard to know exactly when the concept of running a Worldcon in Ireland became more than a wish quickly dismissed. The CCD opening was crucial to any thoughts for sure. Before the CCD, I am certain that the concept of an Irish Worldcon would have been dismissed and indeed nonviable. So it was and is an important and key part in the bid from its inception and at every stage working with them has both been a pleasure and a partnership.

Discussion of Worldcons are continually going on, right now across the World from Australia to China, France to Japan, South Africa to San Jose, people will be talking about a Worldcon. Sometimes it is a fun and hypothetical game, sometimes it is earnest contemplation and serious discussion, but talk is cheap.

In August 2010 the idea of another Eurocon in Dublin, the weekend after a potential London Worldcon was born from Au Contraire being the week before Aussiecon 4. The Eurocon bid elicited support from Bord Failte, the Irish Tourism Board.

I am pretty certain the first Worldcon in Ireland conversation definitely happened in 2010.

So in May 2012 some 18 months later, I was walking into a venue, and many people had gone from discussing it to helping make the meetings a success and help prepare me and ensure we looked right.

James Shields, who was leading the Eurocon bid had already some contacts with Failte Ireland by 2012, who were only too willing to meet about a ‘Worldcon’.

Data was extracted from the vaults of the previous Worldcons, chairs, senior staffers with experience all worked secretly and willingly to help any potential bid. It felt like any time I asked a question I was pushing an open door. Many of those door openers are on our bid committee and if we win, on our convention committee.

Experienced opinions were sought, thoughts and discussions at home and abroad frequently came back to the feasibility of the venue. In Dublin the venue had had an impact, and again, that created a question after initial excitement. The CCD was really a key part.

I had learned the hard way, that announcing that one is going to do something before one is ready or worse, at a stage where it might not come to fruition is really bloody unhelpful. It made me averse with con running, to commit to much, or hypothesize publicly because even an idea can create expectations, set people off in a direction, or result in disappointment. So at this stage, everything was still very quiet, beyond the long list of people who had helped it was not publicly known

Information was prepared to ensure everyone understood what a Worldcon was, and indeed it was repeatedly checked and re-written to ensure clarity and understanding

The first meeting had to be a good one.

I was traveling over from London where I was living, the greeting I received at the CCD was incredibly welcoming, indeed, I am not sure what the were expecting, but I think they may have expected someone not so committed to Ireland. A lot of their preparations which they wanted to present centred on choosing Ireland as a country.

This was not at issue, for me at least.

The realisation, mostly from my accent, but also from my response that I was absolutely committed to finding a way to make a Worldcon work in Ireland, was no doubt a relief. I did not realise how much of a hurdle had been overcome and the team and myself made light of this. Nowhere in all the documentation that I had shared did I mention I was from Black Horse Ave., Dublin 7, schooled in my conventioning ways from the age of 16 at Octocon, (Octocon.com) the National Irish Science Fiction Convention or that the cities comic shops had become my second home, until I moved, like so many.

With international conferences, the country and city are an important step.

Not for me.

The idea that I had to be convinced that Ireland would work, was astonishing. I was not yet confident that the venue was feasible. A Worldcon venue can look the right size, and be the right shape, but the management, economics, staffing can all alter suitability at the blink of an eye.

The day was a success. Business could be done, and although it initiated a negotiation that continued, the willing and positivity was suffice to ensure that the idea drove forward.

Even at this early stage, people at home and far afield were willing to spend time and effort on the concept of a Worldcon in Ireland. Prepared to keep a secret. By Octocon the same year, it was clear that a bid would be viable, and a moment I will never forget was when Gareth Kavanagh with a level of seriousness that was impressive, asked for videos to be halted, recording devices turned off, and at the closing ceremony in front of a large chunk of Irish fandom, I asked the room to keep a secret. Even with site visits, with huge levels of engagement and public gatherings, no one spoke. No one publicised it, hundreds were now so committed to the idea of a Worldcon in Ireland, but they kept it quiet.

Five years after that meeting in the CCD, it is now 100 days until the vote in Helsinki.

There is a lot of work going on right now, and there will be a lot more in the next 100 days.  Thanks to work by so many people we are where we are, looking at a place where we could be a seated Worldcon.

Time is a huge subject of science fiction and it’s linearness is not always clear when you are involved with so many people. If I said that a commitment of 3 years is a huge commitment it would not be a world of a lie, yet at this stage, we will have people who have worked for that amount of time, and less, take a break, or deal with real life or get promoted, and yet, I cannot forget their efforts, and hard work, we cannot afford to be anything yet humbly grateful for that work.

Some supporters, volunteers, friends have shrugged off their mortal coil, a sad contemplation, but they are not forgotten, we will remember their names, as we remember everyone who helps.

The hobby of Worldcon running is such that people come in and work on a thing and then may depart, later to join us in celebration and enjoyment as a piece comes to fruition, for their building block is vital.  At that time right then they were ensuring the future holds a Worldcon in Ireland.

Time can be so unusual, I am not surprised it makes good fiction, sometimes things seem to take for ever or then there’s just not enough time. As chair it is hard to quantify all the hours, the 1.000 upon 1,000 of hours that have already been worked. The sum of so many parts building an Irish Worldcon.

At this stage, I could say that ‘Now the real work begins…’ but that feels like cliched rubbish given the thought line I have followed here.

Of course, we have a vast amount of work to make the Worldcon in Ireland the success that we hope and desire for. To help make it the great celebration, the fabulous social scene and all so much that excites and entertains and educates and enhances. There is so much more work to be done, so many people to recruit, so many others to welcome back, and all of us bring to fruition a really amazing weekend.

We have 834 days until we hope to host a Worldcon in Ireland, and I know that each and every one of those days, someone, no, many people actually  will be working every single day to bring passions to fruition, making sure the structures and systems are humming along, bringing their dynamism  to make sure that we can give a big welcome to thousands of people to an Irish Worldcon.

5 years. 100 days, 1,000’s of hours, 834 days.

All different lengths of time, and no matter how much time any fan has worked on the bid to date, I am very grateful and I am sure so many will be thankful.

The post Reflections From the Bid Chair: James Bacon appeared first on Dublin 2019.

Download A Short Guide to Irish Science Fiction by clicking this link. If you need a pdf reader, you can find one here.

The Blob McCabe

Jack Fennell

For many people, the idea of Irish science fiction seems ridiculous. It conjures up images of science fiction tropes injected violently into the rural Irish landscape, and vice-versa, the rural Irish clumsily inserted into a science fiction milieu. The former is illustrated in this joke, set in County Clare:

A farmer is sitting on a stone wall near Quilty, taking a cigarette break on his walk home from the fields. As he sits there smoking, he hears a strange humming noise overhead. He looks up, and to his amazement he sees a flying saucer. The flying saucer lands in the middle of the boreen in front of him. A door opens and a ramp extends. Down this ramp waddle three little grey men, with huge heads and black compound eyes. The farmer is frozen to the spot in sheer terror.

The leader of the alien trio waddles up to the farmer and says, “C’mere to me, are you local are you?”

“Yeah, I am,” the farmer answers, his jaw hanging open.

“Tell me,” the alien leader continues, “are all the Maguire girls married?”

The farmer thinks about this for a second, completely thrown by the question. Eventually, he responds, “Aye, they are.”

Dejected, the alien leader turns to his comrades and says, “C’mon so, lads. We’d best be goin’ home, we have no business here.”

To appreciate the joke to its full effect, you have to imagine the alien’s lines delivered in a Wesht Clare brogue.

The other comic cluster of images, that of the Irish in an SF story, has many examples. The satirical television show Nighthawks broadcasted a regular series of sketches called “Cork People in Space.” Another example is Brendan Grace’s yarn about the Irish astronauts (who call themselves ‘Spacers’), preparing to blast off into space from the Curragh in a turf-powered rocket. Not only is the idea of Irish people in space thought to be essentially comedic, but the very thought of Irish people attempting to do so provokes laughter—mainly, it must be said, from Irish audiences.

While this comic attitude is personally very annoying to me, I have to admit that my own perspective stems from a comic misunderstanding.

When I was still in primary school, about the age of seven or eight, an idealistic teacher advised us to watch Jim Sheridan’s film adaptation of John B. Keane’s play The Field, perhaps hoping to instil the young minds of the class with an awareness of our literary heritage. The film was to be broadcast on television that night, and there would be a discussion of it in class the next day.

That night, I started watching The Field. At some point, I must have fallen asleep, and my bored-to-tears babysitter took advantage of my nap to switch the channel. On the other side was Chuck Russell’s 1988 remake of The Blob. When I awoke, I was somewhat startled at the abrupt shift in tone, but in my dozy state, I believed I was still watching The Field. The mish-mashed narrative made sense to me: the reason that the Bull McCabe and the American were fighting over the field in question was because there was an alien blob living in it. And who wouldn’t want a blob of their very own? My eight-year-old mind could come up with all kinds of practical uses for such a creature, provided it was properly trained.

I was hugely disappointed to realise my mistake the next day. In my mind, possession of the blob was a much more compelling motive for the conflict than land ownership, and to this day, the two films are inextricably linked in my mind. Consequently, I grew up not understanding why the combination of Ireland with science fiction was so ridiculous. The stitched-together imagery in my imagination led me to understand that rural Ireland was just as suited to science fiction as any other setting. Despite what has been the norm for sf films throughout the decades, I knew that if aliens did decide to invade Earth, their activities would not just be confined to North America. Planetary conquest logically means that all nations are fair game, and Ireland would be a choice location for a first strike, since we could not retaliate with nuclear weaponry.

When I started my doctoral research into Irish SF, I thought that I had picked a nice handy topic: there couldn’t be that many Irish SF novels and short stories out there, and whatever amount there was must be very recent. Over the course of the next four years, I was proven wrong over and over again. There were hundreds of texts out there, so many that I had to abandon my plans to write a comprehensive overview. What struck me as particularly bizarre, though, was the difficulty I had in finding this stuff when there was such an abundance of it. The reasons became apparent as I continued digging.

Firstly, it was just an accepted truism that Ireland was not science-fictional. The phrase ‘Irish science fiction’ would, at best, bring forth memories of irascible Irish engineer Miles O’Brien from the Star Trek franchise (to date, the only character to shout “Bollocks!” on a Star Trek episode); at worst, it would trigger traumatic flashbacks to Leprechaun 4: In Space. The idea of Irish SF in itself was somewhat ridiculous, and more often than not played for laughs. There was a general perception, among the ‘uninitiated’ anyway, that the Irish just didn’t bother imagining such things.

This idea is, as we surely know by now, utter codswallop. This WorldCon bid alone should be evidence enough of that, never mind the multiple national conventions, clubs, societies, websites and dedicated publishers devoted to SF, Fantasy and Horror. This bogus preconception can probably be traced back to time immemorial, but its most recent incarnation is undoubtedly a product of the 19^th century, when economic mismanagement turned the country into a financial black hole. In addition to famine and mass depopulation, Ireland suffered a ‘brain drain’ as imaginative scientists, inventors and engineers moved to countries with better-funded research infrastructures: Ernest Walton was born in Waterford and graduated from Trinity College Dublin, but he had to move to Cambridge before he could become the first person to split an atom; Louis Brennan, originally from Castlebar in Mayo, invented the unmanned helicopter in Australia; and James J. Wood, an inventor with over 240 patents to his name, might never have realised his potential had his parents not emigrated to Connecticut from Kinsale when he was a child.

Secondly, SF was not considered ‘literature’ by people who should really have known better. This is nothing new, of course, but it was disheartening to see the Irish literati fall into that trap as well. Crime writer John Connolly once described how, after his first novel was published, he found himself looked down upon by the self-appointed gatekeepers of Ireland’s literary reputation: as he puts it, he was basically told, “Come back to us when you’ve written your Famine novel.” The end result was that Connolly no longer lives, works or sets any of his work in Ireland. Until very recently, Irish SF was seen to be just as sub-literary as its international counterparts, something worthy of a dismissive footnote at most, or occasionally a whimsical, patronising article.

Unlike the solipsistic suburban guff that informs a great deal of Anglo-American ‘high art’ literature, which is at least somewhat organic, I’m convinced that in Ireland, this avoidance of genre is all about keeping up with the Joneses. Our literary history is full of the fantastic: this is where Gulliver’s Travels, The Picture of Dorian Gray and Dracula came from, not to mention the old heroic sagas and vision-poetry. Rather than celebrate that mad box of tricks, however, many Irish people tried to distance themselves from it, especially in the early years of independence; there was a fear that indulging in non-realist material would amount to playing up to dreamy fairy-story stereotype, and we were keen to show that we could be as responsible and grown-up and rational as any other modern nation. Fantastic and science-fictional stuff was still published of course, but it was ignored and downplayed, largely for fear of what the neighbours might think.

So, the idea that the Irish just ‘didn’t do science’ was due to the lack of adequate research and education infrastructures in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries, and the notion that we just ‘didn’t do SF’ was down to the fact that there wasn’t a cultural/critical infrastructure of writers and scholars prepared to take the genre seriously. The first gap was eventually filled over the course of the twentieth century, though its legacy of anti-modern culchie stereotypes still remains. The second gap lingered, however, so that ‘serious’ Irish writers were allowed to be neither modern nor pre-modern: you can’t do science, and you mustn’t do magic, so what does that leave you?

This is where conventions, small presses, societies, zines and the like became very important, because they constitute a different kind of infrastructure. Fandom is its own unique kind of infrastructure, converting raw enthusiasm into tangible things: every SF creator starts off as a fan, after all. Irish fandom (which in many cases took the form of self-conscious ‘guilty pleasures,’ only acknowledged in the presence of a fellow-traveller) was what allowed me to identify and track down all the material I never knew existed. The only way to find it, in many cases, was through word-of-mouth. Everyone I spoke to knew of one or two Irish SF books, and assumed that was all there was, but everyone had two different examples.

Things have changed an awful lot, of course, even in the past five or six years. SF fandom generally has joined mainstream culture (or been appropriated by it, depending on your point of view); lauded authors who once tried to distance themselves from the genre, even as they incorporated SF imagery into their works, have copped themselves on and now admit their own fan status; and a huge portion of ‘respectable’ film and TV drama is now inflected with SF, fantasy and horror. The cultural infrastructures are there now, and more are springing up every day.

If I don’t call a halt to this post I’ll keep bloviating until I use up all the site’s bandwidth, so I’ll end it here on this note: an Irish WorldCon would be a million shades of awesome, and I’m immensely proud to be contributing to the bid in this small way. See you all in Dublin in 2019.

Jack Fennell is the author of Irish Science Fiction. We would like to thank Jack for the huge amount of work he put into this project, as well as Lisa Macklem, Esther MacCallum-Stewart and Emma England for their work in bringing this to press.

The post Jack Fennell. A Short Guide to Irish Science Fiction appeared first on Dublin 2019.

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Emma England

Every year on the 17th March people around the world celebrate St Patrick’s Day. St Patrick is the patron saint of Ireland and is credited with popularising Christianity in Ireland in the 5th Century.

According to writings attributed to him (including the autobiography Confessio) he was originally called Maewyn, he was British and born into a Romanized family. He was kidnapped and taken into slavery to Ireland before escaping and fleeing the country to Britain and perhaps Gaul (France). After these trials he received the religious calling to move back to Ireland and preach the Gospel.

According to legend St Patrick drove the snakes of Ireland into the sea to their extinction and he used the shamrock to explain the Holy Trinity. The Feast Day was not widely celebrated until the 18th century when Irish immigrants in America used the date to connect with their roots. In 1737 the first St Patrick’s Day parade was held in Boston. This may well have been the beginning of the secularisation of the Saint’s Day. At some point during the secularisation process the colour associated with the saint, blue, was replaced with green to the extent that Chicago’s river has been dyed green since 1962.

In 1903 the day became a Public Holiday in Ireland and today the Catholic Church has given the country special dispensation to forego Lent for the day in order to be able to celebrate. Ireland itself only formalised St Patrick’s Day as the festival we know 21 years ago, but they have been making up for it ever since and now the festival is four days of fun and frivolity.

It isn’t just Ireland and America where you can celebrate, many cities and major towns around the world have an Irish theme bar and they all indulge, while some cities also have parades and festivals. Some of these are linked below. Remember though, whatever you do, never refer to the day as Patty’s Day. This name just does not exist and you might just upset the Irish. If you want to be Irish for the day use Patrick, Pat or Paddy.

http://www.stpatricksfestival.ie/info

http://www.stpatrickamsterdam.com/

http://www.visitlondon.com/things-to-do/event/7609013-st-patricks-day-2016

http://www.stpatricksday.org.au/

http://www.melbourneirishfestival.com.au/

http://www.chicagostpatsparade.com/

http://www.southbostonparade.org/

https://www.nycstpatricksparade.org/

http://www.timeout.com/paris/en/things-to-do/saint-patricks-day-in-paris

http://stpatssingapore.com/

http://swedishirish.com/st-patricks-day/

If you celebrate the day please send us photos of the events and yourself wearing green and we will create a special gallery and share the photos on Facebook and Twitter.

The post St Patrick’s Day with Dublin 2019. appeared first on Dublin 2019.

Access Report – CCD.

With a small team of people with specific Access needs we assessed the CCD with regards to:

• Wheelchair access and mobility
• Hearing
• Seating

Positives

The CCD is a relatively new building, and has clearly been built with a strong eye to access and mobility. There is a handout and information on the website available to all visitors about this, but we also wanted to highlight some of the areas that were particularly praised by our tour.

Of particular note was the fact that at no point during the tour did we have an issue with access or moving around the building. This included using the lifts, access into rooms, corridors and the auditorium.

Main Building

• All rooms are accessible.
• Most rooms have power switches at a low height for doors, and where there aren’t, the doors are lightweight. All of our team were able to open them easily.
• Flat screens outside the doors (showing what is on inside the room) can be easily reached and seen by wheelchair users.
• All rooms have individual panels on the walls to control air conditioning and the lighting/blinds. These can be easily reached and seen by wheelchair users.
• Adjustable lighting and curtains (including blackout curtains in all rooms).
• When using the CCD during Dublin Comic Con (DCC) for a panel, we did not experience any sound bleed (and our panel room backed onto the fan village).
• The CCD has a number of different seating types, including sofas and chairs with firm backs. Our Bid Team member who needs to sit often tried several different types which were in use.
• All signs are marked with braille in both Irish and UK English.
• There are 2 lifts on each side of the CCD in addition to the constantly moving escalators. The lifts have safety “door open” buttons. When pressed, the doors to the lift do not close until explicitly told otherwise.

• Subsequent to this we have requested a list of furniture and its dimensions, in order to compare types of seating, height of registration desks etc.

The Auditorium

• Seating can be moved according to need.
• Large mobility scooter area at front of stage. (This depends on how the stage is set up. The larger the stage the less room for seating – we saw the stage at its smallest.) Chairs can also be removed to make more space here.
• Level 5 (the top area of the auditorium) also has wheelchair accessible seating, which is especially useful for people who may be late.
• Seating for larger people.
• Lift up to the stage is quite slow but there is also backstage ‘ramp’ access (it’s not a ramp, it’s a sloping corridor). Although at a steeper incline than other areas in the building which are usually flat, there are regular flat areas on the ground to break up the incline. Our wheelchair user said that it was easy to navigate.
• At least one changing room backstage is wheelchair user compatible
• Showers and toilets in all of the changing rooms
• Back of house is as accessible as front of house
• Triple strength hearing loops in the auditorium.

Loading Bay

• There is a sharper ramp in this area, but the loading bay is wheelchair accessible.

Toilets.

• There are 10 access toilets – 2 per floor (this does not include the backstage toilets).
• There are unisex toilets on each floor.
• Toilets are generally located at the front of the building, opposite the lifts, or towards the back of the building on either side. There are larger toilets on the ground and first floor.

LUAS

• The LUAS has good access and was easy to use.

Negatives

Most of these were external to the CCD or will be integrated into our ongoing negotiations with the CCD. At this point we are glad to have been able to have already seen the CCD in action, and to identify elements which we might want to do differently.

Food in the CCD

• Getting cheap snack food in the CCD seems to be difficult. At DCC, we saw a small kiosk that had been set up to sell coffees and snacks. It was not cheap, and the food was fairly limited. One of the sandwiches was also mislabeled, which could have been quite a serious issue for vegetarians / people with allergies.
• Although there was a food court around the back outside, this needs to be really flagged up if we decide to take this direction.
• As one of our Volunteers commented; the moment that an attendee leaves the building to seek greater comfort (food, a lie down), the less inclined they are to return.

Further actions:

• we are currently investigating the idea of having a ‘farmers market’ of vendors on site at the back of the building, and Facilities will be discussing this situation with the CCD as part of our ongoing negotiations with them

Toilets

• There are accessible toilets at each end of each floor. However, they only have a regular toilet for one gender at each end. So at one end is a non-gendered accessible toilet and a men’s toilet; at the other end same set-up only a female toilet. This means that at the one end the women (without access needs) may use the accessible toilet and at the other end it will be the men. We will think about ways to make sure that this does not happen and discuss this with the CCD.

Front Doors.

• The CCD themselves are aware that their front doors are rather cosmetic and cause crowding issues at the very least. They did not use these for entry during DCC (12 000 people), and instead use the much wider, accessible side doors on both sides of the building, which were staffed by security and door staff.
• If they could replace those front entry doors with a slider or one wide door that swings open that would be great.
• The small double doors at the front may be an issue for a larger person.

The post Access Report – The CCD appeared first on Dublin 2019.

Here’s some news from our friends over in Helsinki, who are hosting the 75th World Science Fiction Convention. This will take place 9-13 August 2017 in Helsinki, Finland, and of course everyone is very excited to bring the Worldcon to Finland for the first time ever, during the 100th year of Finnish independence! They’ve also sent us this message about why it’s a good idea to support Worldcon 75 now, and we’ve added a little bit more about why Dublin 2019 also wants you to attend this great event!!!

As you may be aware, one of the benefits of Worldcon and World Science Fiction Society membership* is involvement in the nomination and voting process of the prestigious Hugo Awards.

Members of Worldcon 75 have the right to nominate for the Hugo Awards in 2016, 2017, and 2018. Each year, the Hugos are administered by the current Worldcon. The upcoming Worldcon is MidAmeriCon II, 17-21 August 2016 in Kansas City, Missouri, USA. Your Worldcon 75 membership only entitles you to nominate for the 2016 Hugo ballot. To vote on the final 2016 Hugo ballot this summer, once nominations are done, you must be a member of MidAmeriCon II.

If you join Worldcon 75 by January 31st, you will still get your membership at the current rate and are eligible to nominate in the 2016 Hugos. And if you become a member or attend Worldcon, you will also be able vote for us by paying the site selection/supporting member fee. We are still unopposed, but that doesn’t mean we don’t want you there having a great time and dropping your ballot in the box!

Become a member here.

*for the uninitiated, all paying attendees of Worldcons are called ‘members’.

The post Worldcon 75 and Dublin 2019 News! appeared first on Dublin 2019.

Peadar displays his apocalyptic Irish roots by going completely green! 

You can sign up for the course here, and we’ve linked the IWC on our Nerdy Dublin map (below)!

http://www.zeemaps.com/pub?group=1791408&legend=1&list=1&h=sunflower,candle&x=-6.254394&y=53.347319&z=3

The post Dystopian Fiction with Peadar Ó Guilín appeared first on Dublin 2019.

At Gaelcon we also have a rather special contribution for the fan auction on Sunday. This weekend sees the launch of the Ticket to Ride, UK Edition. The map also spreads across the rest of Ireland, and is the fifth expansion for the series. Ticket to Ride is a fantastic ‘gateway’ game, and if you’ve not played, we really recommend it. And it has trains in it; what more could you want?

We’ll be donating our copy to the auction and very much encourage you to go along and bid. Irish fans are known for their generosity, and you can read about the Gaelcon auction here.

Ticket to Ride UK has been donated to us by Eclectic Games in Reading, UK. Eclectic ran many of the demo games in the Games Tent at Loncon, and have been supporting Dublin 2019 right from the start. They recently launched their new premises, and we’re proud to have sponsored four chairs in their gaming room. So, you’ll be able to go in and sit on a famous mythical or literary SFF character from Ireland when you visit to play some games; Dracula, Morrigan, Gulliver or Grainne! Eclectic are also a sterling example of the growing games communities in Ireland and the UK.

The post Getting Trained at Gaelcon!! appeared first on Dublin 2019.