We’ve updated our Where We’ll Be page with the list of conventions at which we plan to have a presence for the next few months. Coming up next: ArmadilloCon in Austin TX on August 27-29. We hope you’ll stop by and talk with us at our tables. We’ll be selling memberships and also our Westercon t-shirt featuring beautiful Foglio Girl Genius artwork (see below)
Westercon T-Shirt Design (Click to Enlarge)
If you pre-supported the San Jose in 2011 Westercon bid, you are entitled to a $15 discount off an attending membership. That discount expires on August 1, 2010. Memberships are currently $65, but only $50 for pre-supporters through the end of July 2010. We urge all of our pre-supporting members to redeem their discounts now and buy an attending membership to Westercon 64 for only $50. Register online on our membership registration page.
If you believe you used your pre-supporter discount and should already have an attending membership, check your membership status and if you still have a question after that, write to our Registration Team.
Westercon 64 Progress Report 1 is now available for download from our Publications page. We mailed copies of PR1 this week to all members (or handed them out in person) except those who opted out of receiving paper publications. If you would like to opt-out of receiving paper publications, write to our Registration department (see contacts on the Committee List).
We’ve posted pictures of our party at SiliCon 2009 on the SJ2011 LiveJournal. We’d like to thank everyone who came by and said hello, and to welcome all of our new members and those people who upgraded their pre-supporting memberships to attending memberships.
San Jose has won the right to host Westercon 64, having received 79 of the 93 ballots cast in the election held at Westercon 62 in Tempe, Arizona.
Westercon 64’s Guests of Honor will be:
Writer: Patricia A. McKillip
Artists: Phil & Kaja Foglio
Fan: Mike Willmoth
Attending memberships will be $45 with discounts to people who voted in Site Selection or pre-supported the bid.
If you pre-supported (or pre-opposed) the SJ 2011 bid and voted in 2011 Site Selection (or were a Friend of the SJ 2011 bid), you are automatically an attending member.
A new Westercon 64 web site at http://www.westercon64.org/ will be online soon. Online registration for Westercon 64 will be also be available soon.
Many members of the bid were at BayCon 2009 in Santa Clara, California. Pictures of our table and party are on the updated Meet Us page. This was the bid’s final promotional appearance before FiestaCon, this year’s Westercon in Tempe, Arizona, where the election to choose the site of Westercon 64 will be held.
We thank everyone who stopped by our table or party at BayCon, and especially to all the new pre-supporting members we signed up. We’re looking forward to meeting more people at Tempe in a few weeks.
Representatives from the SJ in 2011 bid were at Norwescon 32 in SeaTac, Washington over Easter weekend, where we sat at a bid information table and held a party on Saturday night. We’ve posted pictures on the updated Meet Us page. Our next planned convention appearance is at BayCon 2009 in Santa Clara, California.
One challenge of many convention sites is that they are isolated from anything other than the hotel/convention center in which they are held. Restaurants, shops, and other services are inconveniently far away, often requiring one to drive. We’re happy to say that downtown San Jose is nothing like that. In fact, our convention hotel has earned a maximum rating from WalkScore.com, a service that rates locations based on the ease of accessing restaurants, shops, etc. within easy walking distance of a given site. Check our their map centered on our hotel and you’ll see how many places are located nearby within a short walk. Downtown San Jose is also nice and flat, making access simple.
SFSFC, parent organization of the San Jose in 2011 Westercon bid, has formally filed our bid to host Westercon 64. The bid has selected the Fairmont San Jose as our host hotel.
Although we had earlier announced that the San Jose Doubletree was our preferred site, after evaluating all of the proposals we received, we elected to go with the Fairmont Hotel’s as representing the best overall value for Westercon’s members.
For more details and the full text of the announcement, see the press release on the SFSFC corporate web site. We have also updated the Site pages of the bid web site to include more information about the Fairmont, and we have included links to our bid filing information in the Materials and About SFSFC pages.
San Francisco Science Fiction Conventions, Inc. is bidding to host the 2011 West Coast Science Fantasy Conference (Westercon 64) in San Jose, California.
The bid committee is currently evaluating proposals from several properties in the San Jose area, including the San Jose Doubletree Hotel and the San Jose Fairmont Hotel. The Doubletree has hosted many SF genre conventions including Westercon 36, Costume-Con 26, BayCon, and SiliCon. The Fairmont was the headquarters hotel for the 2002 Worldcon and will be site of the 2009 World Fantasy Convention. The committee will announce a specific site later in 2008.
Glenn Glazer will chair the San Jose in 2011 Westercon bid committee. He and other members of the bid committee will be present at the bid’s kick-off party, which will be at this year’s Westercon in Las Vegas, Nevada.
San Jose in 2011 is offering “pre-supporting” memberships for $15 and a variety of other types of memberships to help fund the bid. Membership forms and additional information about the bid are available on the bid’s web site. The bid accepts PayPal for online membership purchases and accepts Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and Discover.
