Newsletter

Progress Report no. 1 - December 2006

Dear all,

Welcome to Eurocon 2007 progress report number one. We will in this report try to inform you about the things we have been working on lately. Even though you haven't heard much from the Eurocon 2007 committee lately, we have actually been doing a lot of things behind the scenes. In this report you will get a short overview.

Guest of Honours:

We now have a final confirmation from all four Guest of Honours. Anne McCaffrey, Stephen Baxter, Zoran Živković and Dave Hardy will all definitely be going to Eurocon 2007 and will participate on all three days. They will take part in panels, give GoH speeches and be available for signings, kaffeeklatches etc. Furthermore Dave Hardy will make a guided tour of his exhibition.

As one of the greatest European science fiction writers Stanislaw Lem recently passed away, we wish to honour him and have appointed him as Ghost of Honour. There will be several program items about Lem.

GoH book:

A book will be published in Danish in cooperation with Science Fiction Cirklen with works by the four GoHs. It will be made available for sale at the convention.

Anthology:

We are trying to put together a Eurocon anthology in English of new European sf/fantasy/horror short stories. The editor will be Klaus Æ. Mogensen who is an experienced fanzine editor. The idea is to get one story from as many countries as possible, selected by whatever means the fans in the individual countries (the Eurocon agents, if no other agency exists) choose. This could be the best story published in 2006, as judged by a jury, or the winner of a short-story contest, or something else. The important thing is that the stories should showcase what is going on in the fantastic genres in the individual countries.

Any stories should be forwarded to the editor of the anthology (at anthologyeurocon2007.dk) no later than June 1st 2007 in electronic format (preferably PDF, RTF or txt). All stories should be translated into English before being submitted; the editor can only be expected to do light proofreading of spelling and grammatical errors. It should be understood by the authors that Eurocon 2007 cannot afford to pay for the publication of the stories in the anthology, but the contributors will each receive at least one copy of the finished book, which will most likely be published by an amateur press (i.e.; general book store circulation should not be expected). The individual authors will retain all rights to their stories for all purposes other than publication in the Eurocon anthology.

Any questions about the anthology can be directed to the editor at anthologyeurocon2007.dk.

Web site:

We are currently working on a new version of the web site. We have had problems getting the right resources onboard to help us out on this one. The new web site will be online early in 2007 with a new design. Stay tuned!

Program:

We are still working on settling the details of the program (there is still room for people that would like to be part of it), but apart from all the many GoH activities and the mandatory ESFS business meetings, there will be panels, discussions, interviews and speeches with a lot of program participants from all of Europe.

We will get back in a later progress report about specific program items, but at this point in time we can tell you this: Through all the three days there will be a comprehensive program in both English and Danish/Scandinavian with several parallel tracks. The program will span both science fiction, fantasy and horror, and cover literature as well as movies and other media. There will be a dealer's room, exhibitions and events such as awards ceremonies.

Contact the program coordinator Knud Larn at
programeurocon2007.dk if you have questions or suggestions about the program.

Movies:

We will have a complete movie track on all three days at Eurocon 2007 where you will be able to see some rarities and special movies. There will be more news later about this, but already now we can inform you that we have got the permission to show the movie Himmelskibet (The Sky Ship). This movie is from 1917, Danish, and considered to be the worlds first full-length sf-movie. It has recently been restored and is currently being published on DVD.

Members:

Eurocon 2007 has been present on several conventions over the past year, and this has paid off. We are now nearing the one hundred mark (currently around 95 members). If you haven't signed up yet then remember that the price will go up as of January 1st 2007. Very soon you will be able to see the membership list online at our new redesigned web site.

If you are not yet a member, then please contact your local agent. If you don't know who that is, then contact us. We might still miss an agent in your area. You can also contact our international agent coordinator Johan Anglemark at
agentseurocon2007.dk or the treasurer at
treasurereurocon2007.dk.

Reception at the town hall:

It is our great pleasure to announce that the City of Copenhagen will make an official reception for us at the old Town Hall at the first day of the convention (Friday). More will be announced about this event later.

Tourist and travel information:

We have now reserved several rooms at various hotels in Copenhagen through our Professional Congress Organiser: Conventum Congress Service, and the booking information will shortly be up at the new web site.

For those of you that want to find some cheaper alternative to hotels, we are currently looking into the options. Send an e-mail to Jesper Rugaard Jensen at
accommodationeurocon2007.dk if you have questions at this point in time. Or wait for the updates at the web site.

There will also be some tourist information at the web site in short time. Ask us if there is anything specific you want to know.

Organisation:

As with all projects run by volunteers it's sometimes a problem recruiting staff - and then keeping people to their promises. But fortunately we have had several additions to the staff lately. Besides the people we have already mentioned there were several staff members that joined us at the recent Danish convention Fantasticon 2006.

It is hereby our pleasure to announce that Flemming Rasch has joined the group as pr coordinator. He also steps into the Eurocon 2007 board. If you have any suggestions about public relations, please write to him at preurocon2007.dk.

Carl-Eddy Skovgaard (also a member of the board) has now agreed to coordinate the exhibition, and you can contact him about this at exhibitioneurocon2007.dk

However, we are still missing people for some of the critical areas, so if you know someone who would like to help out in one of the following areas, please let us know:

• Coordinator of parties
• Coordinator of other events (masquerade etc)
• Gophers
• Technical coordinator
• Design of Eurocon Awards

Finally let us remind you that you can get influence on Eurocon 2007 in several ways. You can e.g. register at the web forum and participate in the debate. If you are either a member or if you joined the staff you can get access to more groups. Furthermore, if you prefer it, you can join e-mail lists instead of the web forum. The two systems are syncronised. Contact the friendly admin people at admineurocon2007.dk to know more about this.

For webmasters:

Please do not post any of our contact addresses in clear anywhere, as we do not want to be spammed. Some months ago we changed our general contact address because of this.

Sum up of contact addresses:

Anthology: anthologyeurocon2007.dk
Agents: agentseurocon2007.dk
Program: programeurocon2007.dk
Membership: treasurereurocon2007.dk
Cheap accommodation: accommodationeurocon2007.dk
PR: preurocon2007.dk
Exhibition: exhibitioneurocon2007.dk
Forum/e-mail: admineurocon2007.dk
General info: infoeurocon2007.dk

Links:

Main site: http://www.eurocon2007.dk
Web forum: http://www.eurocon2007.dk/phpbb/
Membership sign up: http://www.eurocon2007.dk/en/membership/
Staff sign up: http://www.eurocon2007.dk/en/staff
Newsletter sign up: http://www.eurocon2007.dk/en/newsletter/

NB: We will have a meeting in January with all staff present in order to get a good fix on who is doing what. If you have input to this, or if you are at Copenhagen in January then please let us know.

This first progress report has been sent out to several people, e.g. members, guests, staff and some other people. If you want to be sure to receive updates in the future, please sign up for the newsletter at our web site: http://www.eurocon2007.dk/en/newsletter/

With kind regards
Eurocon 2007