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Worldcon 2020: Wellington New Zealand


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Just booked my flight there, and bought my membership.  Checking out hotels, anyone know the con hotel prices? Debating between doubletree (free breakfast) and intercon (con hotel), since they are the same price. 

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Billy and I have decided that we are not going to fly to New Zealand this summer. I'm finding longer flights (8+ hours) have lasting effects on me, and so I'm trying to do as few of those as possible. 

For those of you going, I hope to see lots of pictures!

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Unsurprisingly given the current global pandemic situation, CoNZealand is cancelled. As a real world event, anyway - it will apparently be going ahead online as a virtual con. More details will be forthcoming, but there's obviously no need to book flights or hotel rooms, if it's even possible to do so right now.

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Very sad for the friends and members of the BwB who worked hard to see this happen, and indeed for all the volunteers and organizers. They moved mountains to make it happen. Here's hoping the virtual con is a big success!

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It seems like the only option in the circumstances but it's still a pity for all the people involved in it. Hopefully New Zealand will get an opportunity to host a WorldCon in a few years, I suspect they'd win easily when they decide to run again.

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I'm very sorry to hear this. I wasn't planning on attending, but depending on how this virtual con will work, I may pay for a full membership and participate. I was thinking of attending Nasfic, which is still up in the air.

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I am so sorry for everyone that worked so hard on this and for those who were planning on having fabulous trips to New Zealand this summer. But I guess the silver lining is hopefully more people will be able to attend the conference virtually than were going to be able to travel in person? I for sure will be purchasing a membership so I can attend virtually this summer.

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Here's the full text of the CoNZealand announcement:

 

Another week, and another paradigm shift. The changes are still coming fast and furious as New Zealand enters into a four-week lockdown. We are all still dealing with an unprecedented set of circumstances that make it very difficult to plan for the future.

The choices we are faced with are:

  1. Move the date of CoNZealand. We are constrained in the ability to move the con by the timing of other events that have booked the venues. It might be possible to move it to the end of 2020 or the beginning of 2021, but that would put undue pressure on fans to travel to two Worldcons too close together, and there is no certainty about whether there would be another wave of illness.
  2. Cancelling CoNZealand and minimally fulfilling the WSFS requirements. This would certainly be the easiest, but not necessarily the best or most fulfilling, choice.
  3. Virtualise CoNZealand. This choice provides certainty about what we are aiming to do while we still have time to make the plans. This will allow folks who can’t travel this far or those who are immunocompromised to attend.

The strong belief that we can put on a great Worldcon has led us to the decision to make CoNZealand a virtual convention. Our Tech Division is confident they can deliver a virtual Worldcon and are excited about the possibilities.

We are standing by our decision not to cancel, but in consideration of the health, safety, and wellbeing of our members and crew, we think that holding a large face-to-face event, even if it were possible would be irresponsible. 

Travel and accommodation

We understand that you will have to make arrangements to change or cancel your travel and accommodation plans. Please check our Hotels page for information regarding hotel room cancellations. We will continue to update the page with new information as we get it.

Memberships

Attending memberships will be required for people to fully participate in the interactive virtual convention. We understand that when you purchased your membership, you were not expecting an online con. None of us were. Our terms and conditions state that memberships are non-refundable. However, with the nature of the convention changing so fundamentally, we expect to offer limited refunds.

Over the last year and more we have spent a lot of money on things that will no longer be useful to us, and we now find ourselves needing to spend a lot more money on the platforms and services required to put a convention online. We will need some time to work with our venues and hotels to figure out where we stand. We ask for your patience at this time, as getting the information we all need is difficult during a period when New Zealand is locked down. 

We hope to announce the new online membership rates for CoNZealand by 15 April

Please note that at this time only Supporting memberships are available for purchase, until we have announced the new online membership rates. Attending memberships (of any type) can not currently be purchased.

In due course, we intend to refund any Child Attending memberships upon request, as well as any Unwaged Attending memberships that have not used their voting rights. 

We are willing to refund any Adult or Young Adult Attending members the difference between the amount paid and the price of an online membership. We ask, however, that you consider not requesting that refund. Any money we have will go towards making this the best online convention ever. As a charitable society, any remaining funds will support fandom and future Worldcons.

Issuing these refunds is challenging, and we will need some time to set up a system. We will do our best, but we cannot at this stage say when we will be able to start issuing refunds. 

Programme participants

If you have signed up to be a programme participant, we ask you to please give us some time to think about what a virtual convention will look like. We hope to be in touch with everybody by 15 April to discuss each individual’s options for continuing as a CoNZealand programme participant.

New Zealand Natcon 

CoNZealand, as host of the 2020 New Zealand Natcon is staying in close contact with the board of SFFANZ and the organisations will continue to work together with regard to CoNZealand’s obligations as the organisers of the 2020 New Zealand Natcon.

Future updates

If you haven’t already, please subscribe to our web news updates (you can find the sign up box on our website homepage). 

We are planning to do some Q&A sessions via Zoom (covering different time zones) so that you will have an opportunity to ask questions of the two of us directly. Information on the dates and times of these will be circulated in due course. 

As we have said before, please look after one another, and stay in touch. Especially when we are each isolated, it is good to be reminded that we are a community. We are together for a reason beyond Worldcon. We are fans. We are passionate. We love science fiction, fantasy, comics, art, worldbuilding, reading, writing and a million other things. Let’s concentrate on being kind to one another and helping each other through a very difficult time.

Kia Kaha (Stand Strong),

Kelly Buehler & Norman Cates

Chairs, CoNZealand

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  • 3 weeks later...

Worldcon just announced the new online membership rates

CoNZealand is pleased to announce a collaboration with The Fantasy Network to bring the 78th Worldcon to an interactive, virtual platform, say Chairs Norman Cates and Kelly Buehler.

“From panels and streaming video to informal hangouts and late-night networking, the virtual convention aims to provide members with the most fun that they can have at a convention from their home,” say Buehler and Cates.

In addition to collaborating on creating and hosting the virtual platform, after the convention The Fantasy Network will host selected video-on-demand streams from CoNZealand in their iOS, Android, and Roku applications in a new Worldcon channel.

Updated membership rates have also been announced today, as participation in the virtual CoNZealand will require an Attending Membership. An Adult Attending Membership is now NZD$300. The updated membership rates are detailed below.

“In addition to full access to the virtual con, attending members will be able to vote for the 2020 Hugo Awards and the 1945 Retro Hugo Awards, and for the 2022 Worldcon site selection.

“Supporting Members will receive the standard package with a souvenir book and any other souvenir items they would have received as a Supporting Member, as well as voting rights for the Hugo Awards, Retro Hugo Awards, and 2022 Worldcon Site Selection.


 

Adult Attending Membership

$300

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To be honest, I think 300 NZ $ (around 150€ for me) it's too much money for just online conferences and hangouts. I'm young, Spanish, and not a in a good financial situation right now. I got unemployed in February and after some work interviews when I was about to be sign for a new job the coronavirus crisis started. Spain is the country with most deaths/1000 habitants in the world and economical crisis will be fierce after the health crisis ends.  

But I want to support the kiwis, it should be pretty hard for them after all their hard work to see the physical conference cancelled due to an event such as coronavirus crisis.  So I ask you, fellow BwB (my first Worldcon was last year, I got the awesome t-shirt of the Brotherhood ^^), do you plan to attend the con in the new digital format?

 

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I understand the concern on cost. It's very high with no real knowledge of what you're going to get for that beyond knowing you helped out. I think the supporting membership may make more sense for many, in particular when it seems (entirely reasonably) that most of their planned programming will be at New Zealand hours ... it's 3 AM in Wellington right now. That means you might catch a panel or three in the morning, and maybe one or even two  very late at night, but it's quite limiting. Especially when they talk of only having "selected" panels available on video on demand so you can catch up. 

Feels like I'd like a lot more information on their  hopes for daily programming and how much of that programming will be available to watch after the fact.

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On 4/15/2020 at 12:13 PM, Javi Marcos said:

To be honest, I think 300 NZ $ (around 150€ for me) it's too much money for just online conferences and hangouts. I'm young, Spanish, and not a in a good financial situation right now. I got unemployed in February and after some work interviews when I was about to be sign for a new job the coronavirus crisis started. Spain is the country with most deaths/1000 habitants in the world and economical crisis will be fierce after the health crisis ends.  

But I want to support the kiwis, it should be pretty hard for them after all their hard work to see the physical conference cancelled due to an event such as coronavirus crisis.  So I ask you, fellow BwB (my first Worldcon was last year, I got the awesome t-shirt of the Brotherhood ^^), do you plan to attend the con in the new digital format?

It does feel a bit too expensive given that I doubt I'd attend many of the virtual panels. I may well get a supporting membership, which I was probably going to do anyway even before the recent events - it's probably good value for money just for the Hugo Voters Packet.

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