Saturday, October 17, 2009

Swecon Is Go

We’re in Stockholm for Imagicon 2, this year’s Swecon. There is a good-sized delegation of Finns here (12, plus 2 children), including a couple of first timers which is always great. The ferry trip was fun as usual, and there was time in Stockholm for a really thorough breakfast, some shopping (did manage to do almost no impulse shopping at SF bokhandeln and Comics Heaven, and discovered that Uppsala’s famous English Bookshop now has a store in Stockholm as well), and a really nice Swedish meal at a pub. Then it was time to go see the convention for a few hours, although arriving in Sweden at way too early an hour (wakeup call at 5:30) took its toll on the Friday evening festivities.

Imagicon seemed again to have a better handle on organizing things than the average Swecon—there even were guide signs from the metro station to the local library/culture center where the convention is held. Everything was in place when we arrived, registration went smoothly and the printed program booklet and badges awaited the members.

Imagicon 2, a view from the hallway. Tables with lots of books for sale

The culture center is not very big but is quite well suited for hosting a small, cozy convention. There are a couple of rooms for programming, a hallway where the vendors are (not many of those, the Alvarfondet book sales tables take up most of the space) and there’s also a cafe/bar that offers some vegetarian dishes and a very attractively priced selection of beers (some ciders too).

Six persons sitting around a round table drinking beer and talking

There was some programming on the first day, but I didn’t see much of it; instead the evening was well spent meeting friends and chatting in the bar. Today I plan to go see at least the GoH speeches and interviews, and there were a couple of other program items too that seemed interesting. Plus also Jukka’s “Never mind the Buzzaldrins” quiz, lifted from Åcon, and is of course a must. The beer is not expensive and the books sold at the con are even cheaper, so this looks to be shaping into a great little convention.

2 comments:

Johan said...

I love the way you consider our reasonably big cons as small, intimate, cute affairs.

//JJ

Johan said...

... and when you can't decide if you want to say "consider" or "see ... as", go for both.

//JJ

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