Philcon
From SWILwiki
- Planning for the next Philcon can be found at Philcon 2008.
Philcon (Web Site (http://www.philcon.org)) is the Philadelphia Science Fiction Convention, which claims to be the oldest in the world. It generally happens in mid-November or December, in Center City Philadelphia. It doesn't quack.
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Getting Information
Information about Philcon comes in the mail to people who attended last year. If none of the presidents attended last year, they should pester people who did to let them know when the new information comes. The information consists of: dates of the con, guests of honor, deadlines for discounted tickets, and an order form. The same information is available on their website, too, though that's often less exciting.
Once the information comes, a copy of it should be passed around at meeting. Someone who is planning to go to Philcon should volunteer to make an order (or, preferably, to make one order for each deadline, since some people will decide they're interested after the first deadline) and to pester the frosh to go. Something should be said in SWILnews about the subject.
Running a Trip
In the past, SWIL appointed a Philcon coordinator to make sure there's transportation to Philcon. We used to rent a van from the college for transportation to Philcon, but stopped doing this at some point long ago. (See getting a van if you're interested in restarting this tradition.) It would also theoretically be possible to have people drive, and have other people sign up for seats in their cars. If people don't want to stay really late, or if we have a hotel room, everyone can just take SEPTA to Suburban Station.
- Please note that, as of Philcon 2008, the con is no longer in SEPTA-friendly Center City Philadelphia, but has been moved to auto-centric Cherry Hill, New Jersey. Getting a van is probably your friend.
When there is sufficient interest, we rent a hotel room and fill it to many times its intended occupancy. This was a pretty good system back in the days of yore, since it allowed people to stay late at filksinging without worrying about the driver (or the trains).
SWIL Involvement
It is theoretically possible for SWIL to get more involved in Philcon than just attending, if they so choose. There's a costume contest. There are group registration rates, if you can put together a group early enough. In 2004, Bryn Mawr's a cappella group Sassafras performed at the filksing (sadly, during SWILmeeting so no one could go); SWILlies could do this too, presumably. There's also a provision for groups to get tables at Philcon which they'd use to set up and talk about themselves, kind of like at the Activities Fair. If, for some reason, we wanted to do this.
