Shimmer Program Picks Vazquez, Perković to Visit Chinese Fandom

The winners of The Shimmer Program’s first Two-way Exchange Fund have been announced, Pablo M.A Vazquez and Mihaela Marija Perković. They will travel to China to meet Chinese fandom in the next 12 months

The winning applicants were selected by Yang Sumin and Colin Zhang, who won the Worldcon 75 Attending Funding.

Here are excerpts of the winners’ introductions posted today:

Pablo M.A Vazquez, as a superfan, has been known to edit fanzines, run/staff cons, put together elaborate outfits, spew poetry, bleed prose, perform comedy, drink a lot of cocktails, speak eloquently/angrily on the day’s issues, and live for the weird and wild in the world. An adventurer and raconteur at heart, Pablo travels as often as possible
and loves returning with amazing stories to tell. Pablo was recently the chair
of NorthAmeriCon ’17, the 12th North American Science Fiction Convention in San
Juan, Puerto Rico….

Mihaela Marija Perković is a Croatian author, SF fan and con-runner. She began promoting SF as the PR Manager of SFera, the oldest SF society in the Balkans and of SFerakon (http://sferakon.org/), the largest SF convention in Southeast Europe which has turned 40 in 2018, and has continued as the fan funds delegate for GUFF, visiting Australia and New Zealand in 2013, promoting European science fiction Down Under….

Each of the winners will be awarded a 15,000 RMB funding and will visit China later in 2018 or 2019, and meet the sff community in at least two of these four cities: Shanghai, Beijing, Chengdu, and Shenzhen. In each city, the traveler will make a presentation about their science fiction community. They will report on the trip in social media, and carry out other responsibilities once the trip is over.

[Thanks to Regina Kanyu Wang for the story. My apologies for spelling Perkovic without the accent over the “c”, but WordPress won’t display the character properly, turning it into a question mark.]

GUFF Seeks European Candidates for 2018 Trip Down Under

GUFF administrators are calling for nominations for the Southbound Race 2018 to send a European fan to Continuum in Melbourne, Australia over the June 8-11, 2018 weekend.

GUFF is the Get Up and Over (or Going Under) Fan Fund which transports SF fans from Australasia to Europe (and vice versa).

The winner will also be required to take over the administration of the fund for the next northbound and southbound races.

The administrators tell how to become a GUFF candidate:

If you wish to stand, please contact us at the postal or email address below. You will need three Australasian and two European nominators (who will each need to confirm their nominations), a platform of no more than 100 words to appear on the ballot, a bond of £15/€20/AU$25 and a guarantee to attend the 2018 Continuum convention in June if you win.

If you wish to stand and are unsure about how to go about getting any of these things, what the fund pays for or the duties of a GUFF delegate and administrator, then feel free to contact us in confidence.

Nominations are open until 15 February 2018, and candidates will be announced soon after. Voting will then run until 3 April 2018, with the winner announced online as soon as possible after voting has closed.

Nominations should be sent to [email protected] or via post to PO Box 6445, Conder, ACT, 2906 or [email protected] or Mihaela-Marija Perkovic, Maksimirska 100d, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia. The bond can be sent by PayPal to [email protected], or contact her for bank deposit details. Cash can be given directly to Donna Hanson or through Paypal [email protected] or contact her for Australian direct bank deposit details.

Full information at the link.

The reason for bringing the next GUFF winner to Continuum rather than the Australian Natcon (Swancon at the end of March) was not specified, however, the Natcon would be only three months away at this point.

[Thanks to JJ for the story.]

GUFF Seeks Candidates for Helsinki Worldcon Trip

GUFF administrators ae calling for nominations for the Northbound Race 2016, to send an Australasian fan to Worldcon 75 in Helsinki, Finland, August 9-13, 2017.

GUFF is the Get Up and Over (or Going Under) Fan Fund which transports SF fans from Australasia to Europe (and vice versa).

The winner will also be required to take over the administration of the fund for the next northbound and southbound races.

Mihaela Marija Perkovic, GUFF’s European co-administrator, tells how to enter the race:

If you wish to stand, please contact us at the postal or email address below. You will need three Australasian and two European nominators (who will each need to confirm their nominations), a platform of no more than 100 words to appear on the ballot, a bond of £15/€20/AU$25 as a guarantee you will attend the 2017 Worldcon if you win.

If you wish to stand and are unsure about how to go about getting any of these things, what the fund pays for or the duties of a GUFF delegate and administrator, then feel free to contact us in confidence.

Nominations are open until 17th November 2016, and candidates will be announced soon after. Voting will then run until Saturday 1st March 2017, with the winner announced online as soon as possible after voting has closed.

Jukka Halme Wins GUFF

Jukka Halme

Jukka Halme

It should not come as a surprise that Jukka Halme from Finland, the only announced candidate for GUFF, has been officially confirmed as the winner, although one of the administrators makes it sound as if there was some suspense. Instead of giving a vote total she jokes, “Stats forthcoming after Mihaela has her math lesson.”

Jukka Halme will travel to Brisbane for Contact, the 2016 Australian Natcon, to be held March 25-28.

Perkovic Wins GUFF

Mihaela Marija Perkovic of Croatia has won the 2013 GUFF race and will attend Conflux, the 2013 Australian National Convention.

Perkovic received over 50% of the 86 first-place votes cast.

  European Australasian Other Total
Julie McMurray

19

5

6

30

Mihaela Marija Perkovic

31

12

6

49

No Preference

4

2

1

7

Fund administrators James Shields and Kylie Ding report no one voted Hold Over Funds.

This year’s race raised a total of AU$1,098.02.

Fans from 15 countries voted – Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Channel Islands, Croatia, Ireland, Italy, Malaysia, Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, UK, Ukraine, USA.

GUFF, created in 1979, exchanges fans between Europe and Australia, therefore is called the Get Up-and-over Fan Fund or the Going Under Fan Fund, depending on which direction it’s running. Well, honestly, for that very reason it’s always called GUFF even though the variable name is a cute idea…

[Note: The winner’s last name is correctly spelled with an accent over the “c”, unicode U+0107, a character that does not seem to be available in this program.]

2013 GUFF Race Begins

Voting is now open to choose the GUFF delegate Conflux, the 2013 Australian National Convention. Anyone can vote who was active in fandom prior to January 2011, and who contributes at least GBP5 or AUD8 (or the equivalent in other currencies) to the fund. Candidates for the Europe to Australasia race are: Julie McMurray and Mihaela Marija Perkovi?.

Julie McMurray: I’ve been in Fandom since 1989 starting out in media fandom. Then I went to Novacon 23 and was completely drawn in by the diversity of the conventions and amazing people I met. I volunteered from my first convention doing all sorts of fun and exciting stuff. My passion is travelling and meeting people and I’ve always dreamed of going to Australia. Some of my favourite authors include Shaun Tan & Garth Nix. I love reading, larping and volunteering. I’d love to travel to Australia and have an active trip meeting fans, promoting European fandom and worldcon/loncon3 in London 2014.

Julie’s nominators are James Bacon, Emma King, Jim Mowatt, Dave Cake and Richard Crawshaw

Mihaela Marija Perkovi?: A Croatian fan who is downright crazy about Australia; she earned her degree with a paper on “SF tropes in Peter Carey’s short fiction”. Active in fandom since 2004, she has participated at Croatian conventions as lecturer, moderator and GoH host. She runs the SFERA Award Jury and writing workshops, is PR manager of SFera and SFeraKon, and coordinated Kontakt Special Track at Eurocon 2012. Enthusiastic, cheerful and chatty, she is an active blogger and lousy photographer. She plans to attend Swancon and Conflux, visit Sydney, Melbourne and New Zealand. Her report will be fun to read.

Mihaela’s nominators are Cheryl Morgan, Carolina Gómez Lagerlöf, Cristian Tamas, Anna Hepworth and Adrian Smith.

You can vote via PayPal (the online ballot is available here) or use the print ballot (see link below) and send cheque (made out to ‘GUFF’) or money order or cash in person to James Shields. 7 The Way, Highlands, Drogheda, Co. Meath, Ireland (email james [at] lostcarpark [dot] com); or Kylie Ding, 80A Forrest Street, FREMANTLE WA 6160, AUSTRALIA (email kylie_ding [at] hotmail [dot] com).

GUFF_2013_ballot