CoNZealand Virtual Worldcon Plans and New Membership Rates

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CoNZealand announced today they will collaborate with The Fantasy Network to bring the 78th Worldcon to an interactive, virtual platform.

Chairs Norman Cates and Kelly Buehler said:

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. 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.

As the new Adult Attending Membership rate is lower than what many people previously paid for the same membership tier, we will be offering refunds upon request from May 1, 2020 through the CoNZealand website of the difference between what was paid for a membership and the new Attending rate.

More information on the refund process will be available on the CoNZealand website shortly. 

Rates

Note that all prices are in New Zealand dollars.

Adult Attending Membership$300
Unwaged Attending Membership (NZ residents only)$150
Young Adult Attending (born in or after 2000)$150
Child Attending (born between 2005 and 2010)*$75
Kid-in-tow Attending (born after 2010)*No Charge
Supporting Membership$75

*Please note that this constitutes a change of age to this membership type.

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25 thoughts on “CoNZealand Virtual Worldcon Plans and New Membership Rates”

  2. Still considering an upgrade from supporting. Nice to know what the difference in price is now. I’m curious to see how things will be scheduled with worldwide participation.

  3. For interested Americans, $300 NZ is about $180 US. More or less, depending on the day. Your bank or credit card may also charge to exchange the money.

  4. I’m also very interested to hear what the scheduling is going to be. It’s occurred to me that there’s quite a difference between physically going to NZ for a couple of weeks, where you can acclimate to the new time zone, and trying to spend several days virtually attending on NZ time while in my home time zone.
    Hopefully they can do things like finding timings for the “prime” events for the maximum overlap with most attendees waking hours.

  5. Yes, I was thinking regardless if I “attend” or not, it would be nice if the Hugo ceremony wasn’t at its usual 8pm local time — since that is 4am in my US eastern time zone.

  6. Would be fun to have some filer online chats around the convention. Like a pub meet or a tea and cookie meet. Half the fun with panels is discussing them afterwards.

  9. Regarding time zones, I think the timing of the Hugo announcements is a clear indication that they are being taken into account.You’d hope nearly all panels to have non-NZ-based participants, so they have to be considered for starters. And hopefully we will have scheduled discussion slots in the hours after each program item.
    Is anyone familiar with the platform that will be used?
    http://thefantasy.network/

  11. James Davis Nicoll: On CoNZealand’s Registrations page it says members can log in and do upgrades —

    Reviewing / Upgrading your Membership/s
    Once you have logged into the membership site, you can Review your memberships to see what upgrades are available for your Memberships.
    Similarly to new Memberships, you can select the Upgrade you wish.
    You will receive a pop up asking you to confirm. If you accept, then your Membership will be upgraded to the type you have chosen.
    On the next page you can then elect to make a full payment, or pay by installments.

  12. I did that but I don’t see the option to upgrade.
    My Memberships

    You have 1 membership
    #3519 James Nicoll
    Supporting Membership
    With this membership, you can
    Vote in Site Selection
    Vote in Hugo Awards
    Vote for Retro Hugos

    Under review details I see

    Membership Details
    Title
    First Name (required)
    Last Name (required)

    This is the name that appears on your official ID. We will need to check your ID at registration.
    Public First Name
    Public Last Name

    This is the name you would like to be addressed by. If it is left blank, you will be addressed by your legal name.
    Badge Name
    Badge Subtitle

    This is the text we will print on your badge. It will default to Your preferred name and City and Country from your address. Both fields are modifiable.

    Please note that we reserve the right to reject text that falls outside our code of conduct.
    Share membership details with future worldcons?

    Sharing your information with future Worldcons gives you the Hugo nominating rights for Worldcons other than 2020 that come with your membership. If you answer no, you will not be able to exercise those rights.
    List name on the CoNZealand website and in published directories?

    SFCONZ and Worldcon 78 want to list your information on our websites.
    Address and Contact Information

    Where do you get your postal mail? This should match your credit card address, if you use one.
    Address Line 1 (required)
    Address Line 2
    City
    State / Province / Region
    Post code
    Country (required)
    Paper pubs format

    Our primary means of communication are electronic, in particular our registration system. Opting out of electronic publications does not mean that you will receive zero emails from us. It does mean that we will not attempt to send progress reports, etc., to your email address.
    Accessibility Services
    I would like information on disability or accessibility services at CoNZealand
    Additional Options

    This is how we know if you want to be contacted about specific things. We ask these questions to help us give you the experience you are after.
    I am interested in volunteering before or at the convention
    I am interested in being a program participant
    I am interested in vending in the Dealers Room
    I am interested in selling my art in the art show
    I am interested in exhibiting at the convention
    I am interested in performing at the convention

    What am I overlooking?

  13. James Davis Nicoll on April 15, 2020 at 12:30 pm said:
    Stupid question: how does one upgrade a membership?

    Doesn’t look like the new virtual attending memberships are available yet. You should see an option for it when logged into the membership area when it’s available.

    ETA: I’m supporting now, and don’t have the option to upgrade yet. Before they went virtual and shut down regular attending, that’s where an upgrade option was.

  15. Having filled out a participant availability survey, the indication was that most events would go ahead in NZ timezone (between 22:00 and 06:00 UTC) with some stuff a bit later than that (06:00-10:00). So yeah, I’m gonna be going nocturnal for a week.

  16. I am amused that they are still offering the (free) “kid-in-tow” memberships.

  17. Yeah I’m slightly wondering how the kid in tow membership woodwork.

    Not going to lie, losing the chance to get books signed hurts my desire to join to a convention, especially one as book oriented as worldcon.

    Not to say I’m not interested in the overall concept, indeed I thought about organizing something similar in the form of an online-only convention and talk to a few friends recently, I’m just saying that I’m not sure how much the same creases the odds of me signing up for a full membership.

  18. Just a reminder. Trolling comments from first-timers might or might not be posted. If they’re left by people who use fake emails to register, they certainly won’t be.

    (Not speaking to anyone who’s comment has been posted, if I need to say so.)

  19. I filled out the survey of when they wanted panelists available–it comes to 10 am to 6 pm New Zealand Time.So the heart of programming for someone in the central US like me is centered around Midnight.

  21. Its still a NZ event, so the extravaganzas like the Hugos should be on NZ time. The minor events could be run on a 24 hour clock. What I wonder is how the arrangement with the Fantasy Channel will work. Will every item be recorded (if permissions given), so you could appreciate much more of the convention over subsequent weeks. Timeshifting items, and skipping through them would make the event much more attractive to me than just staring at a monitor in real-time. At Loncon 3 I wished I could clone myself to see all that was happening, with CoNZealand that might be possible.

  23. Indeed previous Worldcons have put a lot of material online. Loncon 3 were good, and Helsinki excellent, so you got to see the items you couldn’t get it the rooms for! If distribution is controlled by the Fantasy Channel, non-members may get less content. All issues for CoNZealand to ponder as they balance costs with revenue streams. As the virtual memberships are rather high, I guess they’ve got a large cost base to cover.

  24. A bit late to the commenting party here, but…

    As almost every conference in the world has gone virtual, and I’ve participated in a fair number of virtual events both as speaker and attendee, I will say that I wish they said more — a LOT more — about their technological plans. Because there is a great variety of different tech out there, and it makes all the difference in whether these are rewarding experiences or not. I mean all the difference — you may think you might be interested in the difference between a worldcon held at a Motel 6 vs. the Anaheim Hilton and LACC, but trust me, the difference between different technological platforms for a virtual conference makes a much bigger difference than the choice of venue does for a hotel based con.

    As we all know, a worldcon isn’t really about attending talks and panels. Yes, those should be there, and yes, they should be good, but it’s 99% a social experience. And at least for now, all the online virtual event platforms suck at the social part, though a few suck just a little bit less.

    Right now the conference world is in freefall of course. You get invites to 5 online conferences every day, most of the free, many of them offering amazing speakers who would be hard to find at a physical conference, because it’s so much easier for them to speak. And even so, most are ending up free, because there are so many that ones that charge tend to pull only modest attendance. Worldcons are an example of one of the exceptions to that, namely physical events which already have a large following (and indeed, already sold a bunch of memberships/tickets.) But boy, is it hard to pull this off. You have no idea how hard.

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