[Notes from Kevin Standlee, Marguerite Smith, Jannie Shea, and Vincent Docherty, and James Bacon.]

SMOFCon 37¼ went well. 

This year’s event SMOFcon 38 in Montreal moved to 2022 and with next year’s 2021 event, SMOFcon Europe in Lisboa. Both SMOFcon’s agreed to host a small one-day virtual event, with two panels and three question and answer sessions for future conventions and bids. 

The event was well attended with 288 memberships were taken through Grenadine and 312 unique individuals logged into Zoom. 

It is important to us, to learn and develop, so we have messaged members and asked them to do a survey. 

We will amalgamate the information from feedback and publish the information in about a month, on our our website https://sites.grenadine.co/sites/conzealand/en/smofcon-37-14/ in late January 2021.

We have uploaded the video recordings of all programme items to the SMOFCon 37¼ YouTube Channel here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLum0yU7zV-UHPMI_OO7XLg

All the questionnaires submitted for seated Worldcon, Future Worldcon bids, Seated SMOFCons and future SMOFCon bids can be found linked to their programme listing or you can find them all here: https://sites.grenadine.co/sites/conzealand/en/smofcon-37-14/documents

They will remain online until August 2021. The known contacts and URLs for the various conventions and bids have been added into the programme descriptions for the individual Question Time Session. 

Members joined Zoom from 21 countries, with some uncertainty because the Zoom report does not indicate VPN usage. The list of countries participating, ranked in order of the number of individual logins from that country, is as follows:

• United States of America    
• United Kingdom    
• Canada            
• Israel                
• France                
• Poland                
• New Zealand            
• Ireland                
• Australia            
• Portugal            
• Germany            
• Hong Kong SAR        
• Sweden            
• Norway            
• Belgium            
• Finland            
• Japan                
• Croatia                
• Netherlands            
• Italy            
• China            

For those of you  who enjoy it, here are some Grenadine/Zoom stats 

• Zoom practice – 35 interested – 34 attended
• Con Suite – 141 interested – 143 attended
• Question Time for Future Worldcon bids – 147 interested – 139 attended
• Question Time for Seated Discon III and Chicon 8 – 126 interested – 119 attended
• Question Time for Seated Smofcons and Future Smofcon bids -98 interested – 91 attended
• CoNZealand Chairs Chat – 92 interested – 89 attended
• Pivot to Virtual Conventions and Best Practices – 120 interested – 113 attended

(“Interested” = those who added the item to their personal schedule in Grenadine. “Attended” = those who used the Zoom link in Grenadine.)

The Con Suite host, Terry Fong, estimates that at peak, there were 80+ members in various break out rooms. Enthusiastic discussions were had about virtual art shows, new Grenadine features, planning for Westercon 74, the Tel Aviv in 2027 bid, and much, much more.

Much thanks to all those who joined, paricpants and back room staff who helped make the event successful. We hope that you consider supporting future SMOFcons and hope to see you there. 

/s/ Kevin Standlee, Marguerite Smith, Jannie Shea, Vincent Docherty, James Bacon

• Smofcon Europe (Lisboa, 2021) https://www.smofconeurope.com/
• Smofcon 38 (Montreal, 2022) https://smofcon38.ca/