The revised 2018 Worldcon programming schedule is now online.
As this is written, the summary shows there are 806 items and 688 participants.
The original program was subjected to enough criticism that it was taken down and a team of volunteers led by Mary Robinette Kowal revised the program to address the concerns.
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However, the ability to add items to one’s personal schedule does not appear to have been re-enabled yet.
I’m having the same trouble: I can’t add items to my schedule using the desktop app. I can, however, add them using the mobile app.
Awesomesauce! Crossing my fingers for Thursday for our Filer meetup.
Striking that Kress, Haldeman, Niven & other figures have little or no presence…
Do you know how much presence they volunteered for?
Haldeman’s got a signing, a kaffeeklatsch, and 2 panels. That seems to be a pretty significant presence to me, considering how many author guests there are to be accommodated.
Paul: I can, however, add them using the mobile app.
Thanks for mentioning that! I had gone through the original schedule and marked everything I was interested in, and a lot of them are still showing on my schedule, but I can’t add anything new. I’ll try the mobile app to see if I can get any joy.
It would be interesting to see how many people are on 3, 4, 5, … items; even figuring that a big chunk of those items are readings or other one-person items (or even markers for things like Registration opening and closing), that’s not a lot of participants for (guess) 500+ panels. OTOH, Kowal had spreading the appearances as a goal, so we can look for it to be sufficient.
@Chip — Looking through a number of entries randomly, I find people scheduled for anywhere from one to nine items. Note that one of the things asked on the programming questionnaire is what the limit is for how many items you want to be scheduled for (both in overall terms and for any given day). So someone with only a single programming item might have specified that as a limit.
@Hitchcock. I can say Kress volunteered her time generously. In the second round her one panel was cut (originally scheduled for a time she wouldn’t even be there) and was left with no book signing schedule or anything else, except a reading slot close to dinner hour on Hugo night.
@Chip Hitchcock: Yeah, W76 has 823 items and 693 participants as I write this (they seem to have added a few items and some people since Mike did his report, but surprisingly more items than participants); for comparison W75 had 931 items and probably 823 participants; W75 used about 80% of the programme volunteers (and some fell away for the simple reason that they couldn’t come).
It would be interesting, though probaby impossible, to do a before-and-after of the W76 programming; I wouldn’t be surprised if some groups (and not necessarily white old men) were replaced in greater proportion than other groups. Given that Elizabeth Bear is only on one panel, or Pat Cadigan on a klatsch and a signing, or PC Hodgell only does a signing, or Mary Anne Mohanraj is on one communal signing and one panel. or Pat Murphy is on one panel, or Diana L. Paxson only does one signing, I believe that W76 still might have serious problems with diversity in their programming, despite the best efforts of MRK and friends.
Which just goes to show that diversity cannot be added as an afterthought; like accessibility it must be part of the effort from day one.
BTW, I can recommend Jesper Stage’s talk “Economics of Terraforming”, he held it at last Swecon, and it’s a fun and interesting lecture on how sf actually get a science right for once!
And I see that Lincoln Peters went back and offered to repeat his photography workshop for kids from W75! Great ideas deserve to be repeated – that one was a hit and a lot of fun. But the children’s track looks extremely sparse, I’d have expected far more items.
A huge number of those 823 items have only one person on them, not just Kaffeeklatsches and Readings but also Panels.
JJ, perhaps this is a preliminary schedule and they’re still filling out the panels? After all, they were scrambling to get it done.
I’m curious to see how the fix plays out. The team that did it owns it now. Obviously this isn’t the army, however, when the commander in chief issues an order, and the second-in-command passes it along, the second has already had their shot at protesting it or following it, when they pass it on it also becomes the second’s order, too, they don’t say, “Well I have to pass this on but I don’t like it.”
There seems to be a post from JJ that’s hung up in moderation….
I’m hoping some of the authors that didn’t get an autographing slot will be able to schedule something at the SFWA booth.
I checked pending, spam and trash, everything. There’s not.
OK, because I am such a numbers geek and people seem to be curious about the programming numbers. I had fun sorting out what “x program items and y participants” might mean, because “program items” include things like “registration opens” right alongside panels and signings and whatnot.
So I set up three general categories:
1. Administrative and open-audience – includes “business of the convention” items, tours, ceremonies, concerts and such like
2. Small-group interaction – This is a bit ambiguous in places, but the idea is that the “audience” is part of the programming. I goofed a bit in including single-person readings here rather than in the next group where they should have been for consistency, but I include KaffeeKlatches here because the idea is that the limited attendees are a key part of the nature of the event (though not listed as participants, of course). Workshops are also included here.
3. Panels, multi-person presentations, and “presenter-focused” items. (Panel discussions, multi-person readings, lectures/papers, etc.) For these, I took note of the number of listed participants.
I only tallied this up for two time periods: Tuesday-Thursday (fairly light on programming) and Friday (the first heavy-programming day which can be assumed to represent the likely distribution on Sat and Sun but I didn’t want to spend all that time counting). I didn’t count listed participants for event types 1 and 2 because it didn’t fit with how I’m classifying them.
Tu-Th
Type 1: 29 events
Type 2: 10 events
Type 3: 32 events and 120 participant slots
(Note that “participant slots” does not mean “distinct participants” since the same person may appear on multiple items.)
Distribution of # of participants in type 3:
1: 7
2: 4
3: 18
4: 20
5: 45
6: 12
>6: 1
(Note that events with >6 participants are almost all group signings)
Fri
Type 1: 41 events
Type 2: 52 events
Type 3: 100 events and 405 participant slots
Distribution of # of participants in type 3:
1: 10
2: 10
3: 17
4: 26
5: 20
6: 9
>6: 8
(Note that events with >6 participants are almost all group signings)
Roughly speaking Sat & Sun have the same number of events as Fri, and Mon the same as Wed. So we could extrapolate for the total Type 3 programming to approximately 360 events and 1450 participant slots. And by a rough visual count, just barely shy of 700 listed participants. But some of those participants are only involved in the type 1 and type 2 events. For example, someone doing a craft workshop or MCing a concert or dance may well be doing only that one item. And some of the people doing single-person type 3 events are, for example, presenting papers in the academic track any may only have signed on for that one item. These are all unknowable factors without tracing each individual schedule. But if we made a wild-ass guess that the total estimate of Type 2 events represents the number of participants involved in only Type 1 or Type 2 programming, that would bring us to roughly 530 participants for the roughly 1440 Type 3 participant slots or just under an average of 3 events per person. Which seems both reasonable and in line with what I see on a spot-check of individual participants. Furthermore, I know for a fact that there are program items still being sorted out and not listed in the program, because I’m on one of them–it was in my participant e-mail with a “placeholder” timeslot and doesn’t show up on the public schedule yet. So the total number of Type 3 participant slots is likely to be larger than the above estimate.
I could, of course, have sorted this out from a much more detailed review of the data but I’m not quite that dedicated.
@Mike Glyer: We will just have to see. Even if the W76 program turns out to be a failure (or not much of a success), I doubt one could the blame MRK and her team that much, given the time limits they worked under and that I doubt they simply replaced the original programming team. Heck, even if the new programming is worse than the first released one, I’m not sure one can blame MRK’s team for it, given the number of withdrawals (though I have no idea how severe they were).
Though I do admit that I look askance at the lineup for “The Scurrilous History of Fandom”. Looking at the participant list, I see at least three women who have as long a career (or longer!) than any of the men on the panel and who are distinctly underused in programming. And one of them is more than capable of overvoicing any mansplainer.
Cassy B: There seems to be a post from JJ that’s hung up in moderation
What were you expecting me to post? 🙂
Mike, my mistake; it was a post in a new thread which I conflated with this one. Sorry for the false alarm!
Whew! I’ve been racking my brain trying to figure out what I should have posted! 😀
And don’t tell Robin Reid or Diana Pavlac Glyer about this typo.
What is the best way to print out the panel, for those of us who like to work out our schedule that way?
I’m currently scheduled to get in rather late on Thursday (though that may change). Will there be Filer meet-ups on the other day(s)? Who’s coordinating these things?
Doctor Science –
I presume Worldcon 76 will have a printed “pocket” program available in your registration packet.
(“Pocket” in quotes because it’s almost never small enough to fit in a pocket any more.)
@JJ, arrgh!