tuckerverse

Details of how to watch the webcasting planned from Corflu this weekend are here.

The Las Vegas Corflu in 2008 was where the concept of webcasting from conventions was first tried out - in fanzine fandom, at any rate. So it's only fitting that this year's Corflu, back in Las Vegas, is taking things to a new level, with not one but two live streams. The first stream is for the main events taking place at the convention (opening ceremony, banquet, etc), whilst the second is a more informal stream from the Con Suite. The feeds are at:

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/corfluglitter - Main Events

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/corflu-glitter-con-suite - Con Suite

Go on, you'd forgotten that you were subscribed to this community, hadn't you?

We should have some more news about webcasting from Corflu in Las Vegas in a short while.

In the meantime, Olympus 2012, this year's Eastercon, at the Radisson Hotel, Heathrow, has just announced on Twitter that they are planning on running a live main hall video stream on uStream throughout the weekend. Their upstream channel is here. I'm guessing that this will start with the opening ceremony, scheduled for 4 pm London time on this Friday, 6th April. You can convert this into your local time here.

There will be live streaming coverage of the Hugo Awards from this year's Worldcon at Reno at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/worldcon1 The ceremony starts Saturday night at 8 pm local time.

Details of the Virtual Corflu coverage will be posted to the corflu community here on Livejournal as we get them. So no more cross-posting from me this weekend.

Go on, admit it, you'd forgotten this community was hidden away in the darkest recesses of your f-list, hadn't you?

Anyway, this is an early warning that we hope to have some form of live coverage from Corflu this weekend. Certainly text, hopefully video as well (subject to all the usual caveats). Further details to follow when we have them.

Potential plans for a video feed haven't come to fruition, but there will be text coverage, using the Cover It Live system, at http://www.thehugoawards.org/2010/09/hugo-award-ceremony-live-coverage/

"Cheryl Morgan and Mur Lafferty will be on hand in the auditorium in Melbourne to introduce the show. Technology willing, Mary Robinette Kowal will join us from Dragon*Con. Kevin Standlee will be moderating your questions. We will also incorporate the official @Aussiecon4 Twitter feed."

The ceremony starts at 8 p.m. local time, which works out as:

• Sunday 5th Sept, 10.00 p.m. New Zealand Standard Time (Auckland)
  
• Sunday 5th Sept, 08.00 p.m. Eastern Australia Standard Time (Melbourne)
  
• Sunday 5th Sept, 06.00 p.m. Western Australia Standard Time (Perth)
  
• Sunday 5th Sept, 11.00 a.m. British Summer Time (London)
  
• Sunday 5th Sept, 06.00 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time (New York)
  
• Sunday 5th Sept, 05:00 a.m. Central Daylight Time (Chicago)
  
• Sunday 5th Sept, 03:00 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time (Los Angeles)

Just a reminder that the "Bridging the Gap - SF/F and Social Media" panel is being webcast on Saturday, at 3 p.m. local time. By investigative means of the utmost cunning (ok, I used the "search" box on the Ustream website), I have uncovered that the link for this is:
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/eastercon-2010---livecon-event
You can also follow along on twitter by searching for the #livecon tag.

3 p.m. Heathrow time works out as:

• Sunday 4th April, 02.00 a.m. New Zealand Daylight Saving Time (Auckland)
  
• Sunday 4th April, 01.00 a.m. Eastern Australia Daylight Saving Time (Melbourne)
  
• Saturday 3rd April, 10.00 p.m. Western Australia Standard Time (Perth)
  
• Saturday 3rd April, 10.00 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time (New York)
  
• Saturday 3rd April, 09:00 a.m. Central Daylight Time (Chicago)
  
• Saturday 3rd April, 07:00 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time (Los Angeles)

(I *think* I've got those right - not helped by the fact that some bits of Australia and all of New Zealand appear to be coming off DST at some point this weekend, whilst other bits of Australia decided to give DST a miss altogether this year.)

Also, because it's Jim, a quick mention for his Eastercon podcasts. People have been doing alternative convention newsletters for years, but Jim Mowatt is trying his as a podcast (or is it a vodcast?). You can get them at http://eastercon.mevio.com/ or via iTunes at http://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/eastercon/id365272759

For those of you who, like me, aren't going to Eastercon, there are at least three different approaches to the concept of the virtual convention being planned for the weekend:

Firstly, the panel at 3 p.m. local time on Saturday 3rd April, entitled "Bridging the Gap - SF/F and Social Media" will be covered on ustream, the same video streaming service we used for Corflu (and indeed for Eastercon last year). The panel asks: can SF and Social Media really help each other? What use are sites like Twitter to the community? How can writers and fans make these sites work for them? Join our panel as they discuss - and demonstrate - the answer. This event will be broadcast live in real time and will be accepting questions from virtual attendees. There's a good blog post describing the panel and what's planned on panel moderator Danie Ware's blog at http://danacea.blogspot.com/2010/03/sff-and-social-media-and-join-us-live.html

Next, there will be several events on Sunday 4th April on CoverItLive. CoverItLive is a text-based chat system which has been used to cover awards ceremonies and the like before; one benefit of being text-based over actual webcasting is that it should be a lot more tolerant if the connection proves a bit flaky. The projected programme includes:

• The British Science Fiction Awards at 6 p.m. local time,
  
• The panel at 7 p.m. on "Virtual Attendees - Conventions' Future or a Minority Interest?" where panel moderator Cheryl Morgan will be taking questions from the online audience, and
  
• The announcement of the Hugo Award Nominees at 10 p.m. by Hugo Awards Administrator Vincent Docherty.

For more details, see http://www.conreporter.com/?p=1469

In addition, the ConReporter site will be covering not just Eastercon but various other conventions around the world on Easter weekend, most notably Norwescon in Seattle. ConReporter is, in effect, a blog aggregator, pulling together posts that contributors make on their own blogs into one easy-to-find combined feed, at http://www.conreporter.com/?p=1395