Conterpoint 2007 -- The 17th NE Filk Convention

Con Report

2007-06-29T18:16:58Z

I've posted a brief con recap in my journal: Part 1, Part 2.

My con report, part 1...

2007-06-28T15:23:59Z

...can be found here.

Con Report

2007-06-27T22:48:01Z

Brief Con Report
Here

Conterpoint photos up

2007-06-27T14:45:53Z

Meredith and Seanan dancing!
Originally uploaded by filkerdave.

I've culled the hundreds and hundreds of pictures I took at Conterpoint, this year's NEFilk and uploaded 200 or so to my Flickr page.

The full set of con pictures is here. They include pictures from Crystal and Steve's wedding on Sunday.

Conrep coming realsoonnow.

conterpoint2007 @ 2007-06-26T08:30:00

2007-06-26T13:03:24Z

Turns out I can indeed run a Consuite and supervise a toddler, but only with masses of help from truly marvelous people. My great thanks to Victor and Lara, and to everyone else who took over in the evenings so I could put the toddler to bed, and sleep myself (since I am that unusual species among fen, a morning person). And my great thanks in addition to everyone who helped out with Small Bear, who is a double handful and a half, and I know it.
Especially when he dives head-first into a bathtub full of soda cans and ice cubes *sigh*. (He wasn't even scraped, though, just Upset About It.) He liked the Consuite, because there were a) people to follow about and play with and b) lots of crispy grain-based products (all "cacker" to him, from Chex Mix to Cheerios) - he asked for so many "cackers" that I was tempted to start calling him the Dread Parrot Roberts.

1. Shopping is the hard part. If you have a steady supply of Easy Baked Goods and Tasty Foods That Can Be Made Quickly (frozen cookie dough, brownie mix, mushrooms and cream cheese, bread mix and a breadmaker), actually running the Consuite is comparatively relaxing.
2. Next time, much more caffeinated Diet Coke and uncaffeinated non-diet and diet sodas. Also, remember the Brita pitcher, darnit! Sorry, guys.
3. Next time, if I make the chickpeas again, keep them warm in the crockpot. They're not so good cold, though I quite like them, but I'm weird. The sesame noodles are good cold, but everyone ignores them anyway because they look strange.
4. Get any kind of Chex Mix other than Cheddar - all the rest, apparently, are kosher, but not that one.
5. Also, get someone to kosher the oven for me if we can manage it, and ask for pot/pan/utensil donations from those who keep kosher, so those who keep kosher can eat my baked/cooked goods. Plan that better. I hate leaving people out. Again, sorry, guys.
6. Next time, make time to make the veggie soup/stew. Got so into the rhythm of "put cookies into the oven, take cookies out, stuff mushrooms with cream cheese, put them into the oven, take mushrooms out, make brownie batter, etc." that I forgot the healthy meal I'd intended to make. This for my own sake as well- I should not live an entire weekend on Chex Mix, but if I don't watch myself, I will try.
7. Take about a half-hour to an hour per day to go hide in a dark room with no stimulation. I overstimulate easily, and I don't notice how stressed it makes me until I get to that dark room and my mind goes "splot" and relaxes. My introverted mind needs that time to recharge, though I'm fine for hours afterwards.
(x-posted to my personal journal)

CD-ROM feedback?

2007-06-26T12:50:57Z

I didn't get many reactions to the CD-ROM during the con, mostly for the reason that people wouldn't have a chance to look at it till they got home.

I'd like to heard feedback on this. Was it a good idea? A bad one? A good one that was badly executed? Should we do it again or not?

There was one mix-up. We were supposed to make a few paper copies, or else print-on-demand at the con, for people who couldn't deal with the disc on a computer. Sorry that this didn't happen.

recordings ...

2007-06-26T05:42:15Z

I got home about an hour ago (took my time leaving DC/Baltimore).... If I recorded you in a contest/one shot and you did NOT get a copy of the recording, please contact me for a copy.

If the copy of the audio I gave you AFTER your concert was bad (they are COMPUTER FILES, please speak to your techie person for help if you are having a problem first.), I will replace it.

THANK YOU FOR LETTING ME RECORD YOUR CONCERT. THANK YOU KLUDGE FOR THE SOUND AT THE CON!

If you plan to do something (publish) your concert, please check with Kludge for better source copies.

Harold S.

conrep, sorta

2007-06-26T02:41:07Z

on my blog

Conterpoint concerts on repeat for the night

2007-06-24T04:20:29Z

The stream of Saturday's concerts will be on repeat until main program starts up again in the afternoon.

http://dorian.altrion.org:8000/conterpoint.m3u

Stream schedule correction.

2007-06-23T16:50:51Z

Correction for broadcast from Conterpoint - Wild Mercy is on at 20:00 NOT 21:00 as previously posted.

Sorry for the error.

Conterpoint concerts online

2007-06-22T23:52:28Z

Live audio streaming from Conterpoint main auditorium will be online at http://dorian.altrion.org:8000/conterpoint.m3u.

Thanks to fleetfootmike for his server

All times in EDT and may be fannishly approximate.

Fri 22-Jun-2007
20:00 - 20:30 Dave Weingart
20:30 - 21:00 One shots
21:00 - 21:30 Rob Balder

Sat 23-Jun-2007

13:00 - 13:45 Boogie Knights
13:45 - 14:15 One shots
14:15 - 14:45 Vixy and Tony
14:15 - 15:00 Break
15:00 - 15:30 Odd Numbers
15:30 - 16:00 Tom Jeffers
16:00 - 17:00 TM John Hall
17:00 - 19:00 Break
19:00 - 20:00 Seanan McGuire
21:00 - 21:30 Wild Mercy

Sunday 24-Jun-2007

13:00 - 14:00 Song Contest
14:00 - 16:00 Closing jam

Airport Shuttles

2007-06-16T00:08:58Z

Oops...posted this to my own LJ by accident. D'OH!

Since we've gotten an inquiry or two, here are the airport shuttle options from National (DCA) and Dulles (IAD) Airports to the Woodfin:

Maryland Shuttle, (301)222-2222
$25-27 1st passenger, $8 each additional for a shared van

SuperShuttle, 1-800-BLUEVAN
$27 first guest, $8 each additional for a shared van

There's also The Airport Shuttle which has gotten the best reviews in the Washington Post Travel Section but appears to be substantially more expensive than the others (they quoted me about $80). Still might be worth a check though.

Volunteer Call

2007-06-15T22:12:14Z

Yep, it's that dreaded "V" word...we're looking for a few good volunteers for Conterpoint.

The most important area we need folks for is Con Suite, particularly for Friday and Saturday nights. This is critical if folks want the Con Suite to be open during late-night filking hours.

Help at Registration is always useful. The table will be conveniently located right outside the main room, so you should be able to still hear the goings-on. (Especially with our schedule. Several of our performers aren't exactly the quiet, mellow types...*grin*)

And a few mike- and instrument-wranglers would be useful too.

Thanks and see y'all next week!

Conterpoint Schedule

2007-06-12T09:59:22Z

The draft Conterpoint schedule is now on the web site -- a few details might shift at the last minute, but this should be mostly what happens.

Anyone want to roomshare?

2007-06-08T13:16:46Z

Sorry for how late in the game this is, but I've come up for air from various other pursuits and suddenly realized that I'd rather not shell out $200+ for my own personal unshared Conterpoint hotel room. Anybody need a slice of a room, or conversely, can anyone wedge in large and snorey me? (I do bring earplugs for all roomies.)

--Randy

CD-ROM is done!

2007-06-03T19:23:09Z

The content of the CD-ROM for Conterpoint is finished, and the files have been sent to stevemb for production. For all my early panic (which is a habit with me), I'd say it turned out quite well. There are 23 songs, four with PDF music and 14 with MP3 recordings. In addition, the latest version of the MASSFILC filk book index is on the disc.

Thanks to everyone who contributed songs (and put up with my occasionally losing their email) and everyone who did proofreading!

about the website

2007-05-28T01:29:12Z

Is there a particular reason for the website to be encoded in UTF-16 little-Endian Unicode, rather than UTF-8? The only sites I've ever seen using UTF-16 little-endian are in East Asian scripts: Chinese, Japanese, or Korean, which have huge character sets.

The problem is that when I tried to save the progress report from Firefox with Down Them All!, the URL came out as

瑨灴⼺眯睷挮湯整灲楯瑮漮杲振ば瀷ひ⸱摰

(In case it doesn't work the same for you, that's a string of Chinese characters, spiced with a couple of question marks and a hiragana "hi". I have no idea whether it actually means anything, but I severely doubt it. All the URLs on the page looked more or less like that, beginning with the same string.)

and the d/l'ed file wouldn't open. I was able to save successfully by opening the PDF directly from the web page and saving a copy.

This may well be a problem with DTA, but why should it have come up at all? I see no non-ASCII characters on the page (Firefox is auto-detecting the encoding). To return to the initial question, why this encoding?

New community for NEFilk

2007-05-17T17:35:59Z

I've just created a new community for the Permanent Floating Northeast Filk Convention, aka nefilk. I'd suggest not taking Conterpoint-specific discussions there, but it's available for future cons in the series and general discussions of the Northeast Filk Con.

Thanks for the CD-ROM submissions

2007-05-16T10:11:01Z

Thanks to a flurry of last-minute submissions -- one of which was literally that, being timestamped 11:59 on the 15th -- the Conterpoint CD-ROM is now looking quite good! There are a number of MP3 files that will be included on it. These are teaching quality, not necessarily polished recordings (though a few are quite decent).

If you really still want to get something in, send it today. This applies especially to convention guests, who unfortunately aren't well-represented -- oh, foo, I don't have any songs from them. min0taur, are you reading this? Please?

Hotel Block Closes May 22 (1 Week)

2007-05-16T02:30:37Z

To make sure you get your rooms in the convention block at the con rate, make your reservation ASAP.

The hotel web site has a good description, but you should call (888-433-9407 or 301-590-9880) to get the convention rate of $109/night for single through quad occupancy.

Reminders

2007-05-12T18:54:27Z

We're just a little over a month out from Conterpoint, so it's time for a few more friendly reminders. (Also crossposted to conterpoint2007 and r.m.f.

The deadline for the CD-ROM songbook is May 15th, this coming Tuesday. If you haven't already, send your songs and MP3's to madfilkentist.

The hotel block expires May 22nd.

The pre-registration deadline is May 31st. Sheryl, Steve, Crystal and I will all be at Balticon; catch us around one of the filk events and we'll get you signed up.

We're working on getting programming and restaurant details for the website, along with other useful last-minute information. And speaking of programming, don't forget we're on the lookout for lots of fabulous items for the Interfilk auction!

And let us know if there's anything else we can help with!

Mention in Analog

2007-05-11T18:25:48Z

Thanks to Tony Lewis, Conterpoint got a mention in the "Upcoming Events" page of the latest Analog. It was one of only five cons mentioned, and two of them are World[something]cons.

The listing spelled the name of the con wrong ("Counterpoint"), but otherwise it's fine, and includes contact info.

Songbook and other goodies

2007-04-28T14:56:16Z

Just a friendly reminder that we're still looking for songs and MP3's for the con songbook. See the Conterpoint web page or this post for more details.

Meanwhile, if you haven't already, it's probably time to start thinking about donations for the Interfilk auction. We want the bidding to be fast and furious!

Web Page Updates

2007-04-27T18:14:48Z

I've done some more tweaks and updates to the Conterpoint web page (most significantly, adding Web-page versions of the Progress Report and Registration Form in addition to the PDF versions).

Again, keep in mind that the hotel room block closes May 22, and the prereg deadline is May 31.

Makin' Progress

2007-04-06T01:32:22Z

With a little under three months to go, time to actually get some more content going here.

Our Progress Report #1 has been posted to the Conterpoint page. The PR contains programming details, directions, airport information, and other tidbits.

Speaking of programming, our programming goddess the_sheryl is hard at work putting together the schedule. In addition to our guests, we have concerts scheduled from the Boogie Knights, Vixy & Tony, and Rob Balder. Plus a song contest (theme: "True Love"), one-shots, workshops, lots of open filking, and the always-entertaining Interfilk auction.

For those who can hang around Sunday evening, the Dead Dog events will feature the wedding of our con-chair and jack-of-all-trades starmalachite and stevemb. Clam Chowder will provide music for the reception.

We're still taking songs & MP3's for our traditional songbook, being issued this time on CD. See the website or the PR for details.

I'll be starting work on updating the restaurant (and miscellaneous) guide shortly. Let me know if anyone has any special requests for things they'd like to see in the guide (Whole Foods, music stores, particular banks, etc.).

And of course, don't forget to pre-register (deadline May 31st) and get your hotel rooms (block expires May 22nd).

Be seeing you!