Below are the 19 most recent journal entries recorded in Potlatch - A Wandering West Coast SF Con's LiveJournal:

Wednesday, March 4th, 2009
5:44 am [calimac]	a couple reports Brief report by L. Timmel Duchamp, who also went to see the Difference Engine in operation. My own comments on the Always Coming Home panel and the Scalzi Rule discussion. (Comment on this)
Sunday, March 1st, 2009
11:07 pm [wild_irises]	roundup Excellent convention! Not that I have the time or energy to post my own report, but: waywardcats was doing some liveblogging on Friday and Saturday, before she got into being full-time (super-successful!) auction manager. badgerbag liveblogged several panels, and she's one hell of a liveblogger. src posted here earlier, but she doesn't say how good her blogging is, and I wouldn't have known it if badgerbag hadn't pointed it out. imnotandrei posted something of a con report. That's what I've seen so far. Current Mood: tired (2 Comments |Comment on this)
3:25 pm [vito_excalibur]	Potlatch 18 - my notes I wrote a bit about the books we covered on the Good Reads panel, as well as the Friday night LARP. Spoilerrific and longwinded, but possibly interesting? Anyway, nice to meet y'all, see you next year perhaps! (Comment on this)
2:34 pm [jemale]	Cartoonists and graphic novels mentioned during Saturday's Graphic Novel Panel at Potlatch 18 Hello, Jenn Manley Lee here. I was on the Graphic Novel panel Saturday morning along with Ursula Le Guin and Lenny Bailes; just wanted to share a list of the creators and comics mentioned during that panel plus a few more that I thought might appeal to folks. Chances are I missed a few – please feel free to fill-in any omissions in the comments as well as recommend other comics you think folks should check out. ( list behind the cut ) (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, February 28th, 2009
5:08 pm [src]	Posted notes from several sessions to my LJ before finding this group. Pls to find there, am solely on iPod touch at the moment! (Comment on this)
Friday, February 27th, 2009
9:52 pm [tiger_spot]	Book of Honor Panel: Always Coming Home I did not get to make my comment at the panel, so I will do it here (at much greater length). One of the things that was mentioned at the panel, and that started to bother me about halfway through the book, was that, although the Condor failed in their war for reasons that were eventually explained and fit the world well, it seemed unlikely that some other culture wouldn't soon do a similar thing more successfully (or, as it was bothering me while I was reading, that some other culture hadn't done it already). This kind of broke me out of the book, which I'd been reading in a very predictive, this-could-come-to-pass way, and made it seem a lot less realistic. But looking back on it, I realize that it's not a realism problem. It's a time problem. The way the book is presented is also the way the Kesh see the world: everything is as it has always been and will always be. It's in the eternal present. But the actual bits of the book -- the poems, the plays, Stone Telling's story -- all come from a particular present. The way of life of the Kesh, although they think of it as eternal, may not last very long. The strong sense of place and home and cycles that's present in the book makes it feel like a culture that has lasted a long time and will last much longer, but their attitude toward history makes it impossible to know whether that's the case. In retrospect, it feels like a precious soap bubble, a specific moment in time. The Kesh may be coming from or becoming some very different culture; the tanks may be just over the hill. But this isn't visible from inside the book, because the book is using the ethnographic present, which dovetails with the Kesh cyclic concepts to create this sense of timelessness, which is not necessarily reflected in the history of the Kesh or the world as an outside observer with a linear sense of time would record it. I know I saw more hands raised than there was time to call on, so this seems like a good place to continue the panel discussion, if any of those people would like to add their comments. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Sunday, February 22nd, 2009
3:30 pm [saycestsay]	Signings? I see Ursula K. LeGuin is a member. Will she be signing? (I don't suppose John M. Ford will be, though. Darn it.) (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, February 21st, 2009
1:47 pm [jaylake]	Algonquin for limeade? whump has suggested I do an Algonquin for lemonade/limeade at Potlatch. I'm down for that, it will require some local prep and materials sourcing by one or more volunteers, as I'm flying in Friday afternoon and simply won't have time to do it myself. Anyone interested in such an effort? (7 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, February 19th, 2009
6:44 pm [elisem]	Dealers' Room Query What are the dealers' room hours, please? Signed, planning my schedule, and figuring out how to cover things during programming that I must be at P.S. Whee! Soon! Yay! (Comment on this)
Thursday, February 5th, 2009
3:53 pm [juliebata]	Thinking of Attending I have a couple questions. Is it too late to get a hotel room? Is the hotel block filled up? Or, is there anyone I might possibly room with at the con? Also, is there anyone I could hit up for a night or two of crash space, either before or after Potlatch, depending on what my travel arrangements are? I plan to rent a car, but I may not have one the whole time I'm there. Thanks! (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, October 9th, 2008
9:42 pm [whumpdotcom]	Call for Participation: Potlatch 18 Programming Planning the Potlatch program is not as much thinking about thematics as it is like running an experiment on the Large Hadron Collider. You have your books of honor, you have people interested in books, and those collide and you get ideas, and those ideas interact with other books and ideas. You look at what you think are going to be the most interesting interactions, and start building a program. Instead of moderators, we work with ringleaders. A potential ringleader might come to us with an idea, fully formed, or when looking at ideas, we think of someone and think, "yeah, zir is the person to run with this." Then the ringleader may pull together group of panelists, or we can suggest panelists to them. We need panelists, ring leaders, and ideas. Not that we don't have ideas of our own, but you have ideas, and those are shiny, and we probably haven't thought of them. We will, of course, have panels on the books of honor, and there's rumors of a musical production afoot. So thinking about the Books of Honor, and the ideas that spark off of them, if you want to ringlead, be a panelist, or have an idea for a program item, please write to programming@potlatch-sf.org. We welcome program involvement from all Potlatch members, both old and new. If you've never been on a program before, this is a great con to try it out! Potlatch also supports diversity; we encourage members from all cultural backgrounds to submit program ideas and volunteer as panelists. Some of Our Current Ideas Unexpected Singularities: Consider Always Coming Home as a post-singularity novel. Is the City of Mind really *that* hands-off? What about other novels and stories that aren't advertised as being about the singularity, but have that feel —such as Candace Dorsey's Black Wine? The Technology of Handmade: In the future, we were told that every artifact was going to be made in a factory, possibly to order. However, knitting and handmade have become important again. We knit, we sell handmade items on Etsy.com.    *Is handmade still under-appreciated?    *What about bespoke software and http://www.markbernstein.org/NeoVictorian.html? Silicon Valley in Science Fiction: Since this is the first Potlatch in Silicon Valley, we could talk about books and stories set here. * Vanishing Point, Blood Music, Rudy Rucker's Novels * Does science fiction about the Valley reflect it accurately? * Is science fiction about the Valley about technology, politics, economics or all three? * Does it represent everyone in Valley, not just the white geeky boys? A Musical Interlude: We don't want to give away spoilers, but John M. Ford did write a musical in the form of a Star Trek novel. Great Books: An idea we borrow from the Farthing Party. Four people pick three books. Those four people read everyone else's suggestions. They discuss them. The Scalzi Rule: It has been suggested in some quarters that the audience at a panel should not make statements, but only ask questions. This was a matter of enough contention that it shook up this year's Potlatch committee. We'd like to discuss it. We will update this list as we hear from you. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008
9:02 am [calimac]	books of honor OK, I'll talk about it. Potlatch 18 has announced its Books of Honor. Yes, books, plural. Both Always Coming Home and Growing Up Weightless came up in conversation among the committee, floating together above other possible choices, but dang if we could come to a definitive choice between them. So we thought, there's room for more than one panel focused on a specific book, so why not choose both? Always Coming Home has come up as a possible choice before. It has a strongly-imagined Northern California setting, it is (in my opinion, anyway) the masterwork by SF's greatest author, and it's a good discussion topic because it's surprisingly controversial. *Is it a utopia? Are the Kesh too sweetness-and-light to be true? *Is it even a novel? Norman Spinrad once described it as an underweight novella surrounded by the equivalent of the Dune Encyclopedia; is he right? I say no to both criticisms, and am ready to defend it on all counts. And I'd better stop here or I'll go on all day. Growing Up Weightless came up in the intersection of two conversations. Though we don't want Potlatch BoH-hood to become the Required Memorial Panel for Recently Dead Authors, we couldn't help thinking of John M. Ford and his bristlingly intelligent work. The other conversation was back when we were apportioning committee jobs. We were chatting about what kind of panels we'd have if Alice were in charge of programming, and a couple of us found a serious side to this. Why not talk about children's and Young Adult SF? There's good work in that area that doesn't get discussed, and Growing Up Weightless is a masterpiece of recent decades' work. Someone suggested a smackdown (a la Wiscon's Narnia vs. Philip Pullman): Ford vs. Robert A. Heinlein's Citizen of the Galaxy. And that's our choices. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, July 9th, 2008
4:59 pm [calimac]	Potlatch hotel report [crossposted from my own LJ at the suggestion of voidampersand] spacecrab, who is our webmaster, announced it on Sunday, but I'll put it here with a direct link: We have a Potlatch hotel. This is what I've been working on for the past few months that I haven't been writing about here. And I'll go on about it ( behind the cut. ) (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, April 26th, 2008
4:41 pm [apostle_of_eris]	Ursula K. LeGuin on NPR Just heard her interviewed about her new historical novel. ("Audio for this story will be available at approx. 7:00 p.m. ET") Novel Gives Roman Maiden Her Moment in the Sun In Virgil's epic poem The Aeneid, the maiden Lavinia marries a Trojan hero but barely gets to utter a word. Science fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin picks up where the classic poet left off in her historical novel Lavinia. Le Guin recreates the life and times of a forgotten heroine. cross-posted to Wiscon (Comment on this)
Saturday, February 16th, 2008
1:14 am [dsmoen]	Anyone Going to Potlatch... ...who doesn't already have their membership? I've got one, and due to a snafu, I won't be able to go. For those who don't know about the convention, it's moveable, in Seattle this year, and is from Feb 29 to March 2. I also have a hotel room I'll be releasing on Tuesday if no one needs it. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, January 27th, 2008
5:55 pm [kate_schaefer]	Potlatch 17 hotel redux If you plan to attend Potlatch 17 and you still haven't made your hotel reservations, you have a little bit of a grace period, but it will expire very soon, on January 29. The hotel is very close to full on Friday night, with somewhat more room on Saturday and Sunday nights. If you are unable to get a reservation at the convention rate either through the web site or by calling the hotel directly, please send email to Suzle (hotel @ potlatch-sf . org) or me (chair @ potlatch-sf . org) (un-munge the addresses, naturally). (Potlatch 17, February 29 through March 2, 2008, Hotel Deca, 4507 Brooklyn Avenue NE, Seattle, Washington; more Potlatch info here.) If you have questions about any other aspect of Potlatch, sling 'em my way. Thanks! (Comment on this)
Monday, January 14th, 2008
4:25 pm [kate_schaefer]	Potlatch 17 Hotel News If you plan to attend Potlatch 17 and you have not yet made your hotel reservations, please do so right away. The hotel is very close to full on Friday night, with somewhat more room on Saturday and Sunday nights. Here are directions on making your reservation. We've been saying that you might encounter difficulty in making your reservation; let me say that although I love our hotel, I'd be surprised if you didn't encounter difficulty in making your reservation, so be prepared to be patient in getting through. If you are unable to get a reservation at the convention rate either through the web site or by calling the hotel directly, please send email to Suzle (hotel @ potlatch-sf . org) or me (chair @ potlatch-sf . org) (yes, I've munged the addresses; I know you can un-munge them). We want to see you at Potlatch 17, and we want you to have places to sleep. Suzle is working on an overflow hotel within walking distance, about 4 or 5 blocks away. We haven't needed an overflow hotel for a Seattle Potlatch before. (Potlatch 17, February 29 through March 2, 2008, Hotel Deca, 4507 Brooklyn Avenue NE, Seattle, Washington; more Potlatch info here.) (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, February 22nd, 2006
11:27 pm [jackwilliambell]	I'm bummed I've been working on a surprise for the Potlatch hospitality suite for the last week, but it is looking like I won't be able to get it finished in time. There are lots of reasons for this: I've been working extra hours at my day job and haven't had enough time in the evenings. I should have started it two weeks ago instead of one. And so on... None of that is an excuse though. This is something that I've wanted to do since the last time Potlatch was in Seattle, and it really burns me up that I can't deliver. I even thought about trying to finish it at the con (I'm sure lots of people would be interested in the process), but what I am doing will create a small amount of fumes and smells and I know a lot of Potlatch members who have multiple allergies. Besides the fact screwing with it at the con will mean missing other things I would rather be doing. So, I'm bummed... It is really cool too! You should be bummed as well. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, February 21st, 2006
4:32 pm [whumpdotcom]	Mashiko! Mashiko! A trip to Seattle must include dinner at Mashiko. Let me know if you wanna go either Friday or Saturday. If it's Friday, I want to get back in time for holyoutlaw and juliebata's engagement party. (4 Comments |Comment on this)