Programming! Auction! Longer Con! Scholarship! o/

[vidukonnews]

Greetings, vid fans! We've got a bunch of updates for you today.

1. Brainstorm and submit your programme ideas
2. Auction open for volunteers
3. Extra time at the con
4. Scholarship

Get your ticket here!

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1. Submit your programme ideas now! We are now open to your ideas for programming for this year's Vidukon. We're always particularly in need of panel ideas, and remember you can do a vidshow and panel combo if you'd like. Priority will be given to attending members, but supporting members can put together vidshows for us as well.

Veteran VJs are welcome and so are first-timers - if you'd like to put a vidshow together but don't know where to start, get in touch and we'll be happy to help. Want to brainstorm? Get feedback on your ideas or suggest them for someone else to pick up in the comments on this post at the livejournal comm or dreamwidth.

The deadline for submissions is 11.59pm GMT February 11th. The final schedule will be announced a few days afterwards, and you will then have until March 12th to submit all content for your vidshow. More detail will be available when the schedule is finalised.

Submit show ideas here and panel ideas here. Email me at such.heights at gmail dot com if you have any questions!

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2. We’re holding the second VidUKon auction o/ Our goals this year are going to look eerily familiar to anyone who saw them last year (badges! more usb sticks! life-giving tea!), with the addition of something a teensy bit more ambitious: a projector to call our very own. The hotel’s AV system does a fair job considering half its circuitry was chiselled on rock using stone age implements, but for vid show enjoyment in general and the sanity of the concom in particular, we’d really love not to have to rely on it. Should we manage to exceed our target, the charity we’ve chosen to donate 50% of any additional funds to is Médecins Sans Frontières.

If you’d like to offer a vid (thank you! thank you! thank you!) you can sign up here (closing 10PM 23rd January). Bidding will open midday 25th January and run through until 8PM February 7th.

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3. Extra Time We took a gamble a few years ago, and started running programming on the Friday night of the con weekend, as an opportunity for everyone to socialise and make introductions. That's gone really well, and has proven pretty popular over the years, so we've decided to try something new. The bulk of our attendees tend to arrive on the Friday, and those who arrive early tend to spend a lot of time vidder-spotting in the hotel foyer or bar. We've decided to pay a bit extra, and book the con rooms from the lunchtime on Friday.

There probably won't be any programming until the usual time, but this'll give the techbunnies more time to hyperventilate and ask the important questions in life, like "But why is it doing that?" and hopefully give those who want to arrive earlier in the day somewhere to hang out, relax, and get to know everyone as they arrive. We hope this'll be useful on several levels - from the option of maybe getting earlier trains and saving on travel, to more chance to hang out and chat before the vidshows start, right through to hearing more exciting stores about the weird and wonderful things that those who arrive even earlier for the con have been up to.

Even More Extra Time If you're thinking of coming down even earlier than Friday lunchtime, there will still be people around; last year, beccatoria, BrokenMnemonic, doccy, LithiumDoll and Isagel spent some time off looking at dinosaurs, watching Mad Max: Fury Road, eating huge slabs of cheesecake, watching Mad Max: Fury Road again, spending loads of time talking about Mad Max, watching all those vids that never quite fit in any of the shows, converting other people to the joys of Mass Effect and Banshee... There also tends to be people around on the Sunday afternoon and even the Monday, if you want to chill out after the con, and while the concom may be partially comatose, there are always giant slabs of cheesecake around somewhere.

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4. The VidUKon Scholarship is funded by donations and intended to offer support to one fan that is a Non-UK resident, has not been to the con in the past and would like to attend.

The scholarship includes:

• Attending membership for the con
• Accommodation for 2 nights (Friday & Saturday) on the basis of 2 sharing a room.
• Saturday dinner ticket

Nominations open on 1st of Feb, if there are no non-UK applicants by 15th of April the scholarship will be open to UK residents as well. All the details are on the website.

Comments

[brokenmnemonic]

How would everyone feel about a Fairy Tales vidshow? I'm thinking both the light and dark kind...

[cosmic_llin]

Very in favour of this idea! :D

[brokenmnemonic]

Do you think we should offer to try and help get a CreaSpace show in again?

[cosmic_llin]

Oops, this got buried in my inbox, sorry! I think we could do! I'm not sure how much effect it's having in terms of connections with the CreaSpace community, but it has been an interesting show both times! :)

[brokenmnemonic]

I must admit, I've barely logged in since... October, maybe? I just don't seem to have the time these days. I did see a post on LJ from CreaSpace listing their best vids of 2015 as voted by their community, so in an emergency, a show could be built from that...

[brokenmnemonic]

I submitted the show, so if you have any Fairy Tale vid recs, please do send them my way :)

[walkthegale]

YES GOOD YAY!

[brokenmnemonic]

Are you sure? After all, I would totally have shown that Marley and Me vid if I was doing a pets show, and I'm worried I could upset people if there are lots of fluffy expectations...

[walkthegale]

The thing with the Marley & Me vid was a very specific issue of mine, not a problem with the upsettingness level of the vid itself!

I definitely don't think people would expect entirely fluff in a Fairy Tales show - and if you're worried, you can always make it clear in the show description that it covers all aspects of fairy tales.

[isagel]

Yeah, I don't think the subject implies fluffiness. There are so many dark and/or violent fairy tales.

[brokenmnemonic]

If you happen to have any recs for such vid - dark, violent or fluffy (or even fluffily dark and violent) I'd love to have them :D

[brokenmnemonic]

I submitted the show, so planning in advance... if you have any recs, please do send them my way :D

[isagel]

I have an idea for a vid show titled The Great Escape. It came out of Prison Break discussions on twitter, but it would be a show about escape both in a concrete sense and in various metaphorical ways, if that makes sense.

[brokenmnemonic]

Sounds like a splendid idea to me :)

[cosmic_llin]

Oooooh, that sounds intriguing! :D

[walkthegale]

Oooh, this sounds like a great idea! :D

[walkthegale]

I was wondering about maybe running an aliens themed vidshow of some sort this year! Would anyone be interested in such a thing?

(Not that this has anything at all to do with my current fixations on a Certain Popular Space Movie Series, or a Certain Beloved Video Game Series. Obviously.)

[brokenmnemonic]

I'm very nosy curious about this - nice aliens and nasty ones? Would you be including computer game aliens?

[walkthegale]

Ideally both and yes! I need to have a proper look at what's around vid-wise on this topic, but I'd like to show a wide range of aliens and their different relationships to humans, and get vids from as many kinds of source as possible, def including games!

[brokenmnemonic]

I don't think I'll have time to put any of these together, but I did ponder whether some of these could be fun:

- They Died Too Soon - a vidshow dedicated to shows that only got one season - or even less than a full season, or maybe even just a pilot episode.

- Hancock's (Almost) Half-Hour - we all love to laugh, so 45 minutes of comedy vids

- A Walk On the Dark Side - Horror vids to make your skin crawl (but not before bed)

[walkthegale]

These all sound like awesome ideas!

I have also had thoughts about doing a horror show! Although I realized that the audience for it at the con would probably be you, me and isagel... and possibly that's it? ;)

[brokenmnemonic]

Well, Jagwriter's a Walking Dead fan too, so her as well, I suspect? And Ludi takes part in zombiethons... so we'd be a select audience :)

[walkthegale]

Haha, ok, fair enough! ;D

I don't think I personally want to run a horror show this year (too set on my aliens show idea!), but I'd totally go if someone else did! :D