C.I.T.O.K.A.T.E.

Michigan's new summer relaxicon had 52 attendees, although that's only who I saw. There were 38 others either within the core of fandom, known to consistently attend relaxicons, or close to the Castle Bradaki social circle, who I was surprised weren't there. In most cases that I've heard of, they had a schedule conflict. Next year I may need to say "Hey, are you coming to ConStruct?" to more of them.

The food was great. They fed hot breakfast and dinner! The right snacks and drinks were in abundance. I played an astonishing number of board and card games. The pool and hot tub were constantly full of fun activities. But what makes ConStruct so clever is that the programming is all user-generated content, signed up on the day.

My marionette-making workshop was a success. We made puppets from a scarf, clothespins, paint stirrers, blank cardboard Christmas ornaments, tape, and string. The kids were between seven five and eleven, with a variety of attention spans and skill levels. The workshop requires the ability to tie string. It was a dry run for KidFusion during ConFusion, but I'm sure I can't do it on that large a scale without recruiting helpers. (Any takers?)

I presented a puppet to the AASFA board at the meeting they held at ConStruct, and they awarded me reimbursement for my expenses. They said they had very low expectations due to the crude materials, but the minute it started moving it won them over. They wouldn't talk to me, only the puppet. The most rewarding things about the project were teaching how to get particular maneuvers from the puppets, and when Man of a Thousand Names told me he really liked the expressiveness. He is with an actual puppet troupe.

SMOFcamp was scheduled for several hours on Saturday. The good part about holding it as part of ConStruct was that SMOFcamp didn't have to pay for function space. The bad part is that it is an automatic schedule conflict between SMOFcamp and ConStruct, which has a clear-cut winner and loser. During that time I did have one conversation about running conventions, but that was the extent of it. I seeded the SMOFcamp schedule with several topics, but no one else did. Many people who told me they were going to show up to ConStruct in order to attend SMOFcamp never did. Others who had expressed interest looked at the schedule board, and kept walking to all the other things happening at ConStruct. SMOFcamp needs to be at Midwest Construction, the conference about running conventions.

I put a Tetris Tournament on the schedule, but there was no interest.

I put "Get Your Portrait Drawn" on the schedule and drew one portrait, that of Man of a Thousand Names:



His random concert was a hit, as was his game of randomness. Think of a dice-rolling quest of missions that lasted all weekend all over the hotel, but with no time commitment. That definitely has to happen again. There was also a workshop on how to do impromptu comedy, a beading session, a class on how to make armor, a picnic, a movie room, Rock Band, and things that I don't even know about.

For a relaxicon, this was tremendously active! Fifty-two is the right number for an active ConSuite, and people hanging out on the fringes of it, and so several of us moved our events to the open Atrium outside the Consuite. It's all about how to attract and direct attention. I think next year there should be no function space, just the Atrium set up with tables and chairs set up like booths so they can be walked through like a fair. When preparing events, it's crucial to pick ones that can be participated in for a minute or two at a time.