What's a supporting membership, exactly?

Supporting memberships are inexpensive memberships that do not confer the right to attend the convention. They play three roles:

1. They are a way of contributing a bit of cash to the convention because you like us and would like to see us succeed (thanks!). We will thank you by listing you on our members page (unless you ask us not to, of course).
2. They are a way of hedging your bets if you're not sure whether you (or a friend) can make it. Supporting memberships can be converted to full attending memberships for an additional cost such that the total that you pay is greater than any full pre-reg rate, but less than the at-the-door rate.
3. They keep you active on our mailing list. If you can't make it to Minicon for several years running but want to make sure you keep getting our progress reports, this is one way to accomplish that.

Are memberships transferable?

Yes! You can change the name on a membership by e-mailing registration@minicon46DOTmnstfDOTorg or when you arrive at the convention. So feel free to buy several even if you don't know which of your friends you're going to sell/give them to.

In order to get the right name on your badge, please send changes by the last pre-registration deadline (March 31). Don't e-mail registration in the week leading up to the convention; we will probably be too busy to respond. If you suddenly can't make it and need to transfer your membership at the last minute, please call the hotel during the convention (meaning, in this case, Thursday-Sunday) and ask to speak to Minicon registration or a Minicon chairperson.

What restrictions are there on badge names?

Please limit badge names to characters that can reasonably be expected to print correctly from a modern American computer with nothing special installed on it. This means that all ASCII characters are ok, things like Greek letters and mundane mathematical symbols are probably ok, arbitrary selections of Unicode are probably not, and Klingon is right out. (You can always leave it blank on your form and write on your badge with a marker!)

Obviously we reserve the right to not print anything we think is going to offend a large number of people, but we don't really expect this to come up.

Do I have to give you all that personal information (e-mail address, phone number, etc.)?

No, not really. We like to be able to contact you in case there is a question about your registration and so that we can send you convention progress reports and so forth. So it would be nice if you gave us either a postal or e-mail address. (Just a phone number will work for questions about your registration, but not progress reports.) However, all that we absolutely require for you to register is some sort of way of telling who you are when you show up to claim your badge. So if you give us no contact information, you at least need to give a name/badge name combination that is definitely unique. Blank registrations under "Mike Larson" are a bit risky, but blank registrations under "Mike Larson", badge name "Bleeknob the Undestroyable" are fairly safe.

What exactly do the age ranges mean?

They refer to how old you will be at the con. If your 6th/13th/21st birthday is during the con, you can take the lower rate. (For checking if you can drink, we will refer to your state-issued ID and not your membership type.)