Minicon 54

April 19-21, Easter weekend, 2019 - St Louis Park, MN

Progress Report #1 - Winter 2018

Hello again from Minicon!

Last year’s Minicon went well in the new hotel, we’ve decided to do it again. Our theme this year is PURPLE.

Our Guests

Naomi Kritzer
Naomi at the Science Museum of Minnesota
Naomi Kritzer has been writing science fiction and fantasy for twenty years. Her short story "Cat Pictures Please" won the 2016 Hugo and Locus Awards and was nominated for the Nebula Award. A collection of her short stories was released in 2017, and her YA novel Catfishing On Catnet (based on "Cat Pictures Please") will be coming out from Tor Teen in November 2019. She is currently working on a sequel. She lives in St. Paul, Minnesota with her spouse, two kids, and four cats. The number of cats is subject to change without notice.
Dave DeVries

Born and raised in West Orange, NJ, Dave DeVries has been illustrating for numerous companies his entire adult life. He has worked for Marvel, DC, and many other major comic creators as well as doing Fleer trading cards. He's worked for everyone from Sega to Columbia Records to Tor Books and Capitol doing various paintings and works. He even has a painting hanging in the Lucasfilm headquarters at Skywalker Ranch.

He teaches art frequently and has served as a staff member at Syracuse University, The Joe Kubert School of Art, FIT in NY and many other colleges. His ongoing project at TheMonsterEngine.com is to professionally illustrate children's concepts and stories of monsters and produce them in book form. It has been very popular.

Hotel

Once again, we will be at the DoubleTree Park Place in Saint Louis Park at the intersection of Highways 394 and 100. How did we use the new space last year? Check out some photos of last year’s Minicon. You can also check out this blog post about last year's Rumpus Room.

Reservation info

Single or double occupancy rates are as follows - Regular rooms are $89 per night, suites (near the pool) are $119 per night, whirlpool rooms (very limited quantity) $119, Executive Level Rooms (Near Consuite) $109.

The cut off date for these rates is Thursday, March 28, 2019. PLEASE get your hotel registration in before March 28. You very probably will end up paying a higher rate if your hotel room is not reserved by March 28.

Parties will be located in the suites facing the pool.

For any desired room type, go to the DoubleTree website and book a regular room. If you'd another type of room, after booking the regular room, do one of the following:

  1. If you’d like to host a party, please contact .
  2. If you’d like a suite or an executive level room, please contact .

We are in the process of determining how many rooms need to be set aside for Minicon (green room, teen room, parties, other). You may not hear that you have a non-regular room immediately, but someone should contact you within a week to let you know that your request was received.

Important information about the suites - Suites will be allocated by Minicon’s hotel department in a way that makes sense. In order to fulfill our arrangement to make noise in our gaming space at night, we must fill the suites. Parties and Minicon functional rooms will have priority.

Last year, we had more requests for suites than we had available rooms. If you’re flexible about reserving a suite (willing to take one, but also willing to take a regular room if the suite area fills), please let Hotel know. If you’d just really like one, please also let Hotel know, and understand that you still may not get a suite if they’re already assigned to other uses.

For more information about the hotel, please check the hotel page.

Music

Music programming will abound at Minicon 54. We will once again host a variety of concerts from returning favorite musicians and bands, as well as from Minicon newcomers. For 2019 we are happy to be moving to a larger space in Courtyard Ballroom 1-2-3, which will give us more room to spread out and make noise without disturbing any panels in progress. If you are interested in performing in the music room, please email . Last year's early evening music circle was a resounding success, so let's do it again! This year you can find it in the Orchard Room beginning at 7 pm each night of the convention and continuing until the last filker finally drops. We hope you'll join us to hear some wonderful music and to make some of your own!

Volunteering

Minicon is an all-volunteer convention! We don't sell tickets, we offer memberships (priced to cover con expenses). As members of a community, we all pitch in and help out. It turns out that working volunteer shifts is also a great way to make new friends, connect with old ones, and generally have a great time at the convention.

There will be plenty of opportunity to volunteer at the con, but if you connect with a department before the con you can take on jobs that are more responsible and rewarding. And it really helps out the department heads when people sign up for shifts in advance.

We can use your help in pretty much every area of the con, but the following departments have a particular need for reliable shift volunteers, with as many shifts as possible filled in before the con: Move-in/Teardown, Consuite, Art Show, Film Room, Registration. And Volunteers, which is upping its game this year. We'll be trying something new, using the Discord service as a way to contact Gofers, Badgers, and other volunteers in real time. As Volunteer Coordinator, I would love to get a few volunteers who are familiar with Discord who can help people create logins at the con (if they so choose).

If you know what department you would like to work for, feel free to contact the department heads directly. But if you can't find department contact info or aren't sure where you want to volunteer, please email me at .

See you at the con, if not before!

-- Sharon (Volunteers Coordinator)

Rumpus Room

Rumpus Room will be in full swing again this year. Come and join us for lots of crafts and science programming for everyone, with many events aimed at young convention attendees. We are especially excited that we will get a visit from the Zoo Bus this year!

Programming

At this year’s MnStf Fallcon, we had a very successful brainstorming session, and we’re thrilled to have many theme related panel ideas, and some excellent ideas for our guests. Regarding the theme, we hope to have a discussion about Purple Prose, a music circle devoted to Prince’s music, and a purple category in the costume contest. To see the list of brainstormed panels, go here. To sign up for these panels or communicate with the programming department, write to .

Film Room

Cinema Obscura plans to have more documentaries in 2019. Some of the documentaries planned include Chesley Bonestell: A Brush With The Future, Chris Claremont's X-Men, The Image Revolution (about the birth of Image Comics), and Neil Gaiman: Dream Dangerously. Anime and narratives are planned as well!

Registration

Register here!

Preregistration is both the cheaper and more advantageous way to go. You can do so online or via postal mail. Please go to here to preregister and for more registration details. The preregistration cutoff date is March 25, 2019.

To check if you've already registered, a list of current members is posted here.