About
Convivial is a Minn-StF Fallcon with a nifty consuite, a single track of fun fannish programming, space for music parties, space to play games, good conversation, and lots of silliness. Or at least that’s the plan. The Minnesota Science Fiction Society has been putting together small fannish relaxacons for many years; Convivial is the latest in a long line of Minn-StF Fallcons.
Convivial 2 (this year’s Minn-StF Fallcon) will be held October 19th - 21th at the Holiday Inn Select in Bloomington, Minnesota.
We want you!
We’d love to see you at this year’s Fallcon. We want to round up the usual Minn-StF regulars, but we’d also love to see some folks who don’t make it to meetings much any more, but who have been a part of Minn-StF at some point during the last (gulp) 40 years. If you haven’t been to a Fallcon in a while, we’re working on bringing back the Fallcons of yore. Or of, um, several years ago.
If you haven’t been to a convention before or are new to Minn-StF or thinking about attending your first Minicon, this is a good small convention to start with as it gives you plenty of opportunity to get to know folks in slower paced casual setting.
It’s all about the consuite
Convivial is a relaxacon so our focus is on putting together a fabulous space for people to hang out and relax. We believe the fannish form of relaxation requires comfy chairs, excellent snacks and drinks, good reading material, shiny objects, a little music, some games, and interesting people. Believe it or not, our consuite also has a nice view. Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet said (of last year’s consuite):
“The view from all convention space was really gorgeous. The National Wildlife Refuge near the airport was spread out to the south, on either side of an amber-colored building that reflected the con suite’s autumn-leaf decorations, its strings of orange lights, and at certain times of day, anybody standing at the window. Across the hall, the view to the north encompassed downtown Minneapolis, doing the best one can do with an elevation of only about 800 feet above sea level to look like a shining city on a hill; and downtown St. Paul, sunk lower on the horizon and often shrouded in gloom, but doing its best as well.”
“There was comfortable seating and cider and beer and glorious munchies; I particularly liked the dried fruit, especially the chili-flavored mango slices, and the pepitas. I’d consulted with Laurel and brought along goat cheese, several vegan pates, hummos, baba ganouj, pita bread, and sheep cheese. And Carol Kennedy had gone to Lund’s and consulted Patrick the Cheese Guy and gotten some really lovely milder goat cheese as well, not to mention some smoked salmon. Laurel and Kevin provided bagels and orange juice and fruit for breakfast, cupcakes and blog (the latter made by Peter Hentges) for Minn-Stf’s 40th birthday, Jim Beam for a memorial smooth for Bob Tucker, a lot of invisible hard work, and endless good nature.”
We tried our darndest and we’re happy to hear that Pamela and others enjoyed themselves.
This year the consuite will be open starting on Friday afternoon and running all the way ’til Monday morning. Last year we had to vacate the primary consuite space by early afternoon on Sunday, this year we’ll be able to continue the party on Sunday afternoon and evening!
Programming at a Relaxacon? That’s crazy talk!
Nah, not really. We’ll have a small suite set aside for the occasional or rare bit of programming. We aim for interactive stuff that works better at a smaller con than any of the larger ones we frequent: crafty stuff, swaps, small group discussions, that sort of thing. Got an idea? Tell us about it.
Let there be songs to fill the air!
If it’s a fannish event in Minneapolis, there’s gotta be music. We’d love to see a music circle on Friday and Saturday evenings or, frankly, whenever. Also if any of you fine musicians out there want to play a set of tunes during the convention, we’re totally open to that– please do get in touch.
Our overflow consuite is a great space for a music party or an acoustic performance, we’ll also have secure storage for instruments available.
Gotta have games
Kevin will bring a selection of games and we imagine others will as well. If you’ve got a game you’re keen to play, by all means bring it. We’ll have a small suite set aside for gaming and it’ll be closer to the consuite than last year; we’re also fine with the occasional game transpiring in the overflow consuite or programming room.
A/V Club
We had technical difficulties last year so didn’t do much with video. We may occasionally show something in the programming room, but only if we’ve got a good reason. We’d love to show footage from fannish events of days gone by (if anyone has something cool to bring, let us know). If you’d like to host a showing of a fan video or a favorite movie or show, let us know and we’ll see what we can do.
This isn’t a fancy video room or even one that’s open all the time, we just may occasionally show stuff in the Programming room on a TV.
Home away from home
The Holiday Inn Select will once again be home to Convivial. If you missed Convivial last year, you may also be familiar with this hotel as in recent year’s it’s been home to Marscon, Diversicon, and CONsume; next year it will also be home to Fourth Street Fantasy Convention.
The convention is on the 13th floor in two large suites (Presidential and Concierge) which are across the hall from each other. One’s home to the food and drink and lots of comfy furniture, the other has comfy and not-so-comfy furniture and still more space for conversation and (we hope) music.
We also have smaller rooms for programming and gaming on the same floor. If you stay at the hotel, your room will be on the same floor as the convention (unless you want a smoking room, then you’ll be just one floor down).
Nice things about the hotel: free wifi throughout the building, free shuttles to/from the airport and Mall of America, close to the Light Rail line, affordable breakfast buffet, free parking, and they give us all the ice we need (without charge). They also seem to like fans, hooray! Check out the Amenities page for the full skinny.
For more info see the Hotel page.
A fan’s gotta eat
This year we’re gonna spread take-out menus on the bar in the overflow consuite for all to peruse, we’ll also post the hours for the hotel restaurant and nearby places. We’ve already started a list of area restaurants.
We’re plotting group orders of food on Friday and Saturday nights, we’ll tell you more on the website or at the con. We’re also plotting a group outing for dim sum at Jun Bo at some point and/or an outing to Khan’s Mongolian BBQ. Interested in any of these things? Got ideas to share? Tell us.
We get by with a little help from our friends
As we said above, we’d love to hear your ideas for things you’d like to do at the convention.
We could use a volunteer or two to open up the consuite in the morning and set things up for breakfast; also someone to make a bagel run to a nearby bagel place in the morning on Saturday. Trust us when we say it didn’t work so well to have your humble con-chairs making the bagel run after staying up to close the consuite in the wee hours of the morning! Then again, perhaps loopy sleep-deprived con chairs are entertaining.
