Dealer Room Hours:

The dealer room closes an hour before Openning Ceremonies mainly to allow the volunteers working in the dealer room and art show time to eat dinner and catch Openning Ceremonies. While the hour between is not going away, ICON 22 has moved openning ceremonies back to 7:30, to allow an extra half hour of dealer room time on Friday. This will hopefully allow time for the out-of-town, Friday-only attendees to hit the dealer room and for every out-of-town attendee to see Openning Ceremonies.

Dealer Room Table Requests:

The person in charge of the dealer room for ICON 21 did not tell anyone they could not have dealer space at ICON 21. Many were told that the room was full, but that they could be placed on a waiting list if they so desired. Some were told that we already had "X" jewelry dealers, did they really want to compete in that environment (both dealers told that said "yes.") Since we are very interested in making sure the dealer room for any given year is full, we start sign-up at the previous ICON. This does tend to fill the room well before the con, so new dealers can often have trouble getting space. Still, fewer than 50% of the tables fill at the previous con. ICON 21 had 20% of the dealers new to ICON, and ICON 22 has seven dealers (of 20) that are either new to ICON or haven't been at ICON in over five years.

Dead Space in the Programming:

The usual reasons for dead space in programming on Saturday night are: the need for setup for the art auction, and the use of secondary programming as a help area for masquerade participants. This means that from 6pm until 10pm on Saturday, we usually only have the auction, the masquerade, and one other panel (though the Anime and SF video room are running full speed!) We will be doing secondary programming during the last hour of the masquerade this year, and we are trying to come up with programming items for out on the green (the only available programming space) opposite the auction and masquerade. The green is a difficult area to use for programming purposes, and many of our major programming participants really like the masquerade, so we may not be able to pull this off. Check out the program schedule so far.

Uninformed Panelists:

We try to have panelists that are well-informed about the subject matter of the panels when we populate the programming. Unfortunately, we often have to take their word for it. This sometimes means we do get people who are poorly-informed, or mis-informed. This can detract from the enjoyment of the audience. We wish we had a good, easy way to avoid this, but there really isn't one. You'll just have to bear with us when it comes to the one or two 'controversial' panels every year.

SF vs Fantasy in programming:

Programming at small conventions tends to be very dependent upon the interests of the person doing programming for that year (since it's most often just one person.) They try to get a good mix of SF, Fantasy, fan, and such, but it's difficult for someone not heavily interested to do justice to some areas. Sometimes panels are scheduled that aren't specifically one or the other, but the panelists add a bias. This is harder to make allowances for. By all means, if you want to see more programming in one area, then, suggest a panel idea or two. Convention programmers are all ears when it comes to new ideas.