Media Questionnaire Reminder
If you’d like your details to be included in the information we pass to journalists who are covering the convention, please fill in our media questionnaire.
Using the Web Site
As the convention nears, will be publishing a lot of information on the web site. We’d love you to check with us regularly, but obviously you are all very busy people so you may not have time. Fortunately there are other options.
Those of you who use feed readers such as Google Reader or Bloglines can subscribe to our feed there. The feed URL is http://www.worldfantasy2009.org/?feed=rss2.
If such things are all gobbledigook to you and you’d prefer to get updates by email, you can do that via an RSS to email service such as Feed My Inbox. Just enter that feed address and your email address and they’ll send you email when we update the site. They only send one email a day, so you won’t get inundated if things get busy here.
Finally our web site is configured to have a friendly interface on mobile devices such as the iPhone. You don’t get the full site menu, but you can search sites by category. So, for example, if you ask for all of the tourism posts you’ll get the one we just made, and you’ll be able to tap through to the local attractions page and the local area map.
If you have any questions about using the site, please let us know.
Local Attractions Update
We’ve added a few locations and a map to our list of local attractions. There are some amazing places almost next door to our hotel, and we know that a lot of you want to visit the Winchester Mystery House. But don’t forget the equally weird Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum. San José is the world headquarters of Rosicrucianism, which is quite weird enough already.
Visiting from Outside the USA?
If you are coming to our convention from outside of the USA, and you will be traveling on the Visa Waiver scheme, you now need an additional travel authorization. Basically you need to register your intention to travel with US Customs & Border Protection. The idea is to cut down on the number of false positives when they get name matches with the no-fly list. This way they can check who you are in advance. Note that this does not give you permission to enter the USA. You still have to go through the usual immigration checks. But without this “ESTA” authorization you may be told you cannot board the aircraft.
If you Google ESTA you will find several companies offering to handle the process for you for a fee. These are scams. You can get the authorization for free from this US government web site. The application process is very simple and you should an answer back within a few days at most.
More Dealers
We have added three more companies to our list of confirmed dealers. To see the full list, click here.
A Local Area Guide
Julie K Rose, one of our members who lives in the Bay Area, has put up a local area guide on her personal blog. We’ll be doing a restaurant guide ourselves, of course, but Julie’s is an excellent start and she has some good tourism ideas too. You can find her post here.
Attending Memberships Sold Out
We have reached our membership cap and have stopped selling attending memberships. No memberships will be sold at the door. You can still buy supporting memberships and add banquet tickets to an existing attending membership using our registration form.
Some people who have already purchased attending memberships are not going to be able to attend and have offered to sell their memberships to other people. We suggest checking the unofficial World Fantasy Convention LiveJournal Community for offers of memberships for sale or to make an offer to buy.
For information about transferring memberships, see the Membership Transfers section of our registration page.
If you have questions about Registration, contact registration [at] worldfantasy2009.org.
Program Outline Available
Work is progressing on our program, and further news will be available in the next few weeks. In the meantime we have posted a rough outline of when things will happen, including the timings for major events such as the mass autograph session, art show reception and awards banquet. To see that information click here.
USPS To Provide At-Con Shipping
Trying to carry home all of those books and pieces of artwork you bought can be a lot of hassle and expense, especially with the airlines charging ever more to carry extra luggage. Why not save yourself a lot of time and trouble and mail your stuff home directly from the convention?
We are pleased to announce that the US Postal Service will establish a satellite postal station at the convention on Saturday and Sunday, and will provide Media Mail, First Class, and Priority Mail service. Insurance and customs forms will also be provided.
For those wishing to ship stuff home via FedEx or UPS, the hotel maintains a business center with those services. (There is also a FedEx Office and UPS Store within a few blocks of the hotel.) The convention will also have a “box farm” with plenty of sturdy cardboard boxes to see your purchases safely home. Hours for the USPS station will be posted at the convention.
Book Bag Donations Open
We are now accepting shipments of donated books to be given away at the convention in the attendee book bags and related ephemera such as bookmarks, postcards, fliers, buttons, stickers, etc. for distribution on the freebie tables.
If you are interested in donating books or other material for distribution at the convention, see our Book Bags page for shipping and contact information. Please do not send donations to our main mailing address or without first contacting our Publisher Liaison.