Tag: celebration vi (2012)

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Convention tip: Vacation-ize your Twitter

Some people take vacations where they can ditch all their tech, or at least keep it in the hotel room for after-hours perusal. I am not one of those people, at least at a Celebration. As a news-blogger, it’s my prerogative, nay, my duty, to keep at least an iPhone on me at all times. Because while yes, while there will be plenty of real-life socializing, I must tweet.

I have no idea how many people I was following during Celebration VI, my first Twitter-enabled convention, but right now I am following almost 300 people. That’s a LOT of tweets, so the first thing I want to do is see how I can – not to be heartless, ahh screw it – ditch some folks temporarily. (Temporarily.) Luckily, Twitter has a built-in feature that will serve me well in not only keeping all the unfollowed people together, but allow me to even backread – Lists.

I decided that my first target would be mostly professional entertainment sites and journalists that are unlikely to cover Celebration. For them, I created a list called Entertainment. Next, for the science fiction/fantasy and comics crowd I suspect won’t cover the con, I created the imaginatively named SFF-Comics. All together, that’s 60 accounts that will be safely out of the way while I’m frantically trying to keep up.

I haven’t actually unfollowed anyone yet, but the lists will make that easy. A day or so before the con, all I’ll have to do is go to the list members pages and unfollow. After the con is over, I can follow them all back. And best of all, I can still check up on them, via the list, whenever I have a spare moment. (Hello, airport.)

Granted, most of these accounts are people who don’t follow me back/barely know I exist, so I don’t think there’ll be many hurt feelings when I unfollow – but keep that in mind. A ‘If I unfollow you today, it’s only temporary’ tweet may be in order if your choices are otherwise. Or, you could always create a special list just for Celebration, and avoid the issue entirely! Lists are cool that way. For what it’s worth, here’s mine.

Stay tuned for more tips!

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Convention tip: Keeping in touch

As nice as it would be to have your convention buddies at your side 24/7, we know it doesn’t always work that way.

→ Get as many phone numbers as you can before the fact. Add them to your phone at leisure and avoid typos.

→ Practice basic phone courtesy in panels. Turn your ringer to silent or vibrate, don’t be afraid to send people directly to voicemail. Make sure your alerts and rings are unobtrusive or set to silent/vibrate. No one is going to be impressed by your ‘awesome’ ringtone if it disturbs the panel.

→ Texting is generally better than actually phoning someone. It’s much less disruptive, and that way your pals have the info when they do check their phone, instead of having to call you back to get it. (And also, some of us may be live-tweeting panels!) Diane: “It’s much much easier to get a good-enough cell signal to text than to do phone calls or email.” (Be warned that if you don’t have unlimited texting, you might go over your limit. It might be worth it to call up your provider and see if they can switch you to unlimited texting for just one month. It’s also a good time to unsubscribe any text alert subscriptions you may get from local news and such.)

→ Group messaging. If you’ll be with a large group, and most of them have smartphones, have everyone sign up for a free app called GroupMe. Eliz: “Instead of calling 10 people, you send out one text to a defined group and have them respond to the text. The app is available for most systems.” Bonus: It uses a lot less memory (at least on iOS) than Facebook Messenger.

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Celebration VI: The Bounty Hunt is back, and the Collectors get social

Clues! The Bounty Hunt is returning back to Celebration. You know the one. Hint: It’s run by Jaders.

Collectors. Star Wars Action News is sponsoring the Collector’s Social Area, which “gives Star Wars collectors the opportunity to network with other Star Wars collectors, learn more about the collecting hobby, and get autographs from authors of books on collecting.” Sounds like the Fan Club lounge… Remember that from CIV? Great for collectors, but I can’t help but wondering why no other areas of fandom ever get an official track, let alone a social area. (Do we have to – gulp – volunteer?)

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Rancho Obi-Wan bringing mini-museum to Celebration VI

Your father wanted you to have this when you were old enough

Rancho Obi-Wan, the giant collection of all things Star Wars owned by Steve Sansweet, will be hitting the road for Celebration VI. The Rancho Obi-Wan Experience will have a mini-museum space on the main exhibit floor and will showcase all sorts of item, from props and prototypes to original art and fan-made wonders, all brought from the world’s largest private collection of Star Wars stuff.

Steve Sansweet will be on hand to chat with fans and answer questions. Steve and other managers and board members of Rancho Obi-Wan will be doing a panel on Rancho Obi-Wan as part of the Collectors’ Track. Additionally, there will be preview sales of the upcoming Star Wars: Ultimate Action Figure Collection book at the booth, with all four authors on hand to sign unique bookplates. Fans who sign up to be members of Rancho Obi-Wan at Celebration will receive an exclusive Celebration VI patch that matches the 2012 Rancho Obi-Wan membership patch, as well as a personalized membership kits.

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SDCC: Clone Wars S5 premiere to be shown at CVI

The Clone Wars panel in San Diego was earlier, and naturally Dave Filoni and co. revealed a few hints about the new season. Moderator Pablo Hidalgo has the rundown, and there’s another nice writeup from Patrick Kevin Day at Hero Complex.

The least spoilery is certainly the news that the first episode of s5 will be show in Orlando at Celebration next month. I’ll let you head over to Tosche Station, who’ve collected Amy Ratcliffe’s live-tweets, but for now I’ll just say that it looks like Obi-Wan is going to have some time in the spotlight. Oh, and Maul might get some clothes. (That’s not spoilery, right?)

If you’re yearning for some actual action, both Entertainment Weekly and IGN have exclusive clips.

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SDCC: Ashley shows off new Her Universe gear, Random House’s fanfic contest and more

James sent in several videos from San Diego, including this tour of Her Universe’s new offerings from Ashley Eckstein, including our first look at the new Her Universe logo tee! And Ashley mentions that they have lanyards, which have been pretty thin on the ground at cons lately… I hope they bring them to Celebration!

James also talked to Katie Fleming about the Random House Audio Fan Fiction contest. He also confirmed for us that they will be bringing the fan fiction recording to Celebration VI.

Other videos: The ‘As You Wish’ Boba Fett helmet art project, artist Jeff Carlisle, and the Well of Souls. James also took a ton more pictures – they start here, if you’ve already seen Wednesday’s.

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Celebration VI: More art prints, Disney pricing

Art prints. The fourth set of art prints was revealed yesterday, including works by Joe Corroney, Doug Wheatley and Erik Maell, left. There’s one more reveal to go.

Disney World. Still no word on any official events at the park, but Disney is offering special pricing for Celebration attendees.

Exclusives. Hallmark fans will want to pick up the Obi-Wan Kenobi & Ponda Baba 3-pack in Orlando. 3-pack! Get it?

Kids. The Jawas Junkyard will “assembling and painting model Gonks.” You can check out some of astromechs from previous cons on Facebook.

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Discussion: Let’s talk Celebration VI

Yes, SDCC is literally right around the corner and we have more than a month to go before Orlando, but it’s Friday, nothing is happening, and we haven’t had one of these in a while.

What are your plans for CVI? Are there any last minute announcements you’re still hoping for? Rumors that have yet to pan out? What do you really want to do at the con?