Constuff, past and present

Got home a few hours ago from the wonderful fun of Portus! Got to see so many people (but unfortunately, not everyone I wanted to see :( ), enjoy wonderful programming, drink the most amazing margaritas, watch Voldemort stage-dive, make new friends, talk to Baptists about moral lessons found in Harry Potter while manning the information desk and (squee!) plan for azkatraz!

You may've already seen mention of it on the journals of our wonderful programming chairs - nqdonne, emmagrant01 and flourish - or on azkatraz itself, but here's the scoop:

Where the mist rolls across San Francisco Bay, from Union Square to Alcatraz, HP Education Fanon, Inc.'s 2009 conference - AZKATRAZ - shakes things up with discussions, panels, insight, debates, fan-creativity, wizard rock, and more!

From July 18 - 21, 2009 at the Parc55 Hotel, join fellow fandomers at HPEF's sixth Harry Potter conference. We'll feature Quidditch, a ball, amazing programming and new programming tracks, including a business and law focus that will include an examination of how the series and the fandom have impacted Silicon Valley business, and vice versa.

Helmed by Interim Chair and outgoing HPEF President gwendolyngrace (Lee HIllman), with programming chaired by emmagrant01, Alexa (nqdonne and Madeline (flourish), we're looking for volunteers, and you can learn more and sign on at our Volunteers Yahoogroup.

Watch our LiveJournal at azkatraz (only committee chairs will be comm members, to keep things organized, but we want everyone to watch the LJ to keep up on the news!) or add the RSS feed - MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and more news/update locations are coming soon.

Registration will begin on August 1, 2008 and our CFP is coming soon.

We are definitely looking for volunteers to take on all sorts of roles pre-con and at the con, from graphics creation and management of the various info-posting locations to programming submission vetting, from Quidditch staffing to security. Again, you can learn more about volunteering opportunities at our Volunteers Yahoogroup.

We should have pricing info finalized by the end of this month for the con itself, although we're going to need a little more time to finalize things for the post-Azkatraz bus-trip down to Comic Con that we will hopefully get to take on Wednesday, July 22, 2009. It's an eight hour drive, and can you imagine how much fun it would be on a bus full of fellow HP fans (perhaps with a wrocker with an acoustic guitar providing live entertainment on the ride down)? The SanFran to ComicCon portion is not a 100% sure thing yet, but we're definitely going to try and make it happen!

I'm swamped right now with getting things ready to post for my art and vids for veronamay's spn_j2_bigbang fic, plus unpacking, catching up with the Spouse, getting things organized for Comic Con - (Melissa, Erin and Sue, what are y'all wearing?), etc., but will try to do a full Portus report tomorrow. Especially if I bring my laptop to the Apple store while I wait in line for a new phone - my old pink one is now starting to shock my cheek even when it isn't plugged in. flourish, did you manage to get one today?