Random Photo For July 9th

• Random number between 1999 and 2015 = 2009
• Random number between 1 and 12 = 8
• Random number between 1 and 31 (or 30 or 28 or 29) = 8

Friends, have I spoken to you about the annual wonderfulness that is “Worldcon”? I’m sure I have, but the short version is that is the “World Science Fiction Convention” and it’s generally the largest of the fan-run, old-school conventions.

Things like most of the Trek cons and the anime cons and the like are all professionally run as a profit-making venture. ComicCon in San Diego this weekend is expecting what, 130,000 attendees? 150,000?

On the other hand, “fannish” conventions are generally non-profits and run about 99.99% by volunteers. Worldcons typically run 5,000 to 9,000 attendees.

Worldcon moves location from year to year. This year it’s in Spokane, next year it’s in Kansas City, last year it was in London. In 2009 it was in Montreal, and so were we.

It was our second visit to Montreal – the first, in 2004, had been something of a disaster. Our rental car was broken into and our luggage and my briefcase were stolen. We spent the rest of the day dealing with the Montreal police and rental car companies who weren’t a credit to their city (to say the least), in part, I suspect, because we didn’t speak a word of French. We then spent the next several days back in Vermont cancelling credit cards, getting new ones issued, and dealing with a case of identity theft. Finally, in my briefcase were several full memory cards with the pictures from the first few days of the trip. That’s one of the reasons I’m now pretty obsessed with multiple copies and multiple backups of digital photo and video when I travel.

The 2009 trip was much better. We had a pretty good time in Montreal, the convention was pretty good, and I found the Montreal Convention Center to be full of architectural wonders to take pictures of. One was this humongous, four-story tall wall of colored glass panes that painted the entire inside of the convention center on that side in constant, shifting shades of pastels.

I’m a sucker for colorful and shiny. If it can be big and majestic on top of it, I’m sold.

Nicely done, Montreal!