James Shields is thrilled at the prospect of meeting up with groovy Australian fans. He has been an active fan since stumbling into a Dublin convention in 1991, and has since run conventions, published and written for fanzines, run fan clubs, built various fan and convention websites, and helped with the YAFA (Young Adult) programme at the 2005 Worldcon. He has become enthusiastic about Fan funds, and after helping with two TAFF reports and hosting GUFF delegates on their Irish stop-offs, would love to experience Australian fandom and promises to publish a timely trip report afterwards. He also likes Lego.
James’ nominators are Claire Brialey, Dave Lally, Dave Langford, Danny Oz and Juliette Woods.
Douglas Spencer, besides being an SF fan, is also a fan of food, science, computers and bad puns. He can cook a bit, he can write a bit, he can act a bit. He's appeared in convention musicals. He's published fanzines under four different titles. He's participated in many convention programme items over nearly twenty years, including "Sumo Wrestling", "Science of Chocolate", "Songs of Praise", "Origami Workshop", and getting his head shaved for charity. He's hoping to meet lots of fans in New Zealand and Australia, sharing some stories, and maybe providing raw material for a new legend or two.
Doug’s nominators are James Bacon, Fran Dowd, Mike Scott, Zara Baxter and Gene Melzack
UK AUS ROW Total James Shields 38 11 4 53 Douglas Spencer 32 4 1 37 Hold Over Funds 0 0 0 0 No preference 7 3 0 10 == == == === 77 18 5 100 James Shields won on the first ballot.
James Shields writes:
Yes, it's been a long time coming.I've put a lot of work into getting the report from my trip report finished, and I hope the result makes it worthwhile. I wanted the finished product to look really good, and I hope I've achieved that. We had a few copies at this year's Eastercon, Worldcon and Octocon, and the response has been great.
More copies are now on their way to Europe and Australia, and it will be on sale at future conventions.
To get a great finish, I used magazine printing from Blurb.com. If you'd like to order a copy by mail, it's much cheaper to order direct from them than to have them shipped to me and posted a second time. €5 from the price goes directly to the GUFF fund. Unfortunately, the shipping on single issues is pricey, so if you'd prefer to wait and pick it up at a con, it should be considerably cheaper.
Special thanks are due to Kylie Ding, David L. Russell, Fionna O'Sullivan and Claire Brialey who helped enormously with proof reading and getting the report to print.
The box below should let you preview and order a copy...
In addition, James posted to a GUFF trip Blog.