Program Ideas Page

It’s never too early to suggest cool things that should happen at MarsCon 2024. As always, MarsCon programming is driven by our attendees. Please share in the fun by posting your ideas for programming here—talks you’d like to hear or give, presenters/performers you would recommend, subjects or activities of interest to you and other fans…

This plan has served us well for a few years now, so... read the ideas list… if you see a program event you want to help with drop us an email. If you have an idea for an event that isn’t yet listed jump to our online “blue sheet” and tell us about it.

By getting beginning programming suggestions online fairly early we’re hoping to stir your creative juices and generate even more great programming suggestions.

Big dumb objects in science fiction
For this panel I'm thinking of relatively near-future big dumb objects (i.e. space elevators) and also far-future ones (Dyson spheres, Niven ringworlds, Banks orbitals, etc.). Are they possible? And if so, are they worth the trouble?

Suggested by Steve White on Saturday, April 29, 2023 at 13:33:42

Life on Jupiter?
(Life NEAR Jupiter, perhaps??) ESA's Juice mission is on the way to the Jovian system to explore icy moons, particularly Europa, which MAY have a life-friendly liquid water ocean under the ice crust. We will have plenty time to speculate; Juice isn't due to arrive until 2031

Suggested by Rich on Saturday, April 15, 2023 at 22:27:23

Those who cannot remember the past cannot rely on books
Publishers sometimes re-edit the works of authors who are dead or otherwise unable to defend their works. If you do your reading on an e-book the text on your device may change without notification and without your permission. How does this affect authors and readers?

Suggested by Rich

Online “blue sheet” - please offer your program idea.

(Real or Fanish) name:

Event title:

Description:

Anything (except HTML) entered above this line will be sent to our programming department and might appear on this web page in a while. If you are a Nigerian prince offering herbal supplements designed to Make Money Fast your ideas will be receive all the attention they deserve. Anything entered below this line will not be published but will be sent to our programming department.

Your contact information:
Email: and/or
Phone:
Best way or time to reach you:

Are you willing to Make This Happen?
If you are, what is the maximum number of events at MarsCon you could help run?
In an ideal world, what time or day during MarsCon would this event happen?
What time(s) or day(s) during MarsCon would not work for you running this event?

Set up information:
We will attempt to provide a basic video projector + screen setup in all programming rooms. Still, if your presentation will need video goodies tell us now. We are learning it works best if presenters bring their own computers—that way they can be pretty sure their presentations will work... We can probably come up with adaptors for whatever type of video output is on your computer if you tell us in advance. If you are unsure what you have, here is a picture of many types of display outputs. If your presentation will have sound we will need to know that as well—if your sound output is not a 3.5mm plug what is it? The most important thing is to let us know in advance.

If nobody suggests an event, it won’t happen. Thank you for your suggestions.

Send questions about MarsCon to info24c@marscon.org, we’ll do our best to send answers!

More about MarsCon may be found at...
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• Twitter: https://twitter.com/MarsconMpls

MarsCon is brought to you by the Fans Educational Network for Science Fiction (FenSF, Inc), a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. Tax deductible donations always accepted.

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MarsCon 2024

March 8-9-10, 2024
Hilton Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport
3800 American Blvd. E. / Bloomington, MN 55425