Hello Fellow Duesers...

Well here it is at last, our first after-con report! We realise this is a
little later than some people may have hoped, but the whole committee took a
week off to catch up on their sleep and Real Life and now we're coming back to
things with our batteries recharged somewhat. It is perhaps not too unfortunate
since this co-incided with DS-L's collapse, so some of you wouldn't have been
able to read an earlier report anyway. <Hope everything is back to normal there
now!>

First off we want to say thank you kindly to everyone who either joined us,
supported us through non-attendee memberships or donations or simply just
expressed interest in Riv Con which was held on the 26th-28th May. It was
great!

As stated previously our three main goals were to a) have fun, b) raise money
for charity and c) build bridges in our fandom which has been sorely divided in
recent years. Each of these goals, we believe, has been achieved.

Despite a relatively low turn-out and some unfortunate last minute changes,
everyone at the con seemed to be having fun and many of them made a point of
thanking us for our efforts on their departure and hoping we would run another
one next year. Lively discussions were held on all sorts of DS topics without
anyone seeming to get upset or angry and opposing views were exchanged with good
grace and civility. The entire committee is both proud of and grateful to each
and every attendee for embracing the spirit of tolerance and understanding we
were hoping to encourage. We tried hard to provide something for everyone and
truly hope that everyone went away happy.

Not everything worked out as planned however, with the major disappointment
being our lack of guests. Unfortunately, both confirmed guests, Dean McDermott
and Tony Craig had to pull out at the very last minute - and we truly
mean last minute, two days before the event! Tony was working and had hoped it
would be finished in time for him to join us, but had to cancel when the project
overran. And Dean was asked to do a screen test in Vancouver on the Monday
after RivCon for a new role in Earth: Final Conflict. We tried everything
(including flying him in from Toronto and back to Vancouver), but realistically
it would have been unfair on Dean not to let him pull out.

As a generous gesture to us and the fans, Dean did agree to do a speaker-phone
Q&A session which was excellent and turned into the highlight of Saturday
afternoon. (Frriday's was probably the taped message from Gordon Pinsent.)
Amongst other things, Dean told us how much he loved DS, how he appreciated the
show's fans and what he was doing next. (A second audition had come up for a
new cop show entitled Blue Murder for Monday morning, so hopefully we will be
seeing Dean again in something soon.) A fuller report on this will be posted
soon.

Many of you have asked about David Marciano who was also expected to attend. We
had been in contact with David off and on since RivCon was announced and as the
event drew closer it became apparent that he might not be able to join us due to
various acting and writing committments. In the end all he could do was send
his apologies and best wishes to the fans. As with Dean and Tony, we wish him
all the best of luck in his endeavours.

So what did we do? Well... At the con, we held a variety of panels and
discussions and played games and quizzes including Mastermind and Wipeout, both
covering all four seasons. We also had a go at Call My Bluff and now know what
a QIVIUT is and no it isn't a flat bottomed Inuit boat, it's the fur off a musk
ox! We went bolas throwing - the bolas is now sitting on the hotel roof! - and
had lots of fun with the DS Dance. In fact, we got it right first time.

The Gala Dinner was lovely (thank you kindly to the hotel for their efforts) and
was followed by Fancy Dress. Ali Bainger won - dressed as Mark Smithbauer
complete with hockey stick and shoulder pads. Other worthy mentions go to Rowan
Watson-Wood as a Furry Night Crawler and Juli Field as the shoe-related Elf
Story. And if you don't believe this, we have pictures!

A cunning obstacle course followed and we rounded off Saturday night with Paul
Gross's Murder Most Likely and Callum Keith Rennie's Last Night much to
everyone's appreciation. <Okay, so we had to move room in-between so the hotel
could get the main hall back in order for the morning, but no one seemed to
mind.>

Sunday was taken up with David Marciano's Q&A from RCW 1998 (we showed Paul
Gross's 1999 stint during Saturday), the raffle and charity auction and more
games! The raffle which was organised in memory of Ann Marie Chastko raised
£150 to which the committee will be adding their own donations and the proceeds
from the Tony Craig autographed video (see below). The final amount will be
announced later.

The event auction has so far raised nearly £2000 with a number of email bids
from our non-attendees awaiting payment. Bidding was fierce for some items.
Because of numbers and the non-arrival before the event of one or two items we
were expecting, we reserved a few items which we will be auctioning shortly in a
special supplementary auction in order to increase the monies raised for the
charities. Please watch out for another announcement regarding this soon.

We have a small number of Paul's rubber ducks remaining AND autographed copies
of the Hamlet programme from Stratford which will be included as well as some
EXCLUSIVE personal photos from Dean McDermott which he took during COTW and one
of the Clearvision PAL videos autographed by Tony Craig. We also have 2
gorgeous knitted afghans as donated by a fan to RivCon. Scans of these items
are being placed on the website, but PLEASE DO NOT BID YET as we want to get
everything up and sorted out first. A formal announcement with instructions
regarding the auction will be made when we are ready to begin. (Probably early
next week.)

Most of these items arrived too late for the main auction so to make them
available to as many people as possible we are inviting ALL DS fans everywhere
to bid on them once the auction goes live. Good luck to all of you.

Finally in closing, as mentioned previously, there is the question of whether
there will be another RivCon next year. The good news is that both Dean and
Tony are eager to try again and that the committee worked well together AND are
still talking to each other. <vbg!> At this point in time we have a lot of
things to finish with before RivCon 2000 can be called complete. Once that is
done we will need to sit and discuss the possibilities before making a
decision... but one thing we can say for sure is that if we do decide to run
RivCon again in 2001, you'll be the first to know!

Thank you kindly...

Felicity, Ann, Elaine, Juli, Vicky, Robin, Kate and Leona
The rivCON committee

email: rivcon@...
website: http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Quark/2321/