CoNZealand Platform announcement

Kia Ora!

We’ve been working hard to turn CoNZealand into a virtual convention. We first put together a group to determine the needs of each of our divisions while researching various folks we could partner with. These led to our partnerships with The Fantasy Network and with Grenadine, and we’ve all been running ever since.

CoNZealand’s Technology Services have been working closely with our partners and the other CoNZealand Divisions. Our newly created Platform Services Division is coordinating the work, and has set up an Architectural Council, with representatives from each of our Divisions, to guide us. We tested our work this past weekend during the CoNZealand All-Staff meeting, trying out our platform and the various components. We wanted to see how the systems worked and, importantly, if we could break them in order to improve them. The weekend testing was very successful, and we are now working on integrating the components into a seamless experience.

What are those components? We can now announce that we will be using the following: 

The social hub of the CoNZealand platform will be Discord. From here, you will be able to enter, talk with bidders at their bid tables, hang out in our social spaces and attend parties.

Programme items will be in Zoom, with the type of item determining what type of Zoom meeting we will use. Most events will be streamed to members and will also be available on The Fantasy Network’s app.

Our schedule will be in Grenadine, where you can read about our Programme Participants, plan your convention schedule, and get to the programme items.

Finally, we will greatly expand the CoNZealand website to provide information on exhibits, dealers, and the art show, and a wealth of information, including the Convention Newsletter and other convention publications.

These will all be tied together with a single sign-in point for authentication through the CoNZealand registration system, while meeting standards for maintaining the privacy of our members.

We have backup components for the platform, and we may add other components as useful. We will announce minimum system requirements to access the platform in mid-June.  

We thank our entire Committee for their very hard work as we switch from an in person Worldcon to a virtual Worldcon. There are big changes, and subtle changes. None of this would be possible without the hard work and cooperation of everyone involved, and we especially want to thank our Technology Services Division, our partners, and Matthew Gray, our Lead Developer, and a cast of many more for the hard work that they are putting in to creating the virtual environment for our convention.

We hope you are looking forward to CoNZealand as much as we are!

 

Norman Cates

Kelly Buehler