Something Discworld this way went...

In another leg of the Trousers of Time, the 12th Discworld Convention took place in 2020, but even the History Monks and their Procrastinators couldn’t make that happen in the face of COVID-19.

But! We succeeded and the Discworld Convention 2022, a four day celebration of the works of Sir Terry Pratchett, took place at the Hilton Birmingham Metropole on 19th - 22nd August 2022. We took our inspiration from one of the favourite Bookes of Witches, Lords & Ladies.

And now it is over. We have all departed the 2020 2022 convention and, as outgoing Chair, I just wanted to pass along a few quick thoughts and thank-yous to those who helped to make the convention such a great one.

First of all I would like to give a massive celestial shout-out to the main man, the reason we all gather, drink and sing songs so heartily, Thank You Sir Terry Pratchett for bringing us all together.

Next I would like to thank all of our guests:

• As some of Sir Terry’s closest friends, and with a long history of working together, I am very grateful to Rob, Colin, Stephen and Pat for sharing their memories of Sir Terry and his works, as well as some insight into the future of some of both his and their own works.
• I also want to thank Ian Stewart, Phil Masters and Marc Burrows for giving so generously of their time and support throughout our programme of events.
• Lastly, I want to thank our newcomers to the Discworld Convention, Jodi Taylor, Ben Aaronovitch (well, he is a relative newcomer compared to the rest of the regulars) and Thomas Benjamin Wild Esq. who were all fantastic additions to the Discworld family and I hope that they had as much fun over the weekend as we all did.

Thirdly, I would like to thank all of the purple-shirted ConCom and all of those who helped along the way on our journey to DWCon 2022. I may be the Big Cheese, but without the entire ConCom I would have been even more of a gibbering wreck than I was. You all did amazingly in what turned out to be a fairly strange few years and deserve a lot more than my measly thanks. (Please note for future cons that ConCom welcome snacks both sweet and savoury as a small token of your appreciation for all their VERY hard work.)

Finally, I would like to thank each and every member of the convention for coming along for the weekend (or week in some cases) and joining in on the festivities. From those of you who were only able to attend a few events or those who participated in the many Coven events to those of you who helped run events, you made a warm weekend in August a very enjoyable one indeed (at least for me).

Last but not least we are, as ever, looking for new wearers of the purple (new shirts hopefully) and if you would be interested in volunteering, or learning more in general, please email us at 2024@dwcon.org.

So until next time, as ever, Be Excellent To Each Other and GNU Terry Pratchett.

Taz
Chair, 2020 2022 Discworld Convention Committee

In fact, the mere act of opening the box will determine the state of the cat, although in this case there were three determinate states the cat could be in: these being Alive, Dead, and Bloody Furious.

Sir Terry Pratchett
Lords and Ladies