Hello, and welcome to the much belated first newsletter of The Phoenix Convention, hereafter to be called P-CON. The plan is to have these come out on a monthly basis, and I'll do my best to stick to that, although sometimes the Real World intervenes, sadly...

GUEST OF HONOUR
Firstly, I want to extend a huge Thank You to Scottish author Ken MacLeod for agreeing to be our Guest of Honour. We are delighted and honoured to have him, and look forward to getting to meet him over the weekend. You can see a profile of Ken, as well as the rest of our guests in the Guests Section of the P-Con Website.

OTHER GUESTS
We are also lucky to have a number of other guests, many of whom are regular attendees at Irish conventions, and some of them, like James P Hogan, making their first appearance at a con here. We are looking for more guests all the time, and should have a few announcements to make in the time between now and the convention. As ever, the best place to find out what is happening at the con, and what news we have, is to go to the con's website, which can be found at www.slovobooks.com/phoenix/.

WEBSITE & MEMBERS PROFILES
Ian Sheppard, our trusty Webmaster, keeps the con site up to date, and it is regularly being added to, with plans for extra features. For instance, Ian has put in place a system that allows anyone who is a member of the con to put up a few words about themselves, as well as a relevant link. We will also be highlighting some of the people who will be attending the convention, but who are not on the cons guest list. For instance, the editorial crew from Albedo 1, which is Irelands only SF short story magazine, will all be there, and will soon have their own space on the con website. If youre going to the con, and would like to say a few words about yourself, go to Member Profiles Section and follow the instructions.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Also, we are putting up an Acknowledgements section, to cover people like the following:

Edward Stafford, who has been taking photographs at cons and other gathering here for a number of years, has put his entire collection at our disposal. Virtually all the photographs of people on the website will have been taken by Ed, and our debt to him is considerable.

Brian Nisbet, who has been manning the registration desk at numerous cons here, both SF and gaming, for a number of years has offered to take the reg desk for P-CON. This takes a considerable burden off the shoulders of the committee, and we are considerably relieved to have someone of Brians experience to do this for us.

Donal Casey, originally from Athlone but now living in Spain, has offered to design a logo for the convention. Considering that we have no way of paying him, and that, like everyone else helping out at the con, he is also paying for the privilege of attending, we are very touched by his offer, especially after looking at his site at www.donalcasey.com.

FUNDRAISER TABLE QUIZ
Before I finish, I want to let you all know that there will be a table quiz to help raise funds to run P-CON, mostly to help pay for flyers and posters, and the postage of same to the far-flung interior of Ireland, amongst other places. The details are as follows:

When: Wednesday 26th February at 8:00 PM
Where: Back Bar of Exchequer Bar, Central Hotel, Exchequer Street, Dublin 2
How Much: €24 per team of 4 people

Questions will be on Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, TV, Movies, Comics, Cartoons and assorted popular culture, amongst other things. Proceeds to go towards the running of Irish SF News and P-CON.

I hope to see you all there (though possible not those of you living beyond easy commuting distance of Dublin, I suppose...)

AND FINALLY
One more thing before I go. The extremely eagle-eyed amongst you may have spotted the fact the certain names have appeared and disappeared from the guests listing on the membership page on the website. Originally we had a listing for Darryl Sloan, but he found he was not in a position to attend after all, and had to regretfully decline our offer of a guest membership. We also briefly had a listing for Michael Carroll, which was due largely to over-enthusiasm on my part. Michael was also not in a position to attend the con, due to other commitments, and I had offered to give him a membership anyway, even though he was not included on the list of guests, in case he found some free time over the weekend. Michael pointed out to me that this could be misleading, and he is right. That is why both Michael and Darryl appeared and disappeared from the membership page. Indeed, Darryl Sloan is still listed on one online listing site, but we hope to have that corrected shortly.

Anyone looking for more broad based SF news from Ireland might wish to subscribe to Irish SF News which I also write, in what I laughingly refer to as my spare time. Thanks for your time, and I promise to get the next newsletter out a bit more punctually!

Next time, I'll be talking about the committee, although the con doesn't have a committee as such, and sending a plea for agents to represent the cons interests elsewhere, amongst other things.