2006's theme was Pirates! (Arrr). The entry forms went missing again on the way back from Glasgow, presumably ransacked from the back of SMS's car by the dreaded Pirates of the M6 Motorway, black hearted road scum that they be (Arrr), so we don't have any written records of what the entries or entrants were called, and our rum-addled scurvy-bitten brains are too rotten to remember most of them. This is what we're going to do. Whenever we can't remember the the name of a ship or an entrant, we'll just make up something suitably ridiculous. If you spot your ship and want to tell us what its real name was (or indeed what your real name is), drop us an email and we'll change it. Also, if you took any photos/videos of the event we'd love to see them (email alex at this site's domain name).
These were the winning entries:
The winners received Doctor Who Easter eggs, apart from Eira who got to take SMS home with her.
Beyond Cyberdrome 2006 was hosted by Concussion, which was held at the Crowne Plaza hotel in Glasgow. The chosen theme was a bit of a gamble because it involved talking the hotel into letting us put a paddling pool outside, building robots that could operate on water, and holding the event outdoors at the mercy of the elements. It was the first year of Alex Holden's involvement, Concussion being only his second SF con (his first was Interaction, the 2005 Worldcon, also held in Glasgow). He only got involved a few months before the con, but ended up bringing a car full of tools and materials and taking over the Chaos Workshop, as well as building the award-winning Rampaging Roger pirate ship.
These three articles should give you some idea of what we were planning to do:
Introduction to the Pirates! (Arrr) theme.
Our plans for the main event.
Technical advice for entrants.
All con hotels have their good points and their bad points, and one of the
Crowne Plaza's bad points proved to be a shortage of small function rooms.
This lack of space left Chaos Robotics and Chaos Costuming sharing a room. It
worked out OK in the end, but with the slight drawback that we were forced to
make use of the mezzanine area outside the room. Many people came into the
workshop just to marvel at how well organised it was compared to previous years.
Since we don't have the entry forms we're not sure exactly how many chaos
robots were built, but it was definitely in excess of ten, including some
rather ingenious designs. Everybody who wanted to build a robot did so, and we
could easily have built more robots if more people had come into the workshop.
The Chaos Robotics workshop.
The main event was prepared by James Bacon and Bazooka, and presented by SMS
and Eira. It involved a large round inflatable paddling pool, no tech (BC is
used to PA systems and video screens), a mass of boats carreering madly out of
control, a huge cheering crowd, Rampaging Roger spraying everything that moved
with his water cannon, and SMS and Eira standing on wobbly chairs shouting
insults at each other, then swashbuckling and falling into the pool. There was
some method to the madness, but it didn't bear much relation to the carefully
worked out plans, mainly due to the loss of the entry forms (which were later
refound and then lost a second time). The audience certainly seemed to enjoy it
even if they were left a little confused as to what was going on and who won.
The main event.
This write-up was captured on the high seas by the following pirates:
