How the Con Works
SteelCon is a three day event, this is how the days break down.
Friday – Workshops and pub
Friday is workshop day. To come to a workshop you’ll need a main event ticket and a workshop ticket, to find out about how to get one, see the How Tickets Work page.
Depending on which rooms the university has given us, we usually have a nice open area around the workshop rooms where we welcome anyone who is in the area early to come along and say hi. This is usually a good place to arrange to meet people, especially those who you’ve never met in person before as we don’t mind doing introductions and helping you to work out who is who. Even if you are on your own, come along and you’ll soon find someone to talk to. You may also get to taste con delicacies such as apple sauce and pork scratching or mushy pea ice cream (as we said, we are quite special).
Friday night is also pub night. This is an informal, unofficial, unticketed, meet up. We usually meet at the Roebuck Tavern but we don’t book any space, everyone just turns up and we basically take over for the night. Each year we give the pub a heads up that they could have a couple of hundred hungry and thirsty hackers descend on them and it might be a good idea to put on extra staff and to fill their food cupboards, and most years they ignore us and sell out of food very quickly. If they do this, please don’t be a Scott and order in pizza, they get a bit annoyed at this. For more information see Friday Night.
Saturday – The main event and party
Saturday is the main event. Doors open around 8:30 when we will be serving breakfast and getting you all registered. The welcome talk starts at 9:30 and then we hand over to the invited speakers for the rest of the day. The event schedule will be in your brochures and will be published on the Talk Schedule page.
At lunchtime we serve a nice big spread of food along with local award winning Our Cow Molly ice cream.
Saturday evening is party time. This is a ticketed event, so only open to people with a con ticket, unfortunately no family or friends. Kids from the kids track are welcome as long as they behave better than the adults, which isn’t usually that hard. There will be food and, sponsors willing, there will also be free drinks. These are usually done through vouchers but we will explain all that during the opening or closing talks.
Sunday – Clappy Monkey fun and lunch
Sunday morning is a time to recover from the party and get some lunch before heading home. The morning got it’s name from the sadly departed Mike Kemp whose company originally sponsored a couple of games of early morning laser quest. Unfortunately the venue closed down and so we are currently meeting up at the local Element Games shop for a morning of painting models and playing games. This is aimed at everyone from kids to adults and beginners to experts. Places are limited though so you’ll need to sign up on the Saturday, information on how to do this will be provided in the welcome talk, or just ask the registration desk crew. We normally run this from about 10 till 12 but because it is just meeting in a shop, you can come and go as you want.
After the morning fun we will retire for lunch, this is usually at Kommune, a venue with a mix of food vendors to hopefully suite everyone. We meet around 12 and anyone is welcome to join us, not just con attendees. The venue has a very large self-seating dining area and we usually take over a large section to keep everyone together.