Midwest Construction, held over the weekend of September 21st at the O'Hare Embassy Suites (which isn't all that close to O'Hare), drew about 65 SF convention runners for a regional version of SMOFCon. Though most of the attendees were from the Midwest (Chicago, Michigan, Kansas City, Minneapolis, Pittsburgh, Toronto, etc.), outliers showed up from as far away as Boston (Seth Breidbart and Sharon Sbarsky), Baltimore (Hal Haag), Denver (Elaine Brennan) and Seattle (Bobbie DuFault). Programming concentrated heavily on the "basics" of small to mid-sized cons and was most valuable for exposing often parochial Midwestern con organizers to other ways of doing the same things.

The convention drew as many people as expected, avoided losing money and didn't spark any major feuds, so a second edition is planned next year in Ann Arbor.


OffWorld Designs produced a convention t-shirt. Hal Haag models Ray VanTilburg's artwork.	Tammy Coxen, who chairs the long-running Michigan convention ConFusion, was elected President of Midwest Construction's parent body, Midwest Fannish Conventions ("MIdFan"), and will be chairman of next year's MWC.

As at SMOFCon, the con suite was the inevitable epicenter of activity. Here Bill Higgins (far right) has seized the attention of the MidFan board of directors. I think that he was explaining quarks.

The officers and board of MidFan (left to right): Jim Mann, Steven Silver, Erik Olson, Tammy Coxen, Joe ("Uncle Vlad") Stockman and Mark Herrup.