Kevin Roche is the chair of Worldcon 76 in San Jose.
Kevin is “a fan for all seasons,” with extensive experience in convention running and many other aspects of SF/F genre conventions. He co-chaired Westercon 66 in Sacramento in 2013 and chaired Costume-Con 26 in San José in 2008. Worldcon attendees will have most recently seen him as Masquerade Master of Ceremonies at the 2015 Worldcon, Sasquan. He also co-directed the 2011 Worldcon’s Masquerade as well as Masquerades at Anime Los Angeles, Westercon, and BayCon. He has been part of convention programming teams at several past Worldcons.
Kevin has extensive and well-received convention hospitality experience, including running the convention hospitality suite at the 2009 World Fantasy Convention in San José, and recently as bartender for the Helsinki in 2017 Worldcon bid. Fans across the USA have seen him as Fan Guest of Honor at conventions from the San Francisco Bay Area to Texas, Iowa, and Boston. He also has conference organization experience outside of the SF/F genre, having been the event registrar for scientific events (SpinCurrents 2009, SpinAge 2010, and Superconductivity 297k! organized under the direction of IBM Fellow Dr. Stuart SP Parkin).
Kevin has been making costumes since he was 8, and continues dressing funny to this day. In his secret identity as a research scientist at IBM Research Almaden, he's hard at work wrangling giant robot vacuum chambers and electrons in atomically engineered materials, and has recently joined the IBM Q quantum outreach team.
Kevin is also created Thinbot, the gold-medal winner in robotic bartending at Robogames, the international robotics competition, in 2012, 2013, 2015 and 2016. Thinbot is not infrequently found hard at work serving visitors to Kevin and Andy's parties at conventions.
As part of the San Jose Worldcon bid, Kevin designed and constructed the San Jose Galactic LIght Tower, a 32’ tall (1/10 scale) replica of the historic San Jose Electric Light Tower, which was first exhibited at MidAmeriCon II, the 2016 Worldcon in Kansas City last August. The tower incorporates 3000 addressable animated LEDs, controlled via cell phone app. (photos of the tower are also viewable at its facebook gallery)
Kevin is also the editor of Yipe! The Costume Fanzine of Record (www.yipezine.com),
