thoughtfulAfter reading this post, it occurs to me that a Westercon at John Ascuaga's Nugget could do worse than to use a steampunk-style mascot named "Sparks Nevada."
The real challenge with a Westercon in the Reno area is that I have yet to find a hotel that is right-sized the way the Sacramento Hilton is. Although I've heard some (sometimes justified) complaints and lukewarm reviews of Westercon 66, overall I think the fact that we "owned the hotel" and had slightly too little room meant that the social aspect of the convention was much better than facilities that have dozens of rooms, thereby allowing Programming to Never Say No, resulting in 27 program tracks, each of which has five people on a head table and two in the audience.
(It is possible that if WC66 had had 50-in-60-minute panels (instead of 60-in-75), they could have put in a few more slots; however, there still would have been a lot of saying No. I like those fifteen-minute breaks myself, and I was impressed at how many panels really did stick to 60 minutes instead of trying to use 80, the way so many 50-in-60s try to make 70-minute panels and don't get out of the way at 50 minutes.)
The Reno/Sparks-area hotels I've reviewed so far (I can't go into a hotel without sizing it up for conventions) are all too large. We could make something happen in them, but the 800 people we expect for a Westercon could easily vanish like a drop of ink in a barrel of water at most facilities. The reason Westercon 66 worked as well as it did was that nearly everyone in the building was One of Us. That doesn't work when there are thousands of other people there while your 800 people are struggling to find each other.