Tulkon: great con. Small enough to be relaxed and get to talk with authors and other guests, but large enough to have an interesting programming track and overflow from the dealer’s room with lots of interesting things to catch your eye and your wallet.
Theoretically this should be an AAR (After Action Review), except I still have the book launch party for friends to attend tonight, a panel I’m on Sunday as well as two more I really want to catch… so this is written partially through Saturday.
For one of the North Texas Troublemakers, Alyssa Casto, this is her first convention. She’s having a lot of fun at the panels, and seeing everything in the dealer rooms, as well as helping man our booth. Yay!
I, on the other end, have been spending most of the con in the bar and the halls between panels… because that’s where I can find people and collect hugs, and get into conversations that involve everything from flying into a hurricane on a SAR mission (not me!) to wildlife that officially doesn’t exist deciding it wants to be present anyway, to the existence of things I didn’t even know had been written by authors I really like, and whether genre is more of a hindrance than a help as a tool.
I did make it through the dealer’s room, picking up a set of dice carved from sodalite, and some art. And along the author tables, discovering that other authors I hadn’t met had heard of me. (Insert startled introvert noises here!) But that they also have nigh-identical rants about the need for competent protagonists, healthy adult relationships (including friendships between members of the opposite sex being possible!), and sometimes, you just want clear-cut good guys and bad guys and a happy ending…
Why yes, I do have a larger TBR stack now!
C.V. Walter has passed me by at a fair fast clip at least ten times today. (I hauled a box from Point A to Point B as a chance to catch up with her, as she’s volunteering and doing logistics and lots more panels.) She’s having fun, too!
While the three of us are having almost completely opposite experiences of the same con, it’s not a matter of better nor worse – it is what you make of it. It’s good to get out and hug people again, and chat face to face, and meet new people, find new books to read, and spread compliments on costumes and sartorial choices people made to show off.
Going to do this again at FenCon later this year – if you’re anywhere nearby, maybe see you there? Do you have any cons this year you’re planning on?
Mad Genius Club 
Em and I are signed up for FenCon.
Glad to hear it went well for you!
I’m going to the 57th MarCon in Columbus, Ohio next weekend. That will be my first post-pandemic convention, and I hope it goes smoothly. I’ve also got LibertyCon, FamilyCon (Greenville, SC), and ChamBanaCon (Normal, IL) to fill out the rest of the year.
If there’s anything you or the other commenters thought was particularly good about the few cons that had events mid pandemic (all online or not), I’d appreciate gleaning your insights. MarCon has a couple panels on the nuts and bolts of con hosting with me as a moderator. They are following the moderator asks questions of the true subject matter experts model, so I don’t *need* to know much myself, but I can ask better questions if I come in with more detailed insight. And of course in the time of Covid, all my panelists could end up quarantined with me doing it solo. So it never hurts to arrive over prepared.
I have considerable experience with Mensa Regional and National Gatherings which are kissing cousins of your typical SF con. The absolute number one rule is to have a very detailed and well thought out written contract with your venue. Spell out exactly what will be provided, what special accommodations and privileges are to be arranged, and designate liaison personnel both on the hotel and con sides by name.
We hope to make it to TrekFest this year– the one in Riverside, IA.
Less a convention than a Star Trek themed small-town parade party.
I’m going to be 0:5 this year on Cons, it looks like. I thought, perhaps, maaaaayyyyybe I could get to Bubonicon, but my concert schedule struck again.
We just got back from Malice Domestic 2022 (#’s 32, 33, & 34 combined). It’s not the type that many here attend as it’s cozy mystery but it was fun to be there, in person instead of that ridiculous virtual zoom mode.
We talked, sold books, made contacts, and talked some more.
Great fun.
I remembered standing the registration line behind someone who was attending her first con.
It was when I learned “her jaw dropped” was an actual thing that could happen.
Then, she was wearing a tie-dyed Star Trek T-shirt, so she just needed to be acclimatized a bit. (Telling her that the t-shirt was a good way to blend in made her very thoughtful.)
“brilliant infiltrator in the world of competent adults”
This is me!
Isn’t that comic just perfectly on the nose?
This may be what I tell myself to psyche myself up before going on a panel.
Maaaaybe.
Haven’t been caught yet!
You done good on the panels!