The pros and cons of Philcon
Nov. 24th, 2010 08:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
babarnettI haven't had much time for spilling my thoughts into the blogosphere lately. Busy, busy, busy. So my apologies if I've missed anything exciting in LJ land.
One of the many things keeping me busy was attending Philcon this past weekend. It was only my second time going, and this year was a bit of a mixed bag for me.
PRO: I got to chat with some lovely friends and acquaintances, I finally got to meet in person some folks I had previously known only in an online context, and I met a few new folks.
CON: People who think the fact that you're on a panel about writing sex scenes is an invitation to make inappropriate comments that leave you feeling highly uncomfortable. Especially that guy who had far too big a smile when he asked me if there would be illustrations for the panel. Eeew.
PRO: Peter Beagle's guest of honor speech.
CON: Having a microphone set up for a room that size would have been nice. It was extremely difficult to hear him, and I say that as someone with pretty darn good hearing. The tinny piece of crap they finally came up with about ten minutes in helped, but it was still a tinny piece of crap. Really, aren't microphones kind of standard operating procedure for things like that?
PRO: I was really looking forward to the screening of The Last Unicorn with Peter Beagle doing commentary.
CON: I never got to see the screening. An hour after it was scheduled to start, people were still futzing around trying to get the equipment to work, so I gave up and went to another panel. I have no idea if the screening ever actually happened.
PRO: Like the first time I went to Philcon, some of the most interesting panels I attended were the science-oriented ones.
CON: The room where most of those panels were held had some damn vent or something running the whole time, which made it difficult to hear panelists who had softer speaking voices. Again, microphones would have made a world of difference.
PRO: Being a panelist for the first time was a good learning experience. Out of the six panels I was on, I think the "Future of Libraries and Bookstores" one went the best.
CON: The last-minute scheduling. I had a few thousand other things going on in those four days between notification and the start of the con, so there was no time to prepare, which isn't entirely fair to the attendees who show up expecting panelists to have it together. No matter how well versed someone is in a topic, some of us just aren't great at extemporizing. Like the Gilbert & Sullivan panel I was on. I can certainly speak to that topic, but my knowledge of it isn't encyclopedic, so I would have been able to address it much better than I did with more time.
CON: Panelists who don't show up, especially when they're the moderator.
PRO: Fortunately, things still worked out OK for the panels I was on where that happened. The person who stepped up to the moderating plate for my Saturday night panel turned out to be a good moderator, even at the last minute like that. For one of my Sunday panels, only me and one other panelist showed up; the moderator was one of the two who didn't. But we had some talkative folks in the audience, so I proclaimed myself pseudo-moderator to get things underway, and "Remember When Vampires Were Evil?" quickly became "A bunch of people sitting in a room chatting about vampires for an hour." Really, we should have just gone to the bar and talked over a few beers.
And with that, I will end my two cents worth, wish you all a happy Thanksgiving, and go have some pancakes and sausage for dinner.
One of the many things keeping me busy was attending Philcon this past weekend. It was only my second time going, and this year was a bit of a mixed bag for me.
PRO: I got to chat with some lovely friends and acquaintances, I finally got to meet in person some folks I had previously known only in an online context, and I met a few new folks.
CON: People who think the fact that you're on a panel about writing sex scenes is an invitation to make inappropriate comments that leave you feeling highly uncomfortable. Especially that guy who had far too big a smile when he asked me if there would be illustrations for the panel. Eeew.
PRO: Peter Beagle's guest of honor speech.
CON: Having a microphone set up for a room that size would have been nice. It was extremely difficult to hear him, and I say that as someone with pretty darn good hearing. The tinny piece of crap they finally came up with about ten minutes in helped, but it was still a tinny piece of crap. Really, aren't microphones kind of standard operating procedure for things like that?
PRO: I was really looking forward to the screening of The Last Unicorn with Peter Beagle doing commentary.
CON: I never got to see the screening. An hour after it was scheduled to start, people were still futzing around trying to get the equipment to work, so I gave up and went to another panel. I have no idea if the screening ever actually happened.
PRO: Like the first time I went to Philcon, some of the most interesting panels I attended were the science-oriented ones.
CON: The room where most of those panels were held had some damn vent or something running the whole time, which made it difficult to hear panelists who had softer speaking voices. Again, microphones would have made a world of difference.
PRO: Being a panelist for the first time was a good learning experience. Out of the six panels I was on, I think the "Future of Libraries and Bookstores" one went the best.
CON: The last-minute scheduling. I had a few thousand other things going on in those four days between notification and the start of the con, so there was no time to prepare, which isn't entirely fair to the attendees who show up expecting panelists to have it together. No matter how well versed someone is in a topic, some of us just aren't great at extemporizing. Like the Gilbert & Sullivan panel I was on. I can certainly speak to that topic, but my knowledge of it isn't encyclopedic, so I would have been able to address it much better than I did with more time.
CON: Panelists who don't show up, especially when they're the moderator.
PRO: Fortunately, things still worked out OK for the panels I was on where that happened. The person who stepped up to the moderating plate for my Saturday night panel turned out to be a good moderator, even at the last minute like that. For one of my Sunday panels, only me and one other panelist showed up; the moderator was one of the two who didn't. But we had some talkative folks in the audience, so I proclaimed myself pseudo-moderator to get things underway, and "Remember When Vampires Were Evil?" quickly became "A bunch of people sitting in a room chatting about vampires for an hour." Really, we should have just gone to the bar and talked over a few beers.
And with that, I will end my two cents worth, wish you all a happy Thanksgiving, and go have some pancakes and sausage for dinner.
