My Convention Career: 1993

• Boskone, Framingham, MA -- Thanks to a business trip to Chelmsford, I got to attend my first Boskone. I even ended up helping out in Program Ops, not the most onerous task with a convention this small and a chance to hang out with my friends who were running it. My first encounter with serious snow fascinated me enough that I was called a "snow-neo" in the Friday con newszine! I also ended up on two panels.

• Potlatch II, Berkeley -- A small literary-oriented convention that was close enough to home that I felt I had to go. Disappointingly snobby although there were some interesting panels.

• Baycon, San Jose -- After escaping having to work for ConFrancisco (everyone assuming I was working Programming except Programming), I was finally dragooned into agreeing to help out the Events division, overseeing the person doing the Hugos and the Meet the Guests party. I met with the division head and the Hugo organizer during Baycon and wished I'd done that before I agreed to help, since it became clear we had different ideas about the Hugos and it turned out there wasn't anyone assigned to run the Meet the Guests party!

• Deep South Con, Louisville -- I was hesitant to come out for this DSC since I'd been away from the South so long, but I was greeted with open arms and had a great time. I even made it to the finals of the Hearts tournament! The con hotel was all-time weird, with strange floor layouts and bizarre lawn ornaments (which we later found out were traditional in the midwest) everywhere.

• Westercon, Bellevue, WA -- A fun con at which I ended up spending most of my time eating long meals with friends or working the San Francisco table/parties. My first experience at having to go across a parking lot to "the other hotel" while wearing a Regency gown. Also my first baseball game in a domed stadium, which was kind of like watching people play the game in your living room.

• ConFrancisco, San Francisco -- Having convinced friend Eve Ackerman to run the Meet the Guests party, my real fear about my responsibilities at this con centered around the Hugo ceremony. (Not that the Meet the Guests party went smoothly, but I trusted Eve to handle things well.) As I already knew, the woman running the Hugos, and her boss, and I had very different ideas about who was the priority: the nominees or the audience. From an audience perspective the ceremony went ok but the nominees were not pleased with a lot of the policies. The fun part for me was that a lot of friends won awards and I got to see them backstage right after they won!

• SMOFcon, Lexington, KY -- A better-than-usual SMOFcon, where the ice breaker was the organization of assigned fake bids (including TrantorCon). I did more panels than usual, and the isolated location meant that people hung around together even more than usual.

This page hosted by