My Convention Career: 1995

• Westercon, Portland -- Without a doubt, this con featured the best publications of any con I'd ever been to: great Web page, progress reports, and a stellar pocket program. I'd volunteered to help with Program Ops, and ended up not only heading it but helping to rescue Green Room, coincidentally in the same room, as well, since the woman assigned to run it meant well but was relatively clueless. My first experience with the famous Portland opening ceremonies, and I even got a brief bit in the show, which was full of insider computer jokes.

  I was on two interesting panels at this con: one on apas that was populated with six panelists, only two of whom besides me were used to "traditional" apas; the others were in apas that ranged from shared worlds to fan fiction, and had very different ideas as to the purpose of belonging to apas (an end in itself or a place to practice writing?). The other was a contentious panel on the relationship between fans and pros, which is still being talked about.

• NASFiC, Atlanta -- I mainly went to this con to see old Southern buddies and a good thing, too: the con itself was more of a comics/media con despite their assurances that the NASFiC part would be a more traditional sf convention. The art show aisles were illegally narrow and required one-way traverses through the show, there were confused corkage rules for the parties, and the pro GoH was only on two program items. I did get to see some old friends for the first time in about 10 years so the trip was worth it despite the con.

• Intersection, Glasgow -- Some pre-con work for Program Ops, the area to which I was assigned, had pointed up the cultural differences between American worldcons and British conventions, and I was a little concerned about how the con would work out. I ended up doing a lot more organizing in Program Ops than I expected, and the track method of programming caused some problems in logistics, but otherwise things went fairly well. The most notable cultural difference turned out to be the serving of hard liquor in the Green Room, and the upset of program participants that the bar didn't open until 11 in the morning! I also got to work the Hugo ceremony so I could take notes in preparation for my own stint at running them the next year. There was a lot less pre-con planning for the Hugo staging than I would have expected but a lot of other preparation work was done so things went smoothly.

• Orycon, Portland -- My first Orycon, which I attended in order to meet a Tech Director candidate for the L.A.con III Hugo ceremony. A lot of fun, including a trip to the famous Powell's Books.

• SMOFcon, Austin -- A spectacular earache left me with impaired tastebuds, making going out to eat an experience. I had a good time at this relatively laid back con, participating on only one panel and watching a lot of football. A nice innovation for the traditional Fannish Inquisition (grilling future worldcon bids) was Fannish Jeopardy.

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