My Convention Career: 1999

• Readercon -- Thanks to a business trip to the Boston-area, I got to my first Readercon. The most surprising happening at the con may have been the number of fans watching the women's soccer World Cup, which probably amounted to about 25% of the attendees by the end! To continue the sports theme, the baseball All Star game was in Boston so I also made a trip out to Fenway for the celebrity hitting contest and brought back some souvenirs.

• Westercon, Spokane -- This was the first time I was ever in Spokane and the area near the hotel turned out to be a charming spot, featuring an authentic 1906 carousel. The hoax daily newsletter was done by Mike Glyer on my small Sony Vaio laptop, and I didn't remember until he was finished that I hadn't brought the printer port attachment with me. In a real science-fictional moment, someone at Registration managed to get my infrared port to talk to her computer's infrared port and we got the formatted file across without the two machines being attached! Another sf moment occurred at a local microbrewery, which was having a promotion of their Alien Ale of T-shirts with Roswell-like aliens, which made a perfect present for Roswell in '02 bid chair Liz Mortenson.

• Aussiecon -- What can I say? I had a fabulous time and want to go back. Full trip report coming soon (honest!) Meanwhile, you can see some of my photos.

• Orycon, Portland -- I had my usual fun time at Orycon. I mostly hung out in the Fan Lounge with various fanzine folks, including special guest Bill Bowers and previous fan fund winners like Lucy Huntzinger and Jeanne Bowman.

• Loscon, Los Angeles -- Loscon was my first "unsupervised" DUFF auction and it didn't go too well, with very few people showing up. However, thanks to a piece of special Star Trek memorabilia, it still raised $160! In one of those "small world" happenings, I found out that a woman who showed up for my trip report talk, who had looked vaguely familiar but whose name I couldn't place, was my old boss from Sage Publications when I worked there in 1980. I didn't recognize her because she'd lost weight, and I didn't recognize her name because she's now writing science fiction and going by her pen name!

• SMOFcon, New Orleans -- I love New Orleans for a con and SMOFcon was no exception. As usual, I I ate way too much rich food. As always when SMOFcon falls on Chanukah, I sponsored a Chanukah party (this time, the featured fried food was beignets :-> ) and wrote a new page for the SMOFTalmud. I also did a usability-test-like panel on web design that went over pretty well.

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