Contact Request

I've found holes in my fan contacts database...

Spike, Gaspode and Jameb, or somebody with such, drop me their contact details to: daveon (at) gmail (dot) com?

Thanks! 

Post Con Thoughts…

This is going to be a relatively random brain dump, so sorry if there isn’t more structure to it.  I *might* do something about that.  Then again, knowing me, and believe me, I do, I probably won’t.  I’m busy.  What can I say?

I’ll also throw the pictures up somewhere – they are also, like the con itself, something of a curate’s egg.

Anyway, onward!

The Con: General Thoughts…

It was a bit of a mixed bag, there was a lot of good programming but it felt, at times tricky to navigate and figure out what was going on.  I’ve a lot of thoughts on this and I think it’s time for a fairly significant overhaul of the programming delivery process – something that recognizes that we’re living in the 21st century now and that we have an easy mobile/web option in line with the program books and sheets – and one that ideally can be updated on the fly.  Rooms did move randomly and the Palais was confusing enough for me to give up on one item.

I also heard a few complaints about the process in general.

I was also unhappy with the Green Room effectively shutting down on Monday morning.  I was only scheduled for items on Monday and turning up at the Green Room to find that nobody was actually doing anything was a little strange.  Guys, I know it’s the last day of the con, but the program did run through.

Montreal: seemed nice – didn’t see much of it as I seemed to keep getting involved in other stuff rather than seeing the city.  That’s probably a feature of the con rather than a bug.

The “party hotel”, the Delta.  What to say here?  One of the reasons I didn’t get out much was I spent a LOT of time on the 28th floor of the Delta battling with the lifts and the insanity of the hotel confusion around the party set up.  To be fair, when more than a third of the con were on the 28th floor (we counted over 1200 people through the door at the Brit Party on Friday), there might be a wee problem.  This probably is another feature, but it wasn’t handled well by the hotel who did seem a little confused by the process and by what their own management had agreed to.

Some Specifics:

Due to my insane travel plan, I ended up having a quiet night.  I was in the Tor Party briefly having followed Neil Gaiman in, after a chat in the lift about the time we nearly killed him in Preston, but I realised that 3 hours sleep in 30 hours was getting to me and I crashed.  This did mean that I got to do some programming on Friday – most of which were ok.

I did get the sensation that this was a small con though.  Like with Glasgow, it generally seemed to be lacking in terms of, er… how can I put this… more forceful American personalities.

Friday evening I wandered by to offer a donation to the British Room Party and, like Ford Prefect, got stuck for 15 years – or so it felt at 3ish when we were fielding noise complaints.  The party rocked – we had an excellent turn out, a lot of fun and generally speaking given we got something like a third of the attendees through the doors it went off without a hitch.

I’ll take some modest credit :), but really praise is due to James Bacon for getting it organised.

 

A final special mention to Jack for being a great room-mate.

Funny Thing Distance...

I realised that in total door-to-door journey time it took me longer to get back from Montreal to Seattle than it would have done to get home to Ealing from Montreal....

That's just madness.

I will probably have to skip Aussiecon but I'm pretty close to 100% sure I'm going to be in Reno. 

Paul Krugman - Fan and a sense of humour

I just re-read Paul Krugman's 1978 paper on Interstellar Trade and was amused to find this lurking in the references:

 Krugman, P. "Theory Capital and Travel Light-than-Faster", processed Yale 1987

Nice one Paul.

Convention Problems: The Panel from hell and the participant who can...

I like a fight as much as the next guy... actually, that's a bad thing to say.  Sometimes a well structured argument between people can be amusing and interesting and certainly lead to an improved level of, if not understanding, at least the position of the other person.

However, there are some things I JUST DON'T GET - and one of them is disrupting something for no readily apparent reason.

There was an interesting post on newly minted Hugo Winner Cheryl Morgan's blog from Kathryn Kramer about "When Panel's Go Bad" about a catastrophic panel failure which left Patrick Neilsen Hayden walking out and Geoff Ryman banging his head on the desk.  Interestingly I wanted to, but couldn't attend this one because I was on another item at the time.  Anyway, I digress.  Basically, it's an old story, somebody monopolises a panel making a point nobody gets and problems ensue.  This one actually takes it to a new degree when the monopoliser called upon somebody to come up and sing a Filk song that they thought addressed their point.

Now I know my thoughts on Filk, and, in fact, any form of Folk singing are on record and in line with the views of the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork when it comes to Mime Artists.  However, I do take a more live and let live approach when it comes to my many friends who are partial to a bit of Filking.  Sorry, I am disgressing more.  Back to point:

I could just about cope with this as fairly standard behaviour which I would address with a post about Panel Moderation - then I came across this:  http://lemmozine.livejournal.com/45970.html, from the person in question where they say the following about the panel:

Monday, 12:30, I somehow was assigned to a panel called Cultural Memory, Societal Resilience and Change. Description: How important is cultural memory? Does it support or hinder social change Does it matter whether it is given up voluntarily or taken away by force? Well, I have no clue how I got on such a panel, and this topic, is, I think, broad enough to drive a planet through it, so I decided to do something very much like that. My thoughts ran thusly: cultural memory is information that is passed through generations, up until recently through oral tradition including storytelling, poetry and songs, and the modern prevalence of communication technology is either disrupting or taking over the oral tradition, resulting in rampant information overload and loss of a lot of what we had before cultural memory started moving from a localized to a global phenomenon. I'm a musician and songwriter, and a song that I honestly think offers a unique prespective on that is Kathleen Sloan's "Take It Back," so I persuaded Kathleen to come in and sing it for the audience. This panel, by the way, had a pretty good crowd. Well, one of the panelists - sorry, I didn't catch his name, and I don't think he was one of the original panelists listed in the program - was having none of this and decided to leave the room. 

Firstly.  If you don't really get why you're on a panel and don't have something pertinent to add - recluse yourself.  I did that on Monday, or rather I took over moderation from James MacDonald on a panel on dealing with disasters - I have no clue why I was on that panel, but I know why James is, and it made more sense for James to participate.

Secondly. Screwing up a panel for your own ends isn't big and it certainly isn't clever and it sure as hell isn't fun for anybody else to watch.

Thirdly.  HELLO?! MODERATOR?  Yes, I'm talking to you!  If a person does this - shut them down.  You are in charge, it is your panel, you are there to keep things on track and drive the discussion.  If somebody wants to bring up their team of performing chincillas to make a particular point - don't let them.  Close them down and bring the conversation sharply back to the topic at hand.

Interestingly gaspode and I were discussing this at length on Sunday in the bar because, like me, he's a pain to moderate - however - we both agreed that it's an extremely important role and one that you should take seriously.  If you want to participate at length in the conversation swap with somebody else as moderator.  You really can't opine on something and control a panel - it's a nice theory but it doesn't work.

Finally... and here I may be controversial.  Audience participation.  I like to take part as much as the next loud mouthed, opinionated, obnoxious Brit.  However, again, the moderator has a role.  The Panel is there to talk and present their opinion.  Don't open the floor for questions from the get go - instead you should get through the key points that you wanted to raise and note where the people with questions are and inform them politely you'll be getting back to them.

It's not about them.  Yet.  I like to try to run a 50/50, 60/40 rule on taking audience questions - unless the panel is dying a horrible death.  I also like to note down where I see hands and when I see them - nothing hurts more than waiting for ages and seeing a person in the front row get asked before you.

Again, this is another reason for the moderator to be moderating not taking part.

Then, again, as moderator, the point of audience participation is to ask the PANEL a QUESTION.  The floor isn't really a forum for somebody who wanted to be on the panel to give a 5/10/15 minute opinion statement, sing a Filk song or similar.  Unless the person is making a seriously good point, don't let them.  You are there to be tough.

The point of the Panel is for the panel to have discourse on the topic at hand.

It's also another reason why you need to have a means for participants to contact eachother prior to the con, and also a well run Green Room where they can confirm the roles and plan things - there is NOTHING worse than turning up at a panel item completely dry and spending the first 10 minutes working out what the topic means...

But THAT is a whole other post...