Minicon 56 Report
Apr. 10th, 2023 09:16 amThis last weekend, I attended Minicon 56. (Guests of honor: Martha Wells, Sara Felix, and Greg Ketter.)
Since the pandemic, I haven't been hanging out at cons the way I used to. I tend to drive in for my panels and then leave. Since I'm not eating at restaurants yet, either, this cuts into a lot of my social time at a con. Even so, this has been a nice way to ease back into things.
On Friday night, I had my first panel at 8:30 pm. If you're curious how this one went, I believe that Justin Grays recorded it and will have some kind of write up about it over at xyr blog: https://www.justingrays.org/my-blog. I was the moderator and if I had to rate myself on a scale of 1 (being worst) to 10 (being best), I would give myself a solid 5. I felt a bit hampered by the fact that there were five panelists and three microphones. The microphones were also, for some reason, taped down to the floor and, thus, their cords could only be moved a few inches in any direction. I tried to mitigate this problem of three people sharing one mic, by sitting on the "wrong" side of the table. I found that while that worked for panelist wrangling, it did nothing for being able to track/sense audience response.
Plus, not gonna lie, I'm not at my best after 7 pm. I am a very early-to-bedder.
All those excuses aside, I think the panel went OKAY. I may have started us off on the wrong foot by not taking some time at the very beginning to define parameters and general terms. We were using robots, androids, machine learning, and AI all rather interchangeably. At least one audience member felt the need to call us out on that near the end, and, honestly, that's on me. I also was far less interested, personally, in REAL LIFE artificial intelligence (or machine-learning) than I was in fictional representations. If I'd been a bit more on top of things, I would have been clear that was what I, personally, wanted to talk about and what I'd be directing most of the conversation towards.
I do think that, substantively, by the end, it was an interesting discussion.
I hung out in the panel room with![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
naomikritzer and Justin for awhile talking about menopause, being back at cons after a long hiatus, and life in general. I like them both a lot and, had it not already been deeply past my bedtime, I could have hung out a lot longer.
Saturday morning I was initially slotted to be part of the author smorgasbord readings, but ended up needing to cancel. ( Content Warning: discussion of stillbirth from 20 years ago )
So that was a rough way to start the second day of con, but time well spent.
My next panel of the weekend was at 1pm, so I stayed and had lunch with Shawn, and then headed out to the con. As a random note, had great parking all weekend. I was always able to find a first tier spot. The lot was always decently full, but it seemed that whenever I need one, a spot appeared!
My one o'clock was Humor in SF and, technically, Eleanor Arnason was the moderator, but, since I felt I had less to say on the subject than she did, I took over moderating by asking all the questions and generally making sure that the panelists all got a chance to answer. Because of this we kind of dug a little deep and tried to tackle the question of what makes humor work? Generally a fun panel, though.
My second panel followed directly on that one and it was GLBTQIA+ representation in the media and that one got... I don't know a person could call it derailed, but we ended up down the rabbit hole of What The F*ck is Up With Publishers These Days and honestly that discussion is always depressing, but it's also really clear that the pendulum is swinging again towards queer book burning and loss of representation. So, while the conversation was good and necessary, the mood was low.
I went home after that mostly because, given our morning, I didn't want to be away from Shawn for too long.
Sunday was my longest day at the con and, of course, I arrived for my 10 am panel to a parking lot already clearing out. I tried to get coffee at the nearest Caribou, but even though they did not have a "Closed for Easter Sunday" sign on the door, they clearly were. The place was dark and the doors locked. Thwarted in my attempt to get extra caffeinated, I headed into con, where I promptly ran into Anton P., who is everyone's favorite guest liaison. I did not meant to complain in such a way that would activate Anton's liaison instincts, apparently, I said just the right magical words, that when I was five minutes into moderating the "Professionals Writing Fan Fiction" in walked Anton with a VERY LARGE, very welcome hot mocha for me.
If Martha Wells hadn't been speaking at that very moment, I suspect he would have been greeted with a round of applause.
This panel was by far my best. I mean, it may help that the panelists were all people (with the exception of Martha) that I knew well, and, of course, this is a subject that generally garners a lot of enthusiasm--both from the audience and the panelists. So, mostly my job as moderator was to keep the ball rolling and make sure that everyone got a chance to talk. Martha Wells has clearly been kicking around the fan fic community probably longer than most of us on that panel (Anna Waltz might be the only other contender,) but I was a relative newbie having only fully fallen into fanfic writing in 2012. To be fair to me, I was reading fan fiction longer than that, but mostly what I'd do, as a fan, was discover the Buffy or Star Wars fic I was yearning for, read it, and that was my entire interaction with the fan community. Martha sounds like she was already writing fic way back in the APA days, which is pretty impressive.
I rode high on the adrenaline of that panel (and, of course, the extra boost of caffeine, curtesy of Anton) and so I spent the several hours between that panel and my last one at 2:30 pm hanging out at the con, mostly with Naomi, but then I was joined by a bunch of other folks in the Green Room.
The final panel I was on was called the "Power of Play" and suffered very greatly for being scheduled during straggler con. Most people were cleared out by the time we were starting up, including the art show and the dealer's room. The only people left, I think, were the fabric swap folks. But, despite low attendance and end-of-con energy, I think the discussion went okay. We had a very broad definition of play, actually, that meant we could talk about all sorts of fun things including "weird road trips" as play, and "I threw myself a divorce party" as play. One of the audience members introduced me to the idea of "hacker spaces," which is apparently an anarchist answer to "maker spaces," many of which are project/build oriented and have some kind of sponsored hierarchy, like a library staff, etc. Hacker spaces apparently don't require that you end up with a finished THING, but just that you go and mess around with things, which sounds very fun, indeed. We, of course, also talked about the lasting power of role-playing games and other games adults are allowed as play.
I would say that, for me, it was a good con.
I'm looking forward to, at some point, being comfortable enough to go out to eat with people again, etc., but, in the meantime, this was probably the closest I've come in a long time to feeling like the pre-isolation part of the pandemic times.
I had been expecting to run into more people that I knew--at least two of my current students were supposedly in attendance--but I think the fact that Saturday was my least present day contributed to that.
How was your weekend? Did those of you who celebrate Easter have a good one? Do I know anyone celebrating Ramadan? Or, perhaps, Death of Margaret Thatcher day? I understand that Passover is still happening, and many of you are in the throes of that, so how is that going?
Since the pandemic, I haven't been hanging out at cons the way I used to. I tend to drive in for my panels and then leave. Since I'm not eating at restaurants yet, either, this cuts into a lot of my social time at a con. Even so, this has been a nice way to ease back into things.
On Friday night, I had my first panel at 8:30 pm. If you're curious how this one went, I believe that Justin Grays recorded it and will have some kind of write up about it over at xyr blog: https://www.justingrays.org/my-blog. I was the moderator and if I had to rate myself on a scale of 1 (being worst) to 10 (being best), I would give myself a solid 5. I felt a bit hampered by the fact that there were five panelists and three microphones. The microphones were also, for some reason, taped down to the floor and, thus, their cords could only be moved a few inches in any direction. I tried to mitigate this problem of three people sharing one mic, by sitting on the "wrong" side of the table. I found that while that worked for panelist wrangling, it did nothing for being able to track/sense audience response.
Plus, not gonna lie, I'm not at my best after 7 pm. I am a very early-to-bedder.
All those excuses aside, I think the panel went OKAY. I may have started us off on the wrong foot by not taking some time at the very beginning to define parameters and general terms. We were using robots, androids, machine learning, and AI all rather interchangeably. At least one audience member felt the need to call us out on that near the end, and, honestly, that's on me. I also was far less interested, personally, in REAL LIFE artificial intelligence (or machine-learning) than I was in fictional representations. If I'd been a bit more on top of things, I would have been clear that was what I, personally, wanted to talk about and what I'd be directing most of the conversation towards.
I do think that, substantively, by the end, it was an interesting discussion.
I hung out in the panel room with
naomikritzer and Justin for awhile talking about menopause, being back at cons after a long hiatus, and life in general. I like them both a lot and, had it not already been deeply past my bedtime, I could have hung out a lot longer.Saturday morning I was initially slotted to be part of the author smorgasbord readings, but ended up needing to cancel. ( Content Warning: discussion of stillbirth from 20 years ago )
So that was a rough way to start the second day of con, but time well spent.
My next panel of the weekend was at 1pm, so I stayed and had lunch with Shawn, and then headed out to the con. As a random note, had great parking all weekend. I was always able to find a first tier spot. The lot was always decently full, but it seemed that whenever I need one, a spot appeared!
My one o'clock was Humor in SF and, technically, Eleanor Arnason was the moderator, but, since I felt I had less to say on the subject than she did, I took over moderating by asking all the questions and generally making sure that the panelists all got a chance to answer. Because of this we kind of dug a little deep and tried to tackle the question of what makes humor work? Generally a fun panel, though.
My second panel followed directly on that one and it was GLBTQIA+ representation in the media and that one got... I don't know a person could call it derailed, but we ended up down the rabbit hole of What The F*ck is Up With Publishers These Days and honestly that discussion is always depressing, but it's also really clear that the pendulum is swinging again towards queer book burning and loss of representation. So, while the conversation was good and necessary, the mood was low.
I went home after that mostly because, given our morning, I didn't want to be away from Shawn for too long.
Sunday was my longest day at the con and, of course, I arrived for my 10 am panel to a parking lot already clearing out. I tried to get coffee at the nearest Caribou, but even though they did not have a "Closed for Easter Sunday" sign on the door, they clearly were. The place was dark and the doors locked. Thwarted in my attempt to get extra caffeinated, I headed into con, where I promptly ran into Anton P., who is everyone's favorite guest liaison. I did not meant to complain in such a way that would activate Anton's liaison instincts, apparently, I said just the right magical words, that when I was five minutes into moderating the "Professionals Writing Fan Fiction" in walked Anton with a VERY LARGE, very welcome hot mocha for me.
If Martha Wells hadn't been speaking at that very moment, I suspect he would have been greeted with a round of applause.
This panel was by far my best. I mean, it may help that the panelists were all people (with the exception of Martha) that I knew well, and, of course, this is a subject that generally garners a lot of enthusiasm--both from the audience and the panelists. So, mostly my job as moderator was to keep the ball rolling and make sure that everyone got a chance to talk. Martha Wells has clearly been kicking around the fan fic community probably longer than most of us on that panel (Anna Waltz might be the only other contender,) but I was a relative newbie having only fully fallen into fanfic writing in 2012. To be fair to me, I was reading fan fiction longer than that, but mostly what I'd do, as a fan, was discover the Buffy or Star Wars fic I was yearning for, read it, and that was my entire interaction with the fan community. Martha sounds like she was already writing fic way back in the APA days, which is pretty impressive.
I rode high on the adrenaline of that panel (and, of course, the extra boost of caffeine, curtesy of Anton) and so I spent the several hours between that panel and my last one at 2:30 pm hanging out at the con, mostly with Naomi, but then I was joined by a bunch of other folks in the Green Room.
The final panel I was on was called the "Power of Play" and suffered very greatly for being scheduled during straggler con. Most people were cleared out by the time we were starting up, including the art show and the dealer's room. The only people left, I think, were the fabric swap folks. But, despite low attendance and end-of-con energy, I think the discussion went okay. We had a very broad definition of play, actually, that meant we could talk about all sorts of fun things including "weird road trips" as play, and "I threw myself a divorce party" as play. One of the audience members introduced me to the idea of "hacker spaces," which is apparently an anarchist answer to "maker spaces," many of which are project/build oriented and have some kind of sponsored hierarchy, like a library staff, etc. Hacker spaces apparently don't require that you end up with a finished THING, but just that you go and mess around with things, which sounds very fun, indeed. We, of course, also talked about the lasting power of role-playing games and other games adults are allowed as play.
I would say that, for me, it was a good con.
I'm looking forward to, at some point, being comfortable enough to go out to eat with people again, etc., but, in the meantime, this was probably the closest I've come in a long time to feeling like the pre-isolation part of the pandemic times.
I had been expecting to run into more people that I knew--at least two of my current students were supposedly in attendance--but I think the fact that Saturday was my least present day contributed to that.
How was your weekend? Did those of you who celebrate Easter have a good one? Do I know anyone celebrating Ramadan? Or, perhaps, Death of Margaret Thatcher day? I understand that Passover is still happening, and many of you are in the throes of that, so how is that going?