Day in the Life of an Idiot

 I had two panels yesterday. I moderated "The Immersive Possibilities of Horror Podcasts" and was on "Everything We Love (a Little or a Lot) about Fan Fiction."

One of these was a disaster. Can you guess which one?

No! The one I moderated went smashingly!  I had a brief moment of panic when I showed up to the panel at the proscribed twenty minutes ahead of time and it was just me and Jennifer Brozak. Jennifer kindly reassured me that, worse case scenario, we could just squee about the various horror audio dramas that we love (which, while I was not prepared for that, I agreed would probably work out fine.) Then another panelist showed up--one who had not shared his e-mail, so once he got everything working, I briefed him on the proposed agenda, my moderating style (hoping for freeform, but, because this was online, might nudge who to go next if no one seems sure who should). Then, when it was still just us three ten minutes to, I sent out a follow-up email saying, "Hey, please log-on if you haven't already. We're about to start!" I did this because Jennifer had been having a very hard time with the time zone calculations and missed a number of panels, including one she was meant to moderate. At any rate, the nudge worked! It prompted a fourth panelist to show up. We went live with the four of us, but not even before introductions were finished, our final panelist came on, profusely apologizing. They were in California and had nearly overslept. 

But, after that, we filled our time perfectly. The questions and answers went well, I think, and, because I had listened to everyone's podcast at least a little, I was able to speak directly to some of the kinds of audio work they did (and remind audience where to find the various shows). I kept a close eye on the time. In fact, I had everyone wrap up so fast that we ended up just shouting recs at the end, which was kind of adorable--at least to me.

It had, I think, the perfect combination of "these people are clearly knowledgeable about their work" and "also real people."

The disaster panel was "Everything We Love (a Little or a Lot) about Fan Fiction." 

I am not going to name names here, but this year's WorldCON seems to have an overarching theme of "there are some Big Names who think the rules don't apply to them." The person on this panel was not as big a name as GRRM, but they were the person on the panel that it's likely most of the audience had heard of, in terms of books sold, current-ness of publications, etc.

But, so, I showed up, as is requested in all of the materials sent out to panelists, at LEAST twenty minutes early. The reason for that is so, like with one of my panelist on the podcast panel, all technical difficulties can be ironed out before the broadcast goes live onto RingCentral. In the case of my previous panel, it took the second panelist a good ten minutes to fully connect properly. He had try something, have it continue to not work, and then totally reboot his entire computer, etc., before it all sorted itself out. He showed up in plenty of time, however. Which is good, because once things go live, the technical support person really has no way to talk to the panelist in trouble, except through the private chat (which you can only see, if you're logged in correctly) or via email. 

But, so, back to the fanfic panel...

When I come on, the technical support person asks me if I've done a panel like this before. I assume (correctly) that what she means is, "Have you used Steamyard yet at the con?" I say, yes, in fact, I just came off a Steamyard panel that I moderated. She asks if I had any technical issues during that panel, and I say, I did not, one of our panelist did, but it was all sorted before we went live, thank you all for your amazing work (<--like you do.)

Big Name swans onto the panel five minutes ahead of launch. The tech assistant who is still on the screen at this point asks very nicely to Big Name, whether or not they've done this kind of online panel before. They fully misinterpret the question and seem vaguely insulted to be asked, as there is a hair toss and, "This ain't my first online con rodeo."

WHELP. 

Maybe you spoke too soon, Big Name.

Because almost immediately Big Name starts having technical problems. They seemed to kind of have it working, we go live, but then--of f*cking COURSE--proceeded THOUGHOUT THE ENTIRE PANEL pop in an out or be distractedly mouthing swears, etc., etc. 

We tried to carry on?

However, any time we'd start to get a thought going, Big Name would be there with an "Ah! I'm back!" seize a few seconds, and then, inevitably, drop back off. Or worse, come on and bring with them this terrible beeping sound that caused at least one of the other panelist to have to remove their headphones (as I think they were particularly noise-sensitive and so the sound likely physically hurt them.) 

You know how this could have been solved, Big Name?

BY ATTENDING THE ONLINE TRAINING SESSION LIKE THE REST OF US.

I lost sleep in order to go to one of these. I got the time wrong and ended up staying up late only to realize that 2 am in Glasgow Monday, was actually a time in my time zone on SUNDAY--so I'd missed the training by a full day. Apparently, a lot of other people made this mistake, and so Glasgow kindly sent out another set of options for training. I carefully did the calculations for that and attended just so someone could walk me through how it would work and to get tips like, "Steamyard really plays best with Chrome, so if you don't have it, please consider temporarily installing it," etc., etc. 

And, yeah, one of the things they "trained us" on was Zoom, which many people are sure they're fully comfortable with, but I knew that Zoom was only for the hybrid panels and every single one one of these proprietary online meeting spaces, like Steamyard, has some kind of special foible, so I was there to learn about Steamyard... and, yeah, as it happens, it's also simple enough, but I'm still glad I went. I feel that not only did my attendance show respect to the tech folks, but it also gave me a chance to to listen to all of their specialized knowledge and to be able to ask question directly about how hybrids would function, what was good to know about Steamyard and all of that.  I also just, personally, feel less nervous knowing that I've done all I can to make sure my end of the con goes smoothly. 

Maybe Big Name really is all that busy and couldn't make any of the half-dozen training sessions. Okay, then. SHOW UP AHEAD OF THE PANEL WHEN YOU WERE ASKED TO. They built in thirty full minutes between online sessions in a single room so that problems like this could be fixed well-ahead of going live. 

I don't know who Big Name is blaming at the end of the day, but I'm sure if they are complaining it's in the vein of, "The tech side of WorldCON was a mess! Why do these cons always have to have a different system for their online things!!??" like this isn't ENTIRELY their fault. 

Fill out the form if you want to be on programming, George.

Go to the tech sessions, if you want your online experience to be smooth, Other Big Name.

It's not that hard, people. In fact, it's the LEAST you can do.