The weekend officially begins
I drove back to Blacksburg in a much happier car. On the way, jsciv called and set up a meet, wherein I found that for $10 more a night I could have had a suite twice the size (not that I would have used it for much). We hit Christiansburg’s new Panera with Lucy, and talked a lot of game industry shop. Joe seems to be doing quite well for himself these days, which is great; we made hyper-flimsy plans for a Disney run out there sometime in the hazy future. (Flying. Not driving.)
Made it to the con, and picked up my Staff badge. I think I’m permanent TCon staff now… not that I mind, it’s a pleasure every year, but it amuses me nevertheless. I did not recognize tltrent at first, gomen, gomen! But I traded a lot of greetings with lots of great folk in those first minutes. I remember yubbie looking quite distracted, for reasons I would later discover…
I spent most of Friday re-learning my way around McBryde Hall on the Virginia Tech campus, location of many VTSFFC and USS McKay events. I socialized quite a bit, catching up with long-time fandom friends. In a lot of ways, Technicon for me is like getting to be 25 again, and getting to spend time with all these fun, intelligent people without being a broke, know-it-all slacker fanboy. I don’t miss that aspect of myself much!
Dwight’s Friday night dance was short and unfortunately-scheduled, turning more into an excuse to play exotic cuts really loud in a University auditorium while the iTunes Visualizer hypnotized the small crowd. nius‘s quote, “We’re rocking McBryde 100, bitches!” ended up on buttons for him and Dwight and me.
Shut down con and move to the Microtel conference room, where I snagged ursulav, Meche, and Bert for Saturday night’s panels, and finally caught up to shrewlet. First, colleenk and I got some long-awaited personal chat time – let’s not make it so long before the next one! – and then Cindy and I got a little conversation in before she had to take a guest home for the evening.
An excellent Technicon Friday! Saturday would be a bit rougher…
Tags: conventions, fandom, friends, gaming, parties, technicon, travel
I saw GRRM’s suite at the Microtel, and, damn, for one or two people, it was VERY nice.
Sorry about the dance, it was one of those ‘not sure where else I can put it, with the mixer and the building close’ issues. Suggestions on how it might have been better scheduled/located?
Suggestions on how it might have been better scheduled/located?
None at all, I’m afraid. That’s why I chose ‘unfortunately’ rather than ‘incompetently’ – I really can’t see how you could have done better with the timeline you had.
Really, all things considered, the scheduling went remarkably well. It’s just that there were a lot more things to be considered this year than in the past 🙂
TCon 25 felt kinda like one of those paint-splatter pieces, to me. We took a bunch of ideas, threw them at the weekend, and hoped it kinda worked out ok. It mostly did, but it definitely was a happening, not a particularly planned event.
Spiel went great! 🙂
Of course, all you really need to do for us is open a room and put some tables and chairs in it and say “have at” and we’ll amuse ourselves all weekend…
I was exceedingly glad for the suite, as I was able to host people on Thursday and Friday before the con, including playing games with Mom, a rare treat. After the con started it was mostly just a place to sleep with extra space between the bed and the bathroom, but I still consider it well-invested.