Philcon: A Triumphant Return
We spent a fun weekend up at Philcon. This was our first visit in several years, having missed the previous three years due to work, family, and quartercon, respectively. The new hotel was pretty nice, other than an HVAC system that made the floor just inside the door of the filk room vibrate, a Sunday morning mundane event with too-loud bass booming across the lobby, and the fact they couldn't wait one more week to throw on the Christmas muzak. But all those were minor gripes, really. And the humming floor was kind of amusing, especially after I announced, "Hey, the floor is vibrating" to the entire filk room. Which of course meant a couple of folks had to verify my observation (*grin*).
I was on two programs, the "To Engineer Is Human" panel and a half-hour concert set. The panel ended up mainly being a discussion of failure and how engineers learn from it. And that primarily from a software/hardware perspective, since my three fellow panelists (and most of the audience, not surprisingly) were electrical engineers or programmers. Also, very talkative panelists (including the moderator), so hard for me to get a comment in edgewise.
The concert was decently attended (double-digit audience), despite being scheduled against the Chromatics' kids concert. And, given that I was told about my programming assignments the Sunday before the con, I managed to pull off a set I was fairly happy with. The recent recording session helped, since I did one of the songs we recorded and one I was prepared to do. The set list was:
Ramble Wood
Builder's Song
Swansong (by persephone_il)
Healthy Thinking
City By The Lake
Sedona
There was a cute moment as I was introducing "Sedona". A boy and girl in faerie costumes came in and sat down in the front row (presumably for the next panel). As part of my introduction I mentioned that it was ten years since the three West Coast trips and respective cons (Baycon, Coppercon, and Orycon) that inspired "Sedona" in the first place. As soon as I mentioned Orycon, the girl enthusiastically raised her hand. I acknowledged her, and she said, "I grew up in Portland. We used to go to Orycon." I answered, with a grin, "Cool. The second verse is for you then."
Got to see (and in most cases catch up with) lots of folks I haven't seen in a while, including Mike & Marli, donnad and Gunther, terriwells, Carole Parker (who I don't usually expect to see on this coast) and howmandu. Managed to escape from Larry Smith's table with only three books. Or four, if you count the two-books-in-one omnibus of the first two John Zakour/Larry Ganem books The Plutonium Blonde and The Doomsday Brunette which I picked up based on cadhla's reviews.
Also caught two interesting panels titled "O NOES teh intertubes R killin ur litracy!!!1" and "My College Major and SF...How our Outside Interests Shape the SF We Like", both of which had starmalachite as one of the panelists. For the former, I think it was concluded that any decline in literacy isn't the Internet's fault. It's mostly the decline in education and educational opportunities--lack of teachers, closing libraries. I of course brought up the influences of my engineering background on both my reading choices (like Bujold's Falling Free or Flynn's Firestar) and my songwriting.
Filking was decent, about the size of a large housefilk (12-15 folks give or take). Pretty relaxed, plenty of chances for folks to get songs in, and enough strong contributions from maugorn, sodyera, madfilkentist, thnidu and me to keep the energy flowing. Got to see good concert sets from maugorn and madfilkentist.
Masquerade was small (I think only nine entries, maybe 11) but some good stuff including Carole's "Silk Moth", Kim Kindya's "Vogue" (she came out in a gorgeous violet-patterned 18th century dress, moving to the Madonna song) and two kids doing a recreation based on "The Humans Are Dead" from "Flight of the Conchords". The presentations were followed by a rocking set from The Chromatics including several new songs.
Bedtime is creeping up, so I'd better leave stop, though I'm sure I'm missing a few details worth reporting. But gotta catch up on sleep with Darkover looming!
I was on two programs, the "To Engineer Is Human" panel and a half-hour concert set. The panel ended up mainly being a discussion of failure and how engineers learn from it. And that primarily from a software/hardware perspective, since my three fellow panelists (and most of the audience, not surprisingly) were electrical engineers or programmers. Also, very talkative panelists (including the moderator), so hard for me to get a comment in edgewise.
The concert was decently attended (double-digit audience), despite being scheduled against the Chromatics' kids concert. And, given that I was told about my programming assignments the Sunday before the con, I managed to pull off a set I was fairly happy with. The recent recording session helped, since I did one of the songs we recorded and one I was prepared to do. The set list was:
Ramble Wood
Builder's Song
Swansong (by persephone_il)
Healthy Thinking
City By The Lake
Sedona
There was a cute moment as I was introducing "Sedona". A boy and girl in faerie costumes came in and sat down in the front row (presumably for the next panel). As part of my introduction I mentioned that it was ten years since the three West Coast trips and respective cons (Baycon, Coppercon, and Orycon) that inspired "Sedona" in the first place. As soon as I mentioned Orycon, the girl enthusiastically raised her hand. I acknowledged her, and she said, "I grew up in Portland. We used to go to Orycon." I answered, with a grin, "Cool. The second verse is for you then."
Got to see (and in most cases catch up with) lots of folks I haven't seen in a while, including Mike & Marli, donnad and Gunther, terriwells, Carole Parker (who I don't usually expect to see on this coast) and howmandu. Managed to escape from Larry Smith's table with only three books. Or four, if you count the two-books-in-one omnibus of the first two John Zakour/Larry Ganem books The Plutonium Blonde and The Doomsday Brunette which I picked up based on cadhla's reviews.
Also caught two interesting panels titled "O NOES teh intertubes R killin ur litracy!!!1" and "My College Major and SF...How our Outside Interests Shape the SF We Like", both of which had starmalachite as one of the panelists. For the former, I think it was concluded that any decline in literacy isn't the Internet's fault. It's mostly the decline in education and educational opportunities--lack of teachers, closing libraries. I of course brought up the influences of my engineering background on both my reading choices (like Bujold's Falling Free or Flynn's Firestar) and my songwriting.
Filking was decent, about the size of a large housefilk (12-15 folks give or take). Pretty relaxed, plenty of chances for folks to get songs in, and enough strong contributions from maugorn, sodyera, madfilkentist, thnidu and me to keep the energy flowing. Got to see good concert sets from maugorn and madfilkentist.
Masquerade was small (I think only nine entries, maybe 11) but some good stuff including Carole's "Silk Moth", Kim Kindya's "Vogue" (she came out in a gorgeous violet-patterned 18th century dress, moving to the Madonna song) and two kids doing a recreation based on "The Humans Are Dead" from "Flight of the Conchords". The presentations were followed by a rocking set from The Chromatics including several new songs.
Bedtime is creeping up, so I'd better leave stop, though I'm sure I'm missing a few details worth reporting. But gotta catch up on sleep with Darkover looming!