Wiscon 37 Ends: May 27, 2013
Last day at Wiscon 37.
I made it to the panel on Tumblr, which was interesting because it's a platform I haven't used. What I gathered: The platform deliberately discourages discussion, but discussions happen anyway; it's better to post pictures than links, because links get truncated; it's dominated by teens, 14-18, and as a result has a lot of brashness; there's a lot of cute animal pictures and porn. (As someone there said, it's like "Corgi, corgi, hedgehog, porn.") It's apparently pretty compelling; one panelist described it as a huge time-suck. I wasn't entirely clear why it's better than Pinterest/ Facebook/ Twitter.
The hotel wasn't giving late checkouts, so I needed to be out of my room by noon. I checked my email one last time before shutting down my computer - and found a message from United. My 7.30 p.m. flight to Chicago was going to be an hour late, which meant that I'd miss my connection. The hotel reception found me a phone number for United (I am embarrassed to admit my phone is Not Smart) and I called them on my plain-vanilla cellphone. It seemed they could give me an earlier flight... no, wait, that was an hour late too and would also be problematic. "It looks like Chicago is a problem," said the agent, and she routed me via Denver on another 7.30 flight.
I didn't go to the sign-out. The whole airline-wrangling thing broke the mood for me. Instead, after lunch I went to the Post Mortem, which gave me an even better appreciation for all the organization that goes into making Wiscon happen. It's really tremendous. The only real complaint was that most parties ran out of beer by 11.30 p.m. on Sunday night, which really depends on the party-givers. (Last year, the problem was the opposite - there was a lot of alcohol left over that had to be removed during the move-out.)
I had dinner at the airport, an unexceptional sandwich... but the place had these signs on a side wall. They'd have been fun any time, but especially after Wiscon...
Caught my flight, slept on the plane, and woke to an announcement that we'd be landing about 20-25 minutes late. Ouch. My transit time at Denver was about 50 minutes, and I expected to miss the flight. But that flight was about an hour late, too, so it all worked out. Got home well after midnight, which was fine.
I made it to the panel on Tumblr, which was interesting because it's a platform I haven't used. What I gathered: The platform deliberately discourages discussion, but discussions happen anyway; it's better to post pictures than links, because links get truncated; it's dominated by teens, 14-18, and as a result has a lot of brashness; there's a lot of cute animal pictures and porn. (As someone there said, it's like "Corgi, corgi, hedgehog, porn.") It's apparently pretty compelling; one panelist described it as a huge time-suck. I wasn't entirely clear why it's better than Pinterest/ Facebook/ Twitter.
The hotel wasn't giving late checkouts, so I needed to be out of my room by noon. I checked my email one last time before shutting down my computer - and found a message from United. My 7.30 p.m. flight to Chicago was going to be an hour late, which meant that I'd miss my connection. The hotel reception found me a phone number for United (I am embarrassed to admit my phone is Not Smart) and I called them on my plain-vanilla cellphone. It seemed they could give me an earlier flight... no, wait, that was an hour late too and would also be problematic. "It looks like Chicago is a problem," said the agent, and she routed me via Denver on another 7.30 flight.
I didn't go to the sign-out. The whole airline-wrangling thing broke the mood for me. Instead, after lunch I went to the Post Mortem, which gave me an even better appreciation for all the organization that goes into making Wiscon happen. It's really tremendous. The only real complaint was that most parties ran out of beer by 11.30 p.m. on Sunday night, which really depends on the party-givers. (Last year, the problem was the opposite - there was a lot of alcohol left over that had to be removed during the move-out.)
I had dinner at the airport, an unexceptional sandwich... but the place had these signs on a side wall. They'd have been fun any time, but especially after Wiscon...
Caught my flight, slept on the plane, and woke to an announcement that we'd be landing about 20-25 minutes late. Ouch. My transit time at Denver was about 50 minutes, and I expected to miss the flight. But that flight was about an hour late, too, so it all worked out. Got home well after midnight, which was fine.