If You Threw a Party, Invited Everyone You Knew
Captain Jack, you look fantastic: Minneapolis, ConVergence 2010
I hadn't brought it up here beforehand, and I didn't even mention it to too many people otherwise, but I semi-impulsively decided to attend ConVergence in the Twin Cities this year. I'd heard many, many stories over the years (from locals and others) about how awesome it was, so I decided I should check out this con for myself.
The con is definitely well-organised. More than any other con I've been to (even, and perhaps especially, larger ones), ConVergence gave off an aura of having its act together. From the great idea of having a half-hour break built in between programming panels, to the panels themselves, to the greater idea of free food and coffee stations, to the two floors of consuites all centred around the hotel pool, you always had the sense that everyone knew exactly what they were doing and what they needed to do to put on the best con possible.
Speaking of those consuites, they were almost all spectacular; any one could be the highlight of another convention. The geeky side of me particularly liked the two-suite Star Trek: The Original Series option--one suite for the Prime Universe and one for the Mirror Universe--because of their dutiful attention to detail. I mean, they even had the right number of buttons on their Tantalus Field:
There was also a lot of excellent cosplay to be found, much of it based on Doctor Who, as in the picture at the top of this post. (According to my research after the fact, by the way, that is Minnesota local Bess Stuvenoxend, who posts on LiveJournal as bessyboo. I should give costuming credit where it's due. :)) There were a lot of Eleventh Doctors and Amy Ponds wandering about, and I would've liked some more old-school characters, but I guess I can't blame them too much--bowties are cool.
My personal approach to the con ended up with a heavy Doctor Who focus, too. One of the Guests of Honour was Doctor Who writer Paul Cornell, and many of the panels I went to were his panels, so that focus was perhaps inevitable. (As you can tell by his own con report, he loved the convention.) I also picked up the essay collection Chicks Dig Time Lords along with the novel The Many Hands by Dale Smith (which I'd been meaning to get ever since I met a friend of his at the Winnipeg Fringe last year).
On an even geekier front (yes, it's possible), I had a great extended discussion with professional continuity maven Dan Wallace after the Mega Panel which runs as counterprogramming to the Masquerade. (You can tell he really liked the convention as well.) We covered a lot of ground, starting with some nice compliments on the timeline site and somehow ending up at Glee, discussing (amongst other things) the advantages of online fiction resources over some "official" options, the continuity problems with shows about high school students and other series set in the "present," and the question of why television showrunners can't just buy a calendar to keep their dates straight.
All of that makes it sound like I had a wonderful time at the convention, right?
Well, not really.
To be honest, I wasn't in a very good mood going into the con, so (despite my description) I don't think I was as outgoing and sociable as I could've been. One of the main people talking up ConVergence (and still encouraging me to go again) was twinkiegirl, who was (unfortunately) not able to go this year, and (despite all the local stories) I encountered very few Winnipeggers or other people I knew there. All of that left me a little adrift after my own plans had been finalised, and I feel like I never got a good handle on it so I could shift solidly into Meeting New People Mode. :/ That's not the con's fault or anyone else's fault, but just a reflection of my own attitude and approach at the time.
ConVergence also has a reputation as a real hard-partying convention...and frankly, I've seen my share of harder parties. After saving up my energies for the last night and what I anticipated would be some epic Dead Dog carousing (especially since it was the Fourth of July, my first spent in the United States), I discovered that everything had thoroughly shut down by around midnight. I later heard through the grapevine that the con is deliberately trying to "tone down" those elements which led to that reputation--which is ironic, since the con itself came into existence because of a schism with another Twin Cities con, leading to the "cool" side separating from the "serious" side.
If something just like ConVergence existed in Winnipeg, I would be all over that--it seems to combine the best aspects of the two annual conventions the city has now--but I'm not sure what I experienced really justifies flying (or even driving) down to Minneapolis every year.
After I got back from the con, I barely had time to settle in before preparing for the Winnipeg Fringe Festival and a visit from my friend Theresa...but that's a subject for a different entry.