Off-the-cuff SwanCon report
Haven't thought about this at all, just typing things in as I think of them...
I had a great time at the con. I attended lots of interesting and fun panels, caught up with some great people, co-ran a kick-ass room party, bought a few nifty items (although far fewer than usual), made a few new friends and generally ran around in a haze of excitement for several days.
Some personal highlights:
- Having everything come together so perfectly with my bid for 2013. A lot of time and preparation went into it and it was really well received. I'm very excited to now be moving away from planning a hypothetical con and into planning a real one!
- Seeing my wonderful, talented wife's art appreciated in two ways. She sold a piece in the pro art show (thanks Grahame!) and was co-winner of the Tin Duck for Best Fan Artist. Awesome!
- Running six different panels that all went beautifully. This year I was on Cranking Up the Cliche, An Appreciation for the Abysmal: Hilariously Bad Movies, 2010 in Film, Comics You Should be Reading, Lost: The End and Film Club: Inception. Most years when I've run multiple panels there's usually been one or two that didn't go as well as I'd hoped, but this year all six ran really well. Very satisfying. Particularly enjoyable were the Cliche one (I was the least confident about this one and it ended up being a blast), the Bad Movies one (overflowing hilarity... LAWWWWW?) and the Comics one (was just generally very enjoyable).
- I sold a bunch of stuff in the auction.
- I danced like a madman at the masquerade (that Sabotage/Black Dog mashup is the best).
- The 2013 bid party went really well. People liked our punch, chatted with us about our bid and generally seemed to have a fun time. I went to three other room parties throughout the convention and they were all great fun as well.
- I unexpectedly ended up on the WASFF board. This may seem to some like an odd thing to list under highlights but I'm really excited to start working closely with the board to build and improve SwanCon and the state of WA fandom in general. Plus all the people on the board are nice folks who I get along with well (hopefully this won't change!).
- The mushroom soup I had was the nicest soup of all time.
- Other program highlights: Grant's interview panel on the first night, The Pro SFX demo/info session, Vikings Are Awesome, The Disney panel (missed the last one so I was glad I could make this one), Whose Line is it Anyway?, The Awards Ceremony/Cocktail party and The 2012 Launch.
- The 2012 launch deserves a second mention. Very slick, very cool, great design work, nice video, awesome shirts and all run by what seems to be a group of enthusiastic, sensible, hard-working fans. Really looking forward to next year!
- Being singled out for kudos on two occasions for my contributions to the program. It was totally unexpected and really, really nice.
A few small gripes:
- The program seemed to be a little haphazardly put together, which led to a lot of rescheduling of panels, last-minute shifting of equipment, etc. These things do happen, and the programmer had a very limited timeframe in which to work, so definitely not condemning anyone's efforts by a long shot. But there's no denying that it was noticeable.
- The pro art show looked great, but I was seriously disappointed at how "tucked away" the fan art show was. The display boards were positioned such that you could very easily walk straight past without noticing them on the way into the market room, there was little in the way of sign-posting and the lighting was virtually non-existent. There were only 4 or 5 bids placed on works for the entire con and I can't help but feel that it was largely due to people just not noticing the work.
- The accessibility issues, while not something which ever directly affected me, were obviously a major concern. I think it's pretty clear that there needs to be a standard practice of actually giving the hotel a "trial run" with people of disability to ensure that they can get everywhere they need to get, rather than taking the hotel's word for it. I'll definitely keep this in mind when I start venue-shopping for 2013.
- The wait times for food and drink were unbelievable. This is entirely the Hyatt's bad. At one point I ordered a cocktail, waited 15 minutes, asked a waiter and was told it'd be 2 minutes, waited 10 minutes, was told that they'd actually run out of a key ingredient and had to change my order, waited another 20 minutes and finally received my beverage. The room was busy but it certainly wasn't packed. All in all, I think it took about 45 minutes for my drink to arrive and I ended up missing almost all of the panel that I had intended to go to. I also missed the start of 2012's launch after waiting an hour for my dinner to arrive.
Overall, the good definitely outweighed the bad, and while the con felt at times like some of the fine details had been overlooked, it's just such an enormous task, done by volunteers, that I'm prepared to cut them plenty of slack. The important thing is that I had a fantastic time and wasn't bored for a moment.
Well done and massive thanks to the committee for all their hard work!
I had a great time at the con. I attended lots of interesting and fun panels, caught up with some great people, co-ran a kick-ass room party, bought a few nifty items (although far fewer than usual), made a few new friends and generally ran around in a haze of excitement for several days.
Some personal highlights:
- Having everything come together so perfectly with my bid for 2013. A lot of time and preparation went into it and it was really well received. I'm very excited to now be moving away from planning a hypothetical con and into planning a real one!
- Seeing my wonderful, talented wife's art appreciated in two ways. She sold a piece in the pro art show (thanks Grahame!) and was co-winner of the Tin Duck for Best Fan Artist. Awesome!
- Running six different panels that all went beautifully. This year I was on Cranking Up the Cliche, An Appreciation for the Abysmal: Hilariously Bad Movies, 2010 in Film, Comics You Should be Reading, Lost: The End and Film Club: Inception. Most years when I've run multiple panels there's usually been one or two that didn't go as well as I'd hoped, but this year all six ran really well. Very satisfying. Particularly enjoyable were the Cliche one (I was the least confident about this one and it ended up being a blast), the Bad Movies one (overflowing hilarity... LAWWWWW?) and the Comics one (was just generally very enjoyable).
- I sold a bunch of stuff in the auction.
- I danced like a madman at the masquerade (that Sabotage/Black Dog mashup is the best).
- The 2013 bid party went really well. People liked our punch, chatted with us about our bid and generally seemed to have a fun time. I went to three other room parties throughout the convention and they were all great fun as well.
- I unexpectedly ended up on the WASFF board. This may seem to some like an odd thing to list under highlights but I'm really excited to start working closely with the board to build and improve SwanCon and the state of WA fandom in general. Plus all the people on the board are nice folks who I get along with well (hopefully this won't change!).
- The mushroom soup I had was the nicest soup of all time.
- Other program highlights: Grant's interview panel on the first night, The Pro SFX demo/info session, Vikings Are Awesome, The Disney panel (missed the last one so I was glad I could make this one), Whose Line is it Anyway?, The Awards Ceremony/Cocktail party and The 2012 Launch.
- The 2012 launch deserves a second mention. Very slick, very cool, great design work, nice video, awesome shirts and all run by what seems to be a group of enthusiastic, sensible, hard-working fans. Really looking forward to next year!
- Being singled out for kudos on two occasions for my contributions to the program. It was totally unexpected and really, really nice.
A few small gripes:
- The program seemed to be a little haphazardly put together, which led to a lot of rescheduling of panels, last-minute shifting of equipment, etc. These things do happen, and the programmer had a very limited timeframe in which to work, so definitely not condemning anyone's efforts by a long shot. But there's no denying that it was noticeable.
- The pro art show looked great, but I was seriously disappointed at how "tucked away" the fan art show was. The display boards were positioned such that you could very easily walk straight past without noticing them on the way into the market room, there was little in the way of sign-posting and the lighting was virtually non-existent. There were only 4 or 5 bids placed on works for the entire con and I can't help but feel that it was largely due to people just not noticing the work.
- The accessibility issues, while not something which ever directly affected me, were obviously a major concern. I think it's pretty clear that there needs to be a standard practice of actually giving the hotel a "trial run" with people of disability to ensure that they can get everywhere they need to get, rather than taking the hotel's word for it. I'll definitely keep this in mind when I start venue-shopping for 2013.
- The wait times for food and drink were unbelievable. This is entirely the Hyatt's bad. At one point I ordered a cocktail, waited 15 minutes, asked a waiter and was told it'd be 2 minutes, waited 10 minutes, was told that they'd actually run out of a key ingredient and had to change my order, waited another 20 minutes and finally received my beverage. The room was busy but it certainly wasn't packed. All in all, I think it took about 45 minutes for my drink to arrive and I ended up missing almost all of the panel that I had intended to go to. I also missed the start of 2012's launch after waiting an hour for my dinner to arrive.
Overall, the good definitely outweighed the bad, and while the con felt at times like some of the fine details had been overlooked, it's just such an enormous task, done by volunteers, that I'm prepared to cut them plenty of slack. The important thing is that I had a fantastic time and wasn't bored for a moment.
Well done and massive thanks to the committee for all their hard work!