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How to be not on a panel
At Olympus, I was speaking to one person who was attending his first Eastercon. He was having a great time, the programme was fabulous and he found the panels really interesting and engaging --- "but I don't get the audience," he said. "There are some people who seem to think that there's no-one in the room but them and the panel."
True. And it's ( Read more... ) -
On broadening the fanbase
The thoroughly-excellent Minorities panel at Olympus raised some very good points which are, I believe, relevant to a number of problems that beset Eastercons.
Ever since I've been going to Eastercons, there have been panels along the lines of "How do we get more young fans coming to Eastercon?" or "Where are the conrunners of the future going to ( Read more... ) -
Redemption '11: overall
I had a great time at Redemption '11. I ran some panels, I sat in the back for some other panels. I planned to go to yet more panels, then changed my mind and went to different ones instead, or had food, or blobbed in the hotel room or hung out in the bar with friends…
…basically, I went to the con, which is a little different from my experience for ( Read more... ) -
Book Panels: Beware of the Shoggoths
This is a panel that i_smell_shite and iainjcoleman proposed. Alas, they couldn't make it to the con, so I had to grill iainjcoleman for useful information before the con, and then pass off all his wise insights as my own. I don't think anyone noticed...
I'd done a bunch of reading beforehand (a number of Lovecraft's stories are available online; I'd gone for downloading ( Read more... ) -
Book panels: Bump in the Night
This was a bonus panel: we couldn't decide which topics to do, so we added this one as a late-night extra (well, of course a panel on ghost stories has to be late at night).
I had to do quite a bit of research for this one, given that ghost stories are really not my genre, and on reflection, I couldn't really think of a single one beyond the obvious ( Read more... ) -
Book Panels: Vampires and Werewolves
This was one of the panels I'd been dreading, because I really didn't know that much about the genre, but it turns out to be huge. I'd done some digging around in advance: I knew that Kelly Armstrong wrote werewolf novels like Bitten, so I looked that up on Amazon, and clicked on the "Customers also bought.." link. And again. And again. And again. ( Read more... ) -
Book panels: SF Shorts
This seemed to go pretty well. Certainly, sending out a reading list in advance seemed to have been a good idea, so I think we'll be doing that again next time*. Big thanks to altariel for finding all the on-line texts.
We were joined by communicator for her first time on the book thread, and a very welcome addition she was too. She brought a different viewpoint, ( Read more... ) -
Redemption '11: The Panel panel
This year, I'm breaking the con report up a little, so that I can give more feedback on the panels I ran. First up was the How to run a panel panel. Which isn't really a panel, of course - it's me ranting at people giving helpful advice.
There were good things and bad things. The main bad thing, of course, is that iainjcoleman couldn't be at the con, so the ( Read more... ) -
Ghost stories
One of the panels at Redemption '11 is on ghost stories: From A Christmas Carol to campfire tales, ghost stories are an enduring genre. We look at what's great, old and new.In the interests of doing some research, and possibly establishing some common ground, I took a note of the contents of an anthology of classic ghost stories, and then went ( Read more... ) -
SF shorts
One of the panels in the up-coming Redemption '11 is on SF shorts: The 'short form' has a revered position in SF history, in magazines and anthologies. We look back at our favorites, and consider why they work so well. Come share the love.Una recently had a discussion relating to good SF short stories, and in the process, she collected quite a good ( Read more... )