Ancient history -- WHC 2007

[zhai]

In 2007 I attended World Horror Con with thehollowbox, and for all of the sessions we made it to, I kept pretty extensive notes. I'd gone with the intention of doing a bit of an experiment -- a news-style writeup of the sessions, similar to conference writeups I've done for Gamasutra. There was nothing like this available for spec fic conventions, as far as I

Comments

[elenuial]

This is awesome. It sucks that your venue crapped out on you and you weren't able to place it otherwise.

[zhai]

Your comment of appreciation is enough for me! Like I said, I just wanted the information out there. Venues will be venues. :) I'm a little miffed that it couldn't be timely, but at least it's on record. If there's enough appreciation for this kind of thing I did, way back then, consider setting up an entire website for these kinds of reports. The only trick would be finding people who are as obsessive as I am about accurate quotations. I've been misquoted before, and it is ontologically horrifying.

[elenuial]

Not everyone is inclined to be a journalist, or archivist. :)

What did you do to ensure that your quotes were accurate? I imagine sound recording equipment would have been tedious, but in my experience scribbling cogently and quickly enough to get decent quotations can sometimes interefere with my ability to appreciate what's being said.

I imagine enough people would appreciate this sort of thing. Although there's a lot of anecdotal information scattered all over the internet, having something that at least attempts to be more objective would be a boon to a lot of people, I think.

I've been misquoted before, and it is ontologically horrifying.

So there's gotta be an interesting story there. :)

[zhai]

True enough! For some reason I actually enjoy this kind of journalism

[kristajhl]

Wow, amazing post!
Many thanks!

I hope you're keeping a file of your notes, because even though you didn't find a venue for this particular piece, you might very well soon have enough info to put together a handy-dandy guidebook/writer's aid sf book, that wouldn't be too dated...just a thought...seems like you could pull that off in your sleep, get permission from the right people, put together a snazzy chapbook or something, and might make a few pennies. Might be the last thing you're interested in, of course. Might feel like death. In which case, don't.

But a tremendous amount of info, thanks for your generosity!

[kristajhl]

aha, just read through your comments, see you're actually considering a website. very cool!

[zhai]

Thanks for your comments! Always great to hear from you. :)

Yeah, this was something I talked about with pantlessjohnny last year, actually. Even kicked around ideas for a website name -- Luminiere was prevailing at the time.

I suspect that what's most likely to happen is that I am going to eventually/soonish get financial support for the item-based speculative fiction magazine model (donation model distributed by stories, so you are donating directly to the author whose story you like), and I would offer these con reports as a supplemental publicity effort for the site.

Very coincidentally, I was just talking to the folk at BookSurge, though, and their POD model and Amazon affiliation is extremely interesting. I could see putting something together for them -- and a collection of "harvests" from elders in the field is something I could actually see doing with this stuff. Wheels turning! Thanks for the idea!

[kristajhl]

Turn, wheels, turn!

You go get 'em! People will be clamoring for your info (& your excellent boots too!)!

[drspooky]

Hi there! I see that you added me (and have a name that fits into an ongoing pattern in my life). Are you someone I know?

[zhai]

Pattern, eh? :)

I went through and added a few people recently that were related to video games -- I don't think we've met, but I saw your posts on gamedevelopers and that you are with Bethesda. I don't think that we've actually met, but I think we've been in the same places (conventions, etc) so it's possible. I usually leave comments for people before adding them, but recently I went through and mass-added some gamedevelopers, so my apologies for not contacting you first. For some archival reasons I was going back through and looking at the commentary that popped up on the community in 2004 following my ea_spouse post, and I think that's where I saw you.

[drspooky]

Heh. Wow. I went back and looked at that community. I'd completely forgotten about the stuff that I wrote there. It's amazing the wrath that being locked in a crunch can bring. Not that my ideas have changed, but a healthy paycheck and reasonable work hours do soothe the soul.

Anyway, hi! I wouldn't except much game related fun in my LJ. It's mostly me whining for the last year about my divorce, but you're welcome to read it. :)

[zhai]

Aha -- yes, I remember now, you were posting over there even about union organization when all of that was going down, which also caught my eye. The union issue is one that has been bubbling for quite awhile. And yeah, it is radically impacted by your exact situation, and the state has to be pretty dire for generally libertarian anti-establishment game developers to begin talking about unionization. Crunch will do that to you.

And hello. :) We have more in common with that, then, too. Most of my posts are actually public, but yeah, the personal stuff stays behind friend-lock. Thanks for adding me! I have a friend who isn't on LJ anymore but is currently working for Emergent and would be absolutely green with envy that you worked on Morrowind and are still with Bethesda. Maryland is a very interesting hub for games these days...

[hildebabble]

See, that's pretty cool. A shame this didn't get picked up. It'd be great publicity for the con(s).

Do you do podcasts? (General question; I noticed you said you didn't do audio recording for this.)

[zhai]

It being publicity for cons is why large-scale professional cons like GDC -- which charge well over $1000 for regular conference passes -- ship the press in there like crazy for free and treat them like rockstars. That and the amount of record that goes on as a result of having so many note-takers there who are generally reporting live from the events.

I have yet to embark upon podcasting. boonofdoom has expressed interest (to the point of acquiring equipment) in doing these for the Homeless Moon, and I think we've talked about making records of our "beer cooler" get-togethers at TNEO, but it hasn't come together yet. I like the idea of podcasts, though, especially where they can be these little special-interest radio shows. And I love, for instance, that Goblin Fruit provides audio readings of several of their poems in each issue.

[hildebabble]

$1000 pass.

I can still see it when I shut my eyes.

It's pathetic but I've never listened to a podcast, neo-Luddite that I am. But yeah, total niche market-friendly. A buddy of mine, he and his wife do a weekly cosplay podcast and I think they're already up to something like a thousand listeners.

[zhai]

Yeah, GDC passes are crazily overpriced. What's perhaps crazier is that even at that price, it's still worth it to go, or at least it has been until recent years when for some reason the programming has started to fall off in quality.

It's very frightening how cosplay has grown in the last 4 years. I wonder what it is. Glad your friends are profiting off of it, though.

[glamberson]

Your sense of total recall is amazing. My chief memory from that "Building a Better Monster" panel was when someone asked us what our least favorite recent monsters were,a nd I said, "The mutants in THE HILLS HAVE EYES remake," and Mike McCarty said, "Thank you." We're friends now...

[zhai]

Hello! Friends is better than getting in trouble for Jay leaving you comments using my account because I leave myself logged on at his place! ;)

I think it comes down to my going into those sessions with the intent to do a report like this. My notes are pretty much exactly what you see, written in a kind of shorthand, with exact quotes written out entirely. The monster panel was great -- I'd been looking forward to it because I am all about the critters.

But yeah -- maybe it's an indication of what is usually taken away from cons compared to the actual amount of thought and wisdom that goes on there, and then vanishes into the entropy of distributed human memory...