DragonCon!

or...The Frustration That Arises From Expecting 40,000 Socially Retarded People To Practice Acceptable Elevator Etiquette

So this past week, I learned what a moderate sized science fiction convention is like. Having only been to small cons that mainly focused on role-playing, I was really looking forward to DragonCon. It promised to be a strange and wonderful experience that would give me months of material. Not to mention that we were finally performing the Zombie Squad Disaster Awareness seminar in an environment where the audience was made up entirely of strangers. So, I was pretty excited to go.

The spousal unit, I, and a couple of friends rolled out of St. Louis around 10:30 or 11:00 after a breakfast that would put anyone into a coma (especially someone who stayed up all night making sure he wasn't forgetting to pack or prepare anything). Luckily, I derived extra energy from the extra strong Chris's Pancake House bloody mary and the many opportunities for breakfast sarcasm that arose from spotting the "mayor" of St. Louis leaving the restaurant (while our server couldn't comment on the mayor's tipping habits, his father is apparently famous for being generous). The alcohol, tomato juice, protein, and sarcasm fueled me up for the looming 9 hour drive.

After a nice drive that involved bad music, good music, a truck stop massage, a new high score on house of the dead, and a flask of scotch, we arrived in Atlanta in time to eat a greasy dinner at the Varsity Diner and crash out. We woke up early Friday morning, checked into the convention hotel, and quickly realized how overcrowded the convention actually was. It turns out that DragonCon planners had expected 20,000 attendees and were surprised when they sold 40,000 memberships.

Now, I'm a pretty capitalistic guy. I believe that if you can make some money you should. If people are buying your product, you should keep selling it to them. All that stuff is great. However, if you're dealing with a finite space and you're noticing that you are doubling the amount of people you plan on having occupy that space, you must do one of two things. You must either STOP SELLING OPPORTUNITIES TO BE IN THAT SPACE, or add more space. The con didn't seem investigate either of these options. This made navigating common areas, getting from the lobby to your room on the 19th floor, and a number of other activities more frustrating than they needed to be. In fact, there were a few times where I didn't engage in certain con activities (panels, parties, whathaveyou) simply because I knew it would be frustrating to do so. So, the overcrowding is my chief complaint.

However, there were some great opportunities to people watch and the attendees at DragonCon seemed to put a lot more effort into their costumes than at other conventions. Of course there was still the contingent of females who felt that simply putting on a set of underwear two sizes too small qualified as a costume, but there were many more costumes that showed the creativity and hard work of the people sporting them. Just the chance to see them made the trip worth it.

I attended several panels over the course of the convention. A few were on the "Writers'" track of programming. Rather than actually consisting of practical advice, they tended to turn into long drawn out discussions of the the moderator's road to success. That's annoying for people who show up to learn "Here's some good ways to deal with this problem," rather than "Here's how I got where I am." One panel on politics in science fiction (that is, incorporating politics into science fiction stories) actually left the subject of science fiction entirely behind and became a lecture on one author's views of the American political system and global politics.

However, at DragonCon you could have met and watched hilarity from the people who bring you Adult Swim. You could have seen Spike and Drusilla reunited as Juliet Landau and James Marsters cohost a panel discussion. You could have seen a Star Trek cas reunion with Gates McFadden, Brent Spiner, Michael Dorn, and Jonathon Frakes. Or...as the spouse did...you could have stalked Eric Estrada until you got a picture of him on your own without having to pay him for posing with you.

Sorry Eric.

There were also tons of concerts, movies, and other events to steal your time. For a full price of $85 (when purchased at the last minute), DragonCon was a great bargain, and I'm sorry to say, much more worth the money than St. Louis's own Archon. Hopefully with this year's NASFIC behind them, Archon may see some type of growth that allows for an improvement in this area.

The Zombie Squad panel went remarkably well. It consisted of a one hour seminar and a short panel discussion in the second hour. Using the zombie apocalypse as a metaphor for other disasters seemed to work well and the audience really absorbed the message about the importance of being prepared. It was probably the best seminar to date and I can't wait to try it out in another town.

This year I did not present or perform as I did in years past. Instead, I pretty much appointed myself to organize everything. One of the interesting side effects of that decision was that I got to sit back and watch how the presentation gelled without worrying about memorizing my own speech. I'm not sure if I was more help or hindrance, but since none of my friends punched me and the presentation went so well, I'm going to give myself a slight kudo.

Everyone presenting did a great job though. They worked incredibly hard on preparing for the con and you really could tell. They even handled a few technical failures in stride and without worry. If you saw the panel, then you know what I mean. These guys were great.

I wish I could comment on the party situation, but as I stated earlier, the overcrowded nature of the con made getting to those parties more of a hassle than it was worth. So, I spent a lot of time in the late evening writing. Which is good since one project I was working on had a deadline to miss.



And that's pretty much DragonCon. It was a good time though I can think of quite a few things I'll do differently next year - starting with not staying in the actual convention hotels. If Zombie Squad is asked back to present and we can work on a few logistical issues (and the cool people who organized the Apocalypse Rising track that featured ZS seem to really want us back), we'll rock even harder.

Oh...one last kudo. Who ever decided that glass elevators and female anime costumes belong together, you deserve a beer.

Good times...