Minicon Report

[dreamshark]

It was a good Minicon. Warm and relaxed, lots of music, well-run consuite, happy GoHs. We went into the weekend with just over 300 preregistrations (not really enough in a number of ways), but picked up a surprising 130 at-the-doors, bringing us to a very viable 400+. That's down from last year and the year before, but about the same size as Minicon 39, IIRC.

I didn't get to much programming, but what I saw was very good. I especially enjoyed the panel on the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis ("Does language shape thought or does thought shape language?"). Not the first time I've seen programming on more or less this topic, but I never get tired of the subject. This particular panel had several multi-lingual panelists, which opened up some possibilities in the discussion. Mary Kaye did a great job of moderating, making interesting comments of her own but not dominating the panel (an excellent example of the Participating Moderator Style, as described in the Minicon Moderator Tip Sheet).

As usual, I spent way too much time on my department, which was the Bozo Bus Tribune again this year. There were a number of glitches during equipment setup that consumed an astonishing amount of my Friday, but eventually I ended up with a usable setup and cranked out three issues. Of course, there really isn't all that much NEWS in a con this size, but we at the BBT have dealt with that problem by finding ways to generate our own news. The last few years, the news generation mechanism has been the Minicon Medallion Hunt (thank you, St. Paul Pioneer Press!). Once again, this was a huge success. It filled up more than half of each issue, turned the con Kid Squad into frantic newspaper groupies, and provided endless entertainment for the Editor-in-Chief and our hard-working ClueMeister.

Staying at the hotel through Monday morning is the ultimate con luxury, especially if you take Monday off from work to unpack and unwind. My main motivation for the extra hotel night is NOThaving to rush around checking out of my room during the last few hours of programming. I'm also far more likely to attend the Dead Dog party if I don't have to come back from home to do it. And this year's DD was well worth attending, with a really dynamite music party sponsored by Tor Books.

Comments

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

What do people say to the Sapir-Whorf question other than 'some from column A and some from column B?'

Thanks for your help and comfort at the con!

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

That's right, put me on the spot and see if I can remember anything from the panel.

Let's see, when I came in a discussion was raging about whether mathematics is a subset of language, language is a subset of mathematics (huh?), or mathematics is not language at all but a place where people go and discover things that already exist. Later on, Peer mentioned that it is hard to speak German without being sexist. For instance, there is apparently no way in classical German to mention a professor or doctor who happens to be a woman without sounding like you are referring to the professor or doctor's wife. Other discussion of actual human languages followed, including mention of a language in Southeast Asia that had no words for left and right (making it impossible to explain how to set a table in proper British style). I thought that the actual examples from existing human languages added a lot to the usual more hypothetical discussion of this topic.

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

That does sound interesting. There's a lot of such discussion on ozarque's LJ, too. (Suzette Hadyn Elgin).