Minicon memories - Thursday and Friday
Apr. 16th, 2004 10:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dreamsharkI had a very good time at Minicon, I think. Thing is, I don't remember much about it, except I'm really really tired and my knees hurt. It's as if the fairies took my body for a run all weekend long and returned it with faerie knots in its mane. Maybe if I start writing some random recollections it will all come back to me.
Thursday evening. It took about 20 minutes, but I DID finally find a free parking place on the street. Okay, it wasn't exactly CLOSE. On the other side of Loring Greenway, in fact. But it was a lovely walk. Work party was either very slow getting under way, or I had arrived at a dinner break, so there wasn't much to do. While I was waiting for the pocket programs to be printed, I hung pictures in the art show. I proved to be too perfectionistic for that job - I think I spent over an hour hanging two panels worth of pictures. Located the little fridges for the Green Room (kindly lent by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
serendipoz), finagled a fire-engine red flatbed, and hauled the larger one down to the Green Room. With the Pocket Programs finally printed, I was horrified to discover that the map was from last year and not entirely correct. This seemed like a much bigger deal at the time than it actually was. By 10 pm or so the consuite had filled up nicely, and a pleasant little party was in progress. Things were going swimmingly until I encountered our author GOH, who politely pointed out that I had scheduled him in such a way that he didn't have time for dinner on Friday. And, to add insult to injury, the final panel of the evening was about food. ACK! I apologized profusely, and went home to brood about this. The solution came to me in the middle of the night.
Friday was mostly about getting set up and dealing with problems (mostly or entirely due to my mistakes and omissions). I was hit with a couple of minor crises when I walked in the door of the hotel, so I hauled my suitcase downstairs into the Green Room instead of stopping at the front desk to check in. About 3 hours later, Richard showed up looking for a room key; I gave him my suitcase and credit card and made him do it. Sometime in there I moderated a panel. That was dumb. Note to self: when running programming, don't put yourself on a panel on Friday afternoon. It went okay, but wasn't the best panel I've ever done. I also flew around the hotel about once per hour checking how programming was going.jbru's Fannish Family Gathering in the consuite was just lovely, and a nice way to get the Singularity buzzing on a Friday afternoon. As I had suspected, the panels at 3, 4 and 5pm were well-attended (20-25), but at 6:00 pm everybody forgot about programming while they greeted their friends who were just arriving. I had only scheduled one thing for 6pm, but it was sparsely attended. Okay, next year a 6pm dinner break on Friday!
The solution to the Dinner Mistake went quite well. We simply ordered in a nice Chinese dinner from Pings and served it in the Green Room at 7:30. A big thank-you tobeccal for stepping in to coordinate the order, and all the other people who helped along the way. It turned into a nice little dinner party of a dozen or so, including two GOHs. I think they enjoyed it; I know I did!
Opening Ceremonies at last - what a relief! The entire con disappeared into the main ballroom and it was blessedly quiet and peaceful. After a few minutes just relaxing, I tiptoed into the ballroom in time to hear WJW's speech. The speech was kind of a surprise to us, but a fortuitous one: well-written, well-delivered, well-received. SDN was next up. Surprised to discover that we were doing speeches at Opening Ceremonies, she had pulled an Abe Lincoln and written an address on the back of an envelope. It sounded great - you would've thought she'd been practicing it for days. Unflappable, that woman. I missed what Deb did with the situation, as I was out finding a rolling office chair for Dr. Mike, who I had discovered patiently standing at the back of the auditorium on his broken foot. (EEK!) So Opening Ceremonies ran over its allotted time and Dave didn't even get to use his Shock Wave material, but it was a great success. Dr. Mike was in good spirits despite the wait, and liked the chair. I understand that his show went very well - I was running around again doing stuff by then. I can't imagine what.
I don't remember much else about Friday night except that I caught about 10 minutes of the Geek Gourmet, which was an absolute hoot. I remember sitting in the back of Satellite 7 listening to music and hand-lettering the event listings for the programming rooms. I'd just about had a fit when I realized that I'd forgotten to print them up before the con - what to do, what to do? Should I go home and print them? Find somebody with a computer and printer at the con? Then it came to me: I have a pen! By this time I was feeling pretty mellow. Crises had stopped happening and everything seemed to be flowing pretty smoothly. Of course that might have been because programming was over for the night. That's the nice thing about programming. Unlike Parties, you are eventually Off Duty.
I finally saw my hotel room at about 11:30 pm, and immediately collapsed and fell asleep.
Thursday evening. It took about 20 minutes, but I DID finally find a free parking place on the street. Okay, it wasn't exactly CLOSE. On the other side of Loring Greenway, in fact. But it was a lovely walk. Work party was either very slow getting under way, or I had arrived at a dinner break, so there wasn't much to do. While I was waiting for the pocket programs to be printed, I hung pictures in the art show. I proved to be too perfectionistic for that job - I think I spent over an hour hanging two panels worth of pictures. Located the little fridges for the Green Room (kindly lent by
serendipoz), finagled a fire-engine red flatbed, and hauled the larger one down to the Green Room. With the Pocket Programs finally printed, I was horrified to discover that the map was from last year and not entirely correct. This seemed like a much bigger deal at the time than it actually was. By 10 pm or so the consuite had filled up nicely, and a pleasant little party was in progress. Things were going swimmingly until I encountered our author GOH, who politely pointed out that I had scheduled him in such a way that he didn't have time for dinner on Friday. And, to add insult to injury, the final panel of the evening was about food. ACK! I apologized profusely, and went home to brood about this. The solution came to me in the middle of the night. Friday was mostly about getting set up and dealing with problems (mostly or entirely due to my mistakes and omissions). I was hit with a couple of minor crises when I walked in the door of the hotel, so I hauled my suitcase downstairs into the Green Room instead of stopping at the front desk to check in. About 3 hours later, Richard showed up looking for a room key; I gave him my suitcase and credit card and made him do it. Sometime in there I moderated a panel. That was dumb. Note to self: when running programming, don't put yourself on a panel on Friday afternoon. It went okay, but wasn't the best panel I've ever done. I also flew around the hotel about once per hour checking how programming was going.
jbru's Fannish Family Gathering in the consuite was just lovely, and a nice way to get the Singularity buzzing on a Friday afternoon. As I had suspected, the panels at 3, 4 and 5pm were well-attended (20-25), but at 6:00 pm everybody forgot about programming while they greeted their friends who were just arriving. I had only scheduled one thing for 6pm, but it was sparsely attended. Okay, next year a 6pm dinner break on Friday! The solution to the Dinner Mistake went quite well. We simply ordered in a nice Chinese dinner from Pings and served it in the Green Room at 7:30. A big thank-you to
beccal for stepping in to coordinate the order, and all the other people who helped along the way. It turned into a nice little dinner party of a dozen or so, including two GOHs. I think they enjoyed it; I know I did!Opening Ceremonies at last - what a relief! The entire con disappeared into the main ballroom and it was blessedly quiet and peaceful. After a few minutes just relaxing, I tiptoed into the ballroom in time to hear WJW's speech. The speech was kind of a surprise to us, but a fortuitous one: well-written, well-delivered, well-received. SDN was next up. Surprised to discover that we were doing speeches at Opening Ceremonies, she had pulled an Abe Lincoln and written an address on the back of an envelope. It sounded great - you would've thought she'd been practicing it for days. Unflappable, that woman. I missed what Deb did with the situation, as I was out finding a rolling office chair for Dr. Mike, who I had discovered patiently standing at the back of the auditorium on his broken foot. (EEK!) So Opening Ceremonies ran over its allotted time and Dave didn't even get to use his Shock Wave material, but it was a great success. Dr. Mike was in good spirits despite the wait, and liked the chair. I understand that his show went very well - I was running around again doing stuff by then. I can't imagine what.
I don't remember much else about Friday night except that I caught about 10 minutes of the Geek Gourmet, which was an absolute hoot. I remember sitting in the back of Satellite 7 listening to music and hand-lettering the event listings for the programming rooms. I'd just about had a fit when I realized that I'd forgotten to print them up before the con - what to do, what to do? Should I go home and print them? Find somebody with a computer and printer at the con? Then it came to me: I have a pen! By this time I was feeling pretty mellow. Crises had stopped happening and everything seemed to be flowing pretty smoothly. Of course that might have been because programming was over for the night. That's the nice thing about programming. Unlike Parties, you are eventually Off Duty.
I finally saw my hotel room at about 11:30 pm, and immediately collapsed and fell asleep.
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no subject
Date: 2004-04-16 09:38 pm (UTC)It's amazing how few crises happen when you're feeling mellow. I find that many crises happen because the people they happen to find some way to make a situation a crisis.
I'm given to recall the time I was sub-head of Parties back when Minicon was in the Rad South. There was this odd pinging noise that I was told was a first stage fire alarm. (Something to do with sprinklers a few floors down, as I recall.) I had a rush of panic but after going through the consuite informing everyone that the noise they were hearing was a fire alarm but that we didn't think that there was any danger and finding most people completely non-plussed by the announcement, it occured to me that we had plenty of snacks, plenty of beer, plenty of soda and lots of good folks having a good time. Why worry?
I'm glad you found your comfort zone, eventually.
no subject
Date: 2004-04-17 05:51 am (UTC)aw, thanks. as soon as wjw pulled out his speech (a typed speech! of many pages!) i blanched and thought, "oh shit."
no subject
Date: 2004-04-19 08:04 am (UTC)Sounds like a perfectly reasonable response, under the circumstances. I'm sorry I missed all the speechifying.