_www.FantasyLibrary.com [Visit Who Is Joseph Teller?] Synthesis & Synchronicity 050

Synthesis & Synchronicity #50

In The Begining It would be inevitable, after all the build up, time spent and posts, that I would need to devote this journal entry to Arisia. I'm starting this at 6:45 on the Saturday of the convention, while things are fresh in my mind, and hopefully finishing it by Monday.

The trip to the hotel started, in many ways, on the wrong foot because I ended up in dispute with Cindy, who failed to get everything she thought she was going to need for her hall costuming ahead of time. In this case, she decided on Friday to announce to me that she needed plastic gloves for her hands, to protect the makeup she was going to apply to them on Saturday from getting washed off accidentally during the day. At the time, it was a daunting 6 below zero Fahrenheit outside and we were contemplating lunch plans.

This lead to a heated argument, as I saw no need to go tramping out in the cold before I had to (which would have been around 3 pm by my schedule). She wanted to do lunch out at a resteraunt as part of a trip out for her search for gloves, and wanted to have me go all the way to Harvard Square to do so. I balked, as could be expected, tried to make some compromises, and in the end she stormed out instead to a nearby drug store and got a slightly imperfect subsitute for what she wanted (she wanted the kind of gloves that come in hair dying kits rather than plain latex gloves) and we had a pizza delivered from up the street for a late and quickly gobbled up lunch.

I tend to be the sort of person who plans logistics and details when traveling to an event in quite a bit of detail, do planning and shopping long before hand, and basically try to make some of the less smooth things that can occur at a convention or other public outing of this sort a problem that other people have. Being organized, logistically minded and efficient at planning is part of my nature. It's not that I don't like surprises, it's that I don't like bad surprises.

Add to this that my stomache decided that IBS should strike that morning because Kiralee and I had had a stressful 2 days in getting her suitcase packed (finishing it up at 7 am on Friday before she had to head off to work) and the convention was off to a poor start before we got to the hotel.

The Hotel we all managed to coordinate our arrival so that we three met up in Park Street on the same Greenline car and could help each other getting our luggage up to the street level and to the hotel. We got there at 4 like the hotel had insisted for check in, and then each took our turns sweating the usual 3 lines (Room check in, Registration for the convention check in and the Guest check in to get schedules). As of this morning I have still not managed to get my panel schedule, thanks to some printer problems they were having, so if there were changes I won't know until I either miss things or find a Clear Ether (the convention's internal newsletter).

The Park Plaza has upgraded their rooms slightly, adding internet access. Unfortunately, despite claims to the contrary, it's not exactly high speed. It works, but at a pace just slightly faster than my own dial-up connection for everything except the web (where its almost up to Wireless internet speeds). I suspect, unlike the MIT hotel, it's a single shared T-line for the building (the MIT one is much more rapid). I presume the internet access is to manage to keep a 3 star rating in the travel books, but the hotel itself still has a number of problems.

The worse problem is the heating system, it has two settings : Broil and Refrigerate. Unfortunately no one really has control of the system, and the thermostats do not accurately sense the real temperatures in the rooms. So you're either sweating to death or sitting in a drafty 50s kind of temperature that's great for fresh fruit but not for people to sleep in. The conference rooms seem to be all stuck at Broil, by the way, which may be great for the fishnet stockings crowd, but makes it miserable for folks who are doing things like Victorian Suits (which a number were since there was a Victorian Steanpunk Dance on Friday). Sleep on Friday Night turned out to be real difficult for me, as our room liked to alternate between the two settings for many hours.... so I'd be alternately sweating and grabbing for the blanket on the half hour (and regularly waking up in the process).

Silent Movies One of the first things I decided to go to at the convention was the showing of the Sean Connery 'League of Extraordinary Gentlemen' film, as it was open long before most of the other events or rooms. This proved to be an effort in futility, because the folks running the room had been unable to get the sound system to work. Action adventure with Pithy dialogue fails to amuse or amaze or entertain when all you have is two big speakers giving off a random crackle now and then to very silent action. Understand that the movie started at 4:00, I got to it around 4:45, and it was still non-functional. Sigh.

Food : The First Challenge So, we managed to gather together and treked on up to the Green Room, in the hope of finding an early dinner before we began our various panels (Kiralee had a 7:00 one, as did Cindy). This proved, as always, to be a good idea. The food available included a fantastic Lasagna, sandwhich fixings and other niftiness that filled our needful bodies. We also got to mingle with other panelists, presentors and even a few of the major guests, who had all decided to do the same thing.

One slight annoyance is that the powers that be at the convention had evidently reduced the budget for the Green Room, according to some discussions I overheard. (At least they had remembered to give them a reasonably large room this year, unlike the previous year). Now, Arisia has had no problems with attendence and making enough money from year to year for the past decade, so there seems little logic to reduce budgeting for essential services (like feeding your speakers and guests). This makes me wonder if there is a cash shuffle going on to help with costs for Worldcon this summer (a convention I was involved in the preliminary planning of the gaming events for and dropped out of some time ago when it became obvious that they were not taking the gamers seriously and had a serious for-profit attitude on in many ways). I personally believe that the money that Arisia brings in should go to Arisia, and not to some other event, project, or convention.

Despite the cutbacks the Green Room was ample on Friday... and remained reasonable throughout the con. The folks who run the Green room are wonderful fen, and deserve lots of credit for the hard work they do before, during and after the convention. They spend weeks preparing things, shopping, baking food, and packing, and I always make sure to thank them and to clean up after myself (and others) when possible to make sure they know they are appreciated. I made about 10 trips or so to the Green Room (mostly for coffee) over the weekend.

The Green room also provides easy access to folks that other people have to fight tooth and nail to get a moment from between panels. Frank, open and friendly talk with other panelists that include the major speakers and guests is always an interesting experience (but one must remember not to be begging for book signings - trading website business cards is, of course, acceptable behavior).

Panel Time Ok, time compression mode. The panels, in general went well, for everyone. I had great fun at the one's that I was sitting on as a Panelist and nearly all the one's I sat in the audience for. I got to play 'useful kibitzer' in the audience for a number of friends and acquaintences, as well as for Kiralee (who had a couple of panels where she was the single fen on the panel with a group of writing professionals). Kiralee had 9 panels she was on over the weekend, I think her most ever, but she had fun with the overload. I went for less panels this year, in hope of getting to do things I wanted to experience.

Where was I? I was at these panels:

Friday
7pm : League of Extraordinary Player Characters
9pm : Designing Great player Characters On Panel
10pm: Online Fan Communities

Saturday
10 am : Who's Reading Your Blog?
11am : The Plight of the Older Gamer On Panel
1 pm : The Balkanization of Fandom Kiralee's Panel**
2 pm: Pitfalls for New GMs and How to Avoid Them On Panel
3 pm: Does Information Really Want To Be Free? *
4 pm: Outlaw Heroes Kiralee's Panel
5 pm: I Gave You Stormbringer?
7 pm : Games For Under $10. On Panel

Sunday
10 am : Contemporary Fantasy vs Traditional Epic Fantasy Kiralee's Panel
11 am : Web Comics : The Future of Comics?
12 noon : Introductory Fan Web Design

*The Only Panel I didn't really like, mainly because the moderator seemed more interested in imposing his own opinion on the discussion than carrying on real dialogue, in my opinion.

** Which got interrupted by a fire alarm mid-way thru. Turned out a water leak in the sprinkler system had set it off...so technically you could say it was a water alarm, or lack of water alarm.

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