Sounds Like Weird
30 May 2005
Around about Saturday of BayCon, I started recovering. While a lot of staff jobs leave one more and more tired as the convention continues, the head of programming is an exception: the position is front-loaded, meaning that one starts the con tired and gradually recovers.
Unfortunately, this front-loading and being tired thing means that one can make mistakes. I counted four preventable mistakes that made it to the final program, quite in addition to the usual more minor stuff.
I managed to clear enough of my schedule to read and critique all the entries for the writer’s workshop section I participated in. If I were doing it over again, I’d put my writer’s workshop section on Sunday to have that one extra day — I prefer to read the entries when I first get them, read them once more, then make my actual critique comments within 24 hours of giving the actual critique. Unfortunately, with Friday being as crazy as it was, I kept having to defer that time and wasn’t able to get uninterrupted time to write my critiques. I’m not saying that this was anyone else’s fault. I certainly could have gone some place and hidden.
Which reminds me…. All weekend, random people were waving at me. Most I recognized, but some I didn’t. When I didn’t recognize the person, it seemed a bit disconcerting, as though someone was starting some sort of “Wave at Deirdre” campaign.
Saturday night, I finally got to see Patricia MacEwen’s famous “Alien Sex” panel, featuring reproductive strategies of various terran species.
After that, Adrienne Gormley and I winged it on the “Writer’s Workshops” panel, which I had to admit that we were unprepared for. That we were unprepared was one of the aforementioned mistakes: I didn’t realize until some time Saturday afternoon that I’d scheduled (and put in the program book and on the program grid) a writer’s workshop panel — but not scheduled anyone for it. Oops. So, I pressed my friend and I into service, though I was unable to find any other fellow victims on such short notice, especially given that it was counter-masquerade programming.
Despite this, we had a full room and had a great deal of interest in the topic, so that was all good. After the panel, I finally managed to get a spot of dinner, hanging out with Adrienne, Margaret Bonham, and, of course, Rick.