Pi-Con report

So I'm back from Pi-Con where I was LARP coordinator and on too many panels. I got a full night's sleep last night, but I'm still rather tired and somewhat out of it.

Pi-Con was awesome! I knew a lot more people there than I did last year, but that's hardly surprising given between being on staff, stronger programming in areas that attract my friends, and knowing people I met last year. Despite tiring me out, being on panels is fun! Most of all, there was a unique satisfaction at seeing the result of changes I helped make to con work out at least decently.

We had LARPs! All but one of the scheduled LARPs ran, despite the lack of advance sign-up and poor space for some games. Thanks go out to natbudin, kamianya, emp42ress and The Camarilla for running games! I wish I had actually had a chance to play more than one mini-game from 10 Bad LARPs, but unfortunately, I was always either busy with panels, or way too tired for the after midnight games. If you played in or ran a LARP, I would love to hear your feedback. I'm probably going to be LARP coordinator for Pi-Con next year, unless someone else volunteers for the job, and I'd like to do a better job.

Panels: A combination of foolish enthusiasm and a desire to make sure there were actually filk and LARP panels caused me to sign up for too many panels. Also, I didn't make it to more than 10 minutes of any panel I wasn't on, because I was simply too busy. Overall, I felt a lot of responsibility for the panels I was on, and much of my memory was how well did this go, rather than what was talked about. I was on the following panels.
* What is this thing called filk? My memory was that this went pretty well. Attendance was decent, with slighty more than half of the audience being non-filkers. I was moderating, and mostly felt that I kept the panel running smoothly. We managed to cover all the major points and still have time to do a fair amount of sample music. Doing a single verse and chorus is our friend.
* Religion in SF. Not all Religion in SF panels are alike! This one was almost entirely religion positive contrasted with the almost entirely religion negative panel I attended at Gaylaxicon back in 2005. I felt a little out of place here, being a last minute replacement and having prepared for a different type of panel, but at least I got to recommend some SF with interesting treatments of religion.
* Introduction to LARPing. This basically went well, though I think a more diverse collection of panelist would have been good, as 3 out of the 4 of us were primarily into one-shot theater-style LARP.
* LARP writing. This was entirely too narrow a topic for Pi-Con. We had one attendee who wasn't a friend of a panelist, and only 3 attendees in total. Whoops, my bad in suggesting this.
* Genre Musicals. I remember enjoying this panel a lot. There are a lot of things which could be considered genre musicals, and if memory serves, our audience was very participatory in coming up with them.
* Fragmented Fandom. This was the best attended and most satisfying panel I was on. I think we had a really good discussion, including the audience, on the topic including, at least a little bit the values of responding the fragmentation in a positive manner.
* Technology and Sex. Amazingly enough when this panel doesn't have 2 Guest of Honor on it, it doesn't get as much turnout. We also had all female panelist this year to contrast with last year's all male panelist, and this, and the con book description is probably what, turned talk much more to communication technology than gadget technology. I would kind of liked to talk a bit about gadgetry and adaptive systems, and that my engineer side.
* A Survey of Fannish Music. This went pretty well, though I wish we had had more attendees and more music. I definitely had the sense of "there wasn't anything in particular wrong with that, but I wish we could have done better"


Music: And there was filk! Thanks to orawnzva! I led a bawdy song circle, which was a lot of fun despite being a few performers short of the ideal. I think the small size was small sample size theater since I believe at least 2 performers skipped the song circle for a LARP. Between that, the Gaming song circle and open filk I wound up performing most of my repertoire, despite having expanded in preparation for the con. I unfortunately missed Rob Balder's concert (I had a conflicting panel), but I did get to Devo Spice's and Ben's concerts, which were both quite good. So yay! Music!

In between these major happenings, I managed to play a couple of games of Dominion, and buy a CD, three games, a bumper sticker, and two sets of hair sticks.

All in all, an excellent time, and totally worth the energy invested.