Worldcon thoughts
Sep. 15th, 2014 10:27 pmI had lots of thoughts about worldcon I didn't have time to write up.
One of the coolest things about worldcon (and eastercon) is that people are encouraged to mix equally, that famous authors are not mobbed, and conversely, get to chat normally if you run into them.
Something I've always found difficult about Eastercon (and worldcon) is that if I already know people, it's a wonderful place to hang out with them with way, way, way too much to talk about. But I'm not naturally channelled into meeting _new_ people. This wasn't an issue at worldcon because I ran into so many people I knew already, I kept meeting more people and friends-of-friends. And if you just, you know, talk to people you don't know about science fiction, they almost always reciprocate! And if you volunteer immediately without being embarrassed about knowing anything already, or go to more workshop-y items, you'll definitely meet people. But if you're a bit too shy to do that, you can end up in a bubble of only meeting a specific subset of the con, even if there's other which would be better: I've heard several reports of "con was like X", "it wasn't like that for me" along those lines.
One of the coolest things about worldcon (and eastercon) is that people are encouraged to mix equally, that famous authors are not mobbed, and conversely, get to chat normally if you run into them.
Something I've always found difficult about Eastercon (and worldcon) is that if I already know people, it's a wonderful place to hang out with them with way, way, way too much to talk about. But I'm not naturally channelled into meeting _new_ people. This wasn't an issue at worldcon because I ran into so many people I knew already, I kept meeting more people and friends-of-friends. And if you just, you know, talk to people you don't know about science fiction, they almost always reciprocate! And if you volunteer immediately without being embarrassed about knowing anything already, or go to more workshop-y items, you'll definitely meet people. But if you're a bit too shy to do that, you can end up in a bubble of only meeting a specific subset of the con, even if there's other which would be better: I've heard several reports of "con was like X", "it wasn't like that for me" along those lines.