Worldcon background comments

2014-08-21T12:32:51Z

Overall

Worldcon was really lovely. Having a Rachel to go back to at the end of the day, and a lot of friends who are lovely but don't always go to Eastercon turning up, and generally being more experienced at seeing which panels I'll actually enjoy and which have a good title but I won't get much out of, and a mix of panels, other events, general socialising, and leaving the venue, made me feel a lot more happy and relaxed than I normally feel. I normally have a lot of fun but worry I'm missing something.

Layout

The layout of the venue worked surprisingly well. There was one large area for almost all programming. A separate fan village for cafe, bar, village green, and a lot of open space for people to congregate. A large display area including dealers, art show, and a few others with a little space to spare, so it felt large but not too crowded. Plus food court. Plus large and medium auditoria. Plus a smaller wing of rooms for fan events (kaffeeclatches, etc and some interactive programming) and a wing of rooms for any pre-arranged parties.

I was worried having the fan village not on the way between programme items would mean there wasn't enough mixing of people, but it seemed to go well. Because the fan village was so large, it was natural for people to go there in gaps, even if they had to go downstairs from the main programme to do it. And there were a scattering of benches and tables in the very large corridor outside the programming, so if you met someone or just wanted a pause, or an author ran into an impromptu signing party, there was somewhere to sit without blocking the corridor.

Congestion

There was congestion on the escalators up to the main programming, it tired me up if I ended up running up and down a lot of time. But it was normally possible to get through with very little delay. The lifts were reserved for access, which was a good decision, and while not perfect, seemed to make getting between levels without being marginalised a lot, lot more straightforward than many cons.

Travel

Being right on the DLR was surprisingly convenient. The Excel centre opens straight out onto the walkway to the DLR platform. I was worried a ten minute travel to the hotel might be inconvenient, but because the trains were so frequent, it was never really a problem. It would have been if I'd often wanted to stay past midnight, though. And it meant that it was _nearly_ as easy to go to a restaurant anywhere along the DLR as somewhere right on site, which gave a lot more choice, although I ended up eating on site most of the time.

Food

The food court was expensive for takeaway (£5-£10 for a meal), but had a reasonable choice of food, and could have been a lot worse for somewhere in central london. And had more variety than a hotel buffet, and was easy to eat fairly quickly if you wanted to grab food and get back to something. And had non-denominational chairs, so if you were organised enough to bring sandwiches, you could eat with everyone else without feeling like you were intruding on one business' premises.

Area

The area felt really strange. Just round the corner from our hotel were some small residential streets and a small supermarket, and a short hop from there was a small high street in canning town, full of vegetarian-aware slightly-chic greasy-spoon cafes serving a mix of construction workers, pensioners, and people in a hurry.

But turn a corner, and there was two miles of concrete, interspersed with large dual-carriageways with niggardly foot/cycle paths, water features, and intimidating glass towers of hotels and conference centres. One night I stayed late and walked back along the river and paths to the hotel, but I got a feeling I was breaking an unspoken rule by not taking a taxi from door-to-door -- like someone wandering into a medieval forest and discovering if they didn't stick *strictly* to the path, they might never come out again.

Programme

For the first time I've had a sufficiently good smartphone and there's been a sufficiently good event app that I navigated entirely by online programme rather than paper programme. In most ways that was really good -- it was invaluable to be able to quickly view events by stream and by participant as well as by time, and to have it all fit in my pocket.

The paper programme was very good too -- folded into a very thick but narrow ring-bind booklet, it condensed a lot of dense information into something that would just fit into a pocket. For a few things the paper programme is still better, like skimming descriptions without clicking on them. But in general I was very very very happy to have it managed online.

There's a few things I wish the app had: an ability to mark "maybe" on my programme, as well as "yes", so if I marked several things at the same time, I could see easily see which one I'd originally intended to go to. An ability to enter provisional events myself, so I could say "at 6, I'm going to dinner with [name]" and remind myself not to book things that clashed. And it didn't lock up when updating. But in general it was extremely useful and free, so yay.

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Kaffeeclatch with Max Gladstone

2014-08-20T18:15:10Z

Personal comments (Max, if you ego-google this, pretend you didn't read this bit :)) He was really nice and friendly, though a bit jetlagged. He recognised me in the food court later, which was flattering. He was really young, well, maybe my age, but that's young for writing such a prominent book. He wore jeans and a smart jacket, rather than a black T-shirt with a slogan, he looked like he had a place in the real world :)

He reminded us what I'd read before in his "big idea" post on Scalzi's blog but forgotten, that the inspiration for gods being made of bundles of agreements and contracts with worshippers, other gods, and other entities and organisations was the financial crash: the feeling of everyone standing around looking at their "god" who had suddenly gone overdrawn.

He had a lot of ideas about the world, and books 2, 3 and 4 (which I've not read yet) explore different aspects of it, which often goes badly, but sounded to have gone well in this case.

I asked if it was coincidence that the two major characters in the first book were women, and he said he did the same thing I do, that whenever he invents a new character, he doesn't let himself stop at whatever is the most "obvious" sex/race/etc, but asks "could this be different" and develops a character from there, which often turns out more interesting than another rip-off of Harry Dresden or Anita Blake. And he was appropriately diffident, that he was still trying to write diversely, but not assuming he was succeeding.

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