jack

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.

* Eastercn was great fun

* I have some good books, including some old classics and sequels I'm curious about but didn't want to buy, and some duplicates of my most accessible favourites to give away

* The travel was all pretty successful.

* Many nice people I knew went, and I got to know better, which is very nice.

* There were lots of interesting things, I've a whole bunch of percolating questions that'll crop up on

* I went to coffee with China Miéville. I'd tried Iron Council but couldn't get into it, and had the impression of someone like Anne MacCaffrey, but he looks more like Vinnie Jones, and talks like he looks. His guest of honour slot wasn't devoted to anything about him, just here's an essay which recently occurred to me, now I'll talk about it, which was really interesting.

* I described him and Neil Gaiman as stubbornly not convinced that they're not a rockstar (with the charisma to pull it off). Neil failed to be kissed by anyone though, sorry foreeverdirt. (I would have asked him for a kiss to send you if I'd met him, but never did :))

* I wore my cloak increasingly more over the weekend. In my opinion, it went surprisingly well with the blue Hawaiian shirt. Worn inside out it's a lot more science-fictiony, as it's incredibly silver, but blue with flashed of silver lining is definitely the look I like.

* The hotel was very nice. They had mazes of twisty passages, but I liked the decoration, just the right mix of posh, tasteful, nice decoration, but sufficiently interesting not to be boring. And of course, slowly helpful notices appeared, "You are in a maze of twisty passages all alike" in the maze of twisty passages and "Beware of the Leopard" on the leopard statue.

* However, they slightly failed in some ways. I got the impression the staff doing what they regularly did were pleasant and helpful and knew what they were doing, but that they'd drafted in extra staff to deal with the vastly increased number of people for meals, for the extra bars, etc, who were nice, but didn't really know what they were doing.

Eg. when approximately a thousand people all want a glass of beer at once, it may be more helpful to place more emphasis on "serve pint, get exact money, next customer" than mainting the illusion that people will amble past the bar, strike up conversation, and casually mention that perhaps they're a little thirsty and did the bar have anything appropriate, and they'd be sure an appropriate little amount would find it onto the hotel bill later, and can I wait two minutes while you try to get the till to give a receipt? I don't blame the staff (who were obviously helpful, just didn't know enough) or the con committee (who did a great job), it's just a shame the hotel hadn't given some more directed training beforehand.

* I run out of socialising. I'm in a situation where I can just speak to someone standing there and we have lots in common and can speak easily. However only some of the time can I *do* that, after three days, I just stall and listen, without meeting new people.

* And there were a lot of friends there, but none I'm quite close enough to I can just flop with not worrying about whether I'm saying anything or not.

* And several panels had interesting ideas, but were frustrating, as there seemed to be someone waffling and I wanted to shake them, but I had too many different things to say at once and they jammed, me unable to work out what would be really most useful and what wouldn't.

* The "Crossing the steams: What's the difference between scifi or fantasy?" especially. Weston was very funny, and had a good point ("one of the things,and imho the only important one, that defines science-fiction is being rationalistic about physics"), but insisted on making it vociferously rather than consistently, when listening to other people would have been really interesting. And so everyone present only wanted to shoot that down rather than talking about anything else, but it was hopeless.

* I spent four days almost continuously in one building, only going outside just to experience fresh and snow for a couple of minutes each day. I think that's the longest I've spend inside, but can see why Americans and science fiction authors can imagine living entirely inside.

* Thanks to Sebby, who got me half his room in the main hotel, and was a interesting, polite and inoffensive room-mate. I hope you were glad of someone to share with too.

Today we'll be walking up the river or canal to the pub and probably playing cards or dominos to boot.

I'm with my parents. It was lovely to see them again. We met at the station and went to the pub for an hour or so and I felt happy.

I found the official train route planner thing, of which I was previously unaware, and it okayed my glasgow->edinburgh->birmingham->cambridge journey, though I was disturbed to see the top hit on google was not it, but someone complaining that it was ambiguous. But I was going through node stations only, so I think I was ok.

I met mair and katie in edinburgh, though didn't have time to get to any show or anything, but I saw [sic] the something gallery, the someone memorial and the castle, and we had lunch in a nice park from which I aforementionedly saw, and then got coffee, coffe including a few glasses of tapwater, which it never before occured to me to prevail on a coffee shop to provide. I'm glad I got a chance to see people I rarely do get to see, especially if they rarely see cambrigde people much atm and need the fix :) And got hugged.

Last night the con finished in the afternoon, and we had a nice lazy time on the grass with real ale afterward. And I got hugged by people including strangers :) Many people I'm seeing in a couple of days.

On Sunday the Hugos were awarded, with much amusing references to their supposed originator, Victor Hugo :) Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrel won the best novel, and I discovered that Susannah Clarke, amongst others, knew CUSFS people from way back. It's a small world. There was a meeting of dozens of ex-reeves (ie. old cusfs members) including amusing anecdotes about history of the society, and amazement at what we still do, and what we don't do. Apparently the omnipotence is a relatively recent invention.

And I bought lots of books from the dealers' room, mostly old stuff, but some 'just because' stuff and some new american paperbacks. It made my bags only just managable on the way back :) I looked at art and tat, but didn't buy any.

The masquerade was interesting but not amazingly inspiring, but there were some lovely costumes wandering the halls (see quotes); some low res pictures from camera phone may appear.

There was a condensed starwars play which was very amusing, if flat in a couple of places. But there was some lovely touches. Like there were several amusing costumes, they call to Lando, you wonder how they'll portray him, and a foppish centauri enters. And the entire audience had spaceship-shaped kazoos for the purposes of playing the vader theme tune whenever he appears.

Quotes:

* Please don't smoke inside the Armadillo.
* There was a Klingon in a kilt there. You don't often see that. Even in glasgow.
* The Singularity is this enormous turd that Vernor Vinge crapped into the punchbowl of SF writing, and now nobody wanting to take a drink can ignore it ... There are some turds so big you either have to ignore them entirely, or spread them around and use them as fertiliser.

Sorry for the length. Responses to some of the actual talks to follow later. Maybe.

I had fun with rail enquiries and station staff, but end up with ticket that will supposedly take me from cambridge to glasgow the quickest route, and let me return via tolkien 2005. On the first train I met a nice young Scottish lady solving So Dukae[1] and we resolved to follow everyone with the correct accent through the random intermediate changes.

At the first stop I crossed the platform and met ceb and ian. (Who later informed me of a non-shit rail journey planning webpage: bahn.hafas.de.) We spent much of the journey working on laptops, me trying and failing to write fiction, and later making my phone spod. Well, nearly.

At glasgow the cambridge contingent went for pizza at a nice restaurant (dino's?) next to the station, with an incredably chatty waitress, which was nice but disconcerting, especially with the inevitable 'why are you in glasgow' question. Then we played mao.

I navigated mostly successfully across glasgow to the not-ridiculously-far-out residence (despite being student place). Two people spontaneously offered to help while I was puzzling over maps. It was surreal to be back in a university, there were even bedders, in much the same uniform.

I slept a bit distrubedly, because I'm used to a big soft double bed, no streetlights and no fire-engines, and was a bit nervous at meeting the membership-transferring guy, and somehow transferring my stuff to the rather-further-out-residence.

[1] Mu