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Event Horizon

WindyCon XXV

WindyCon XXV ran from Friday, November 13 to Sunday, November 15, 1998, and included a great many fun and wonderful things to do. The following account is based on my experiences, reflects my interests and activities, and should be considered as such. It is not intended to cover the entire program. The opinions expressed herein are my own; YMMV.

The Guestlist

As usual, WindyCon attracted a generous selection of notable guests, program participants, and other folks worth meeting. The official short list -- Guest of Honor: Allen Steele, Artist Guest of Honor: Phil Foglio, Fen Guests of Honor: Marcy and Barry Lyn-Waitsman, Editor Guest of Honor: Martin H. Greenberg, Silver Guest: Frederick Pohl, Toastmaster: Christian Ready. Of these, I was most interested in meeting Marty Greenberg, who as an anthology editor has his finger in just about every pie on the planet. He is one of my all-time favorite editors, and I have reviewed many of his anthologies over the years. Happily, I managed to dig up several tearsheets so that I could give him copies this weekend, and he was pleased to get the feedback -- especially since I just covered Lord of the Fantastic which is a favorite of his. I got to see Mr. Greenberg on the "Variations on a Theme" panel which explored the role of themed anthologies in science fiction and fantasy. That panel, by the way, sprang from a discussion between myself and Kathleen Massie-Ferch, the title and description being taken from my volunteer form. I wasn't on the panel, though they did get Kathleen on it, due to a (personally quite disappointing) schedule glitch. More on that later.

I also had the chance to meet some other really terrific program participants including Leigh Kimmel, Stephen Leigh, Janice Murphy, and John O'Neill. Leigh Kimmel I swapped contact info with after hearing descriptions of her really cool Website. Stephen Leigh and I have been conversing intermittently since I reviewed his latest novel Dark Water's Embrace, and it was wonderful finally meeting in person. Janice Murphy got in touch with me several days before the con, in the course of assembling a splendid online resource intended to support her panels on electronic publishing and other Web-related matters. If you go there, you'll see some references from my link list along with a lot of other useful goodies contributed by other panelists. John O'Neill does much of the work behind the utterly awesome SF Site and is just as entertaining in person. Yup, I'm listed on that site, too. Steven Silver, one of the organizers, also showed up and was charming to talk with. Finally, some of the WindyCon staffers had a really terrific idea concerning the guestlist; see the entry on the t-shirt.

The Dealers' Room

This included a decent selection of merchandise to ogle and carry home. Indeed, I came home with a nice bag of goodies, and I've got a gorgeous ceramic sea-serpent sculpture on order too. However, it has come to my attention that WindyCon is not very dealer-friendly, and I would like to remind people, politely, that if the dealers are not happy the con dies. Some of the more notable errors include not allowing anyone (including gophers, dealer employees, and other dealers) to fetch food and drink to the dealers from the con suite; and matching the dealers' room hours to the con suite hours rather than keeping the con suite open longer. This resulted in some tables being unattended or closed so that the dealers could take care of life's little necessities. In the future I recommend either fixing the schedule or appointing at least one Dealer Nanny to look after these very important, hard-working folks. The main reason for not catering to dealer needs seems to be that there is a waiting list for table space at WindyCon -- to which I reply, not for long, if they aren't treated well. It seems preferable to me to arrange for more space, especially since I noticed several key categories of merchandise missing, most notably buttons. More on space later, too. Overall I found the dealers' room attractive, but this has room for improvement.

The Panels

As you have already noticed, scheduling this year got a bit scrambled. Hail Eris, all hail discordia. One end result of this was my personal schedule getting mangled. I wound up participating in the 11 AM "HELP! It Ate My Universal Translator!" panel, the noon "Writing Reviews" panel, and the 2 PM "Electronic Publishing" panel -- and I had to skip the 1 PM "Web Resources You Should Know About" panel. All of these took place on Sunday. I'm not real pleased with that, but it could have been a lot worse and the panels themselves did go well. I'll just hope for a little better organization next year, and acknowledge that last-minute chaos does occur and is not necessarily anyone's particular fault. Besides the panels I sat on, I also attended two on Saturday: the 11 AM "Variations on a Theme" and the 2 PM "Developing and Promoting a Successful Website." Despite the scheduling stress, I must say that this year's panels offered a splendid choice of topics and participants, so the organizers deserve a pat on the back for that.

In chronological order:

• "Variations on a Theme" covered the process of producing a themed anthology, compared the different kinds of anthologies, and examined their impact on the field. This is exactly what I had in mind, and it went off without a hitch; my only regret is not being on the other side of that table. Perhaps I'll have another opportunity someday; I'm sure this topic has much more territory to explore than could be covered in a single hour. I learned some interesting new things about anthology construction, and got confirmations on some other things I already figured out. Definitely worthwhile.
• "Developing and Promoting a Successful Website" proved both fascinating and surprising. This panel featured speakers experienced in different areas of Web technology and application, and they fielded many questions from the audience, answering in detail to our great satisfaction. I learned a lot about handling a Website, and picked up some terrific new resources. I also discovered that the process of researching and developing my own site (with the help of my Loyal Webcrafter -- take a bow, Janet) has given me a much greater understanding of this topic than I realized. I found that I had plenty of things to say, and in fact several folks came up to me after the panel (remember, I was in the audience for this one) and asked for my URL.
• For several years I have been doing xenolinguistic panels as various conventions. "HELP! It Ate My Universal Translator!" is my favorite of these, and has been on my list the longest. Never the same twice, this panel changes according to the participants and our audience. This time it did something it hasn't done in quite a while, and went off on a historical/cultural tangent featuring hilarious examples of how members of the same race (human) create constant misunderstandings and how much harder it would be for members of different alien races to communicate when we have so much trouble just talking to each other. This lively discussion covered a lot of ground, including favorite linguistic mistakes in history and literature, speculation on how best to convey ideas to future humans (like, don't dig up this toxic nuclear waste), and ways in which these challenges might echo in interspecies relations. Here I discovered that while our tastes in fiction differ significantly, Kristine Kathryn Rusch is an engaging co-panelist; and Stephen Leigh is as much fun in person as he is in print. A favorite panel scores again.
• The panel on "Writing Reviews" was smaller and quieter, but still fun. What impressed me most here was the sheer diversity of reviewers we had; stand-outs in this regard included one person who reviews restaurants and another who reviews military history nonfiction. That gave us a really wide range of experience, so we got to examine many different aspects of reviewing -- its effects on the market, the ethical ramifications, and personal preferences in what to cover. Not the most exciting my panels, but not a waste of time.
• Finally, "Electronic Publishing" offered a rousing cap for the weekend; had to, in fact, because we panelists ducked out one at a time to head home. Here I got to join Janice Murphy (who had already impressed me earlier), John O'Neill, and Toni Lichtenstein Bogolub for an in-depth debate of electronic publishing's impact on the rest of the publishing industry. We covered such things as attention-span degradation, electronic book equipment, the challenge of enforcing intellectual property rights in cyberspace, and responsible development of new technologies. This is another panel that changes each time, one I've done before and will undoubtedly do again. This rendition worked well enough to create a sizable draw at the very end of the weekend, so I'm pleased.

The T-shirt

This year, some folks in charge of producing the WindyCon t-shirts had a truly brilliant idea. Upon discovering that the artwork would not require a great deal of airbrushing as previous images have, they asked Steven Silver for a copy of the guestlist, which wound up on the back of the shirt. I have therefore awarded this Uncommon Sense Award in hopes of encouraging a repetition.

Now, I don't collect con t-shirts, so I didn't pay any attention to the thing, and would have missed it entirely. However, my parents noticed somebody wearing one in the elevator, and they saw my name in the list, so naturally they just had to have one. They told me, and I wanted one too, because it's a terrific piece of promotional material and a nifty credit and all that jazz. Here's hoping the con-com will decide to continue this tradition in the future, because if they do I'll certainly want to collect those con t-shirts ... and otherwise I'll go back to being uninterested. It would be intriguing to see how many other folks feel the same way, so you might want to write the con-com a letter if you have an opinion on this matter; I'm sure they'll appreciate your feedback. As for the shirt itself, the artwork features a blimp by Phil Foglio, and it's printed on bright purple fabric. Pity I didn't bring my fabric pen; I'd have gotten Phil to sign mine.

The Hotel

WindyCon has occupied the same hotel for a number of years now, and this establishment has gotten increasingly restrictive with regard to rules and increasingly reluctant to meet the needs of a large group. Some cases in point: The weapons policy has come all the way down to "no weapons of any kind anywhere at all, including replicas" and the sign policy to "signs only on the corkboards" -- boards which, I might add, appeared very late and were of paltry size indeed, quite insufficient for our needs. And how exactly are we to confirm that we've reached the right door for a room party when it is forbidden to hang a sign there? Numbers do get misprinted on flyers and the like.

But the straw that broke the camel's back occurred on Sunday morning when we went down for breakfast, only to discover that the attractive (and almost affordable) breakfast buffet closed at nine-thirty, not to be replaced by the (exorbitantly priced) brunch buffet until ten. Thoroughly offended, we took our grievance to the manager, pointing out that 75% of the convention members (we had booked the entire hotel) were not even out of bed yet. The manager explained, politely but quite bluntly, that the hotel always did things this way and catered to a local crowd, not just hotel guests, and the general impression we got was: not only does the hotel not care about meeting our needs, they don't feel they have to care. To which I say, if an establishment cannot be bothered to meet the needs of large groups, then it should not be in the business of hosting events; let them stick with their so-precious local crowd if that's where their priorities are. We and our money can go elsewhere. I have enjoyed far better service at many other hotels which are delighted to host conventions, which welcome fannish guests, and which do not mind making reasonable arrangements to improve the quality of our experience. Now, this is just my opinion, to which I am entitled, and with which you are entitled to agree or disagree, but I happen to feel that closing a breakfast buffet at nine-thirty is ridiculous beyond all justification; consequently, I award the hotel my first Golden Ass Award for doing something really, really dumb.

Later that day, someone suggested to me that the con-com should negotiate more accommodation into next year's contract, such as extending the breakfast buffet hours to 11 or so. I add to that -- if the hotel won't accommodate our needs, we should look for another hotel. We could really use a bigger dealer's room anyway, not to mention a con suite that doesn't create a permanent traffic jam on that Lilliputian staircase.

Some High Points

• Watching a group of jugglers practice late Saturday night. Doug and I stopped to watch them, and they appreciated having an audience. It was especially fun when they started juggling themselves -- three jugglers moving around each other (while continuing to juggle three balls apiece) in the classic three-object pattern worked out horizontally on the floor. It took some doing to get right, but the effect was delightful, and we encouraged them to polish it for use onstage.
• Running out of writer's business cards for the first time. I print these up myself in ten-card sheets. Previously one sheet has been sufficient per con -- no longer! A small but immensely gratifying sign of progress.
• Observing the elaborate, almost mazelike koi pond at the hotel, with its armada of vast carp inclined to beg for treats. Wouldn't it be fun if they sold fish food for a brief period each day? Or taught the pudgy little critters to jump through hoops? (Yes, koi can learn to do tricks.)
• Meeting up with Connie Gilbert, an old friend, who is currently learning to make lampworked glass beads -- and I am getting into an art form that incorporates those, so we spent quite a while chatting about beads and handicrafts and other such fun.
• Getting feedback on the macaw-feather hair ornament I made last week and wore on Saturday and Sunday. It took me two days just to make the fingerwoven ribbons for that thing, what with all the (self-mobile, cantankerous, gremlin-fathered ... but gorgeous) blending filament I used. Several people made gratifying "ooh, ahh" noises, and I had two folks ask me for a business card after I mentioned that I'm now making feathercrafts for sale.
• Watching half a dozen people play an insanely complicated but captivating game in the con suite ... using a bunch of plastic cups. Fen are so easily amused, at times.

Yes, this weekend had some flaws, but the perks really paid off.

A Brief Note of Gratitude

Here I would like to thank all the wonderful folks who came together to make WindyCon XXV the memorable experience it was. To those of you who attended the panels I sat on: thank you for being a terrific audience. Your insightful comments and questions made those hours a mosaic of happy memories and mental fireworks. To my co-panelists: you were all a delight to work with, and I hope we can do this again sometime. To the rest of the program participants: thanks for presenting great panels on topics that I personally know little or nothing about. To the organizers: thanks for putting in all the time and effort to throw a con for the rest of us. Please don't take my more negative comments the wrong way; I mean them as indications of potential improvement, not as notice that you'll never hear from me again. I fully intend to come back next year, and I really did enjoy myself at WindyCon XXV.

"Event Horizon" copyright 1998 Elizabeth Barrette.

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Art on this page is from the "Late 20th Century Dimensions" set, at Moyra's Web Jewels.

The URL for this page is http://www.worthlink.net/~ysabet/admin/ehorizon.html and it was last updated on November 22, 1998.