One of the things I enjoy most about Con are the panels. Yeah, the costumes and parties are cool and all that, but I also come for the panels. In a good, well run panel, you can actually learn quite a bit, participate in discussions and meet people with similar interests. In a poorly run panel, the only thing you learn is that there is a reason for having a moderator who actually cares about the subject at hand.
I’m not going to point any fingers and name names, but many of the panels I went to today were not well run at all. People asking stupid questions, panelist meandering through unrelated subjects, entire topics being misunderstood and abandoned… Not a good day at the con at all.
But then came the drinking and the people watching, which is always fun.
To cap off the night, the wife and I decided to duck into a concert. 99% of live performances by bands are not intended for people who like lyrics and don’t already know the songs by heart. The music is cranked so loud that the only thing you know for sure about the words is that the song does have lyrics, and sometimes you can make out the tones, but actual phrases are lost beneath the thrumming beat and the wailing guitars.
Oh well… there’s always drinking and people watching…