Denvention

I.e., the World Science Fiction Convention, which held in Denver over this past weekend under the name Denvention.

I went, I drifted along, I moped around, I ran into some people, Leonore and I ate dinner with Daniel, Becca, and John Stith on Friday evening, I was on a panel on Friday and attended a couple of panels on Saturday, I came home. It was an odd experience. I think it's better to go to a convention of this level (i.e., World SF Con, World Horror Con, World Fantasy Con) when it's in another city. That's much more expensive, obviously, but you're in the convention hotel and you spend much more time at the actual con. As it was, I had my usual weekend chores -- mainly, all the grocery shopping -- and I squeezed the con in as best I could. When I had my doubts about going downtown to the con, as I did this morning, it was easiest simply not to go.

Denver won the bid to host the 2008 Worldcon two years ago. When I heard that, I was excited, convinced that I would be much further along professionally than I turned out to be. Clearly, I'm not there. For a while, I wasn't sure I'd attend the con at all, but then I decided that that would be silly, given that it's here in town.

On the bright side, I saw various people I normally only see at cons, and some people I didn't expect to see at all, such as a former coworker from back when I was a software developer (happy days!). On the negative side, I missed a lot of people I had hoped to see, and I heard grim news about some local people, leaving me depressed and guilty because my complaint is that I'm not rich and famous, whereas their situations are much more serious. On the third, and grayish, side, I was able to give useful advice to another local acquaintance about reentering tech writing and even about the writing biz. ("Shoot yourself now.") (Kidding.) (Mostly.)

I could ramble on, but I don't want to get portentous, and I'm afraid that would be the next phase of this.