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Belated Con Report
17 years ago
Sorry, would have posted sooner but when you work as many hours as I do, you don't have much time for most other stuff.
Anyway, left for the con Friday evening after getting up at 4:30AM for work. Didn't have to wake up that early but originally we had planned for me to come into the office a few hours early to help with a program launch. Unfortunately even though they found somebody else to do it my internal clock still woke me up at exactly the time I was should have if I was still going to do that project. Anyway it was a long exhausting day at work after which I left for the con and got there at about 9PMish. I got settled and mingled a bit, got to bed at about 4:30AM, so hurray for being up 24 hours.
Saturday was my first day at the con, quickly registered and went off to do my panel. It was fairly successful. Had an entire suitcase full of stuff to give out and I had so much that I still have some left over for the next con. There were about 35 people at the panel, there should be more next year because they said that they would put flyer's up advertising the panel outside of the gaming rooms. I felt the panel was a bit dry because It was just me by myself reading 12 pages of a speech, and since I didn't really have time to practice it didn't go as smoothly as it could. Now 12 pages is a whole lot to sit through and swallow from just one person, I think that there should have been at least one other industry fur up with me and we could have traded off making everything easier to listen to and digest. I think for next year I will shave just a bit off to make it a bit shorter. A lot of questions were asked, I answered most of them and several audience members with experience with the rest of the questions asked piped in and gave their input. They had a new thing this year where we had people fill out cards after the panel to describe how entertaining, useful, etc the panel was. I read over the cards afterwards and it was about 95% positive. A couple of folks thought the speech was too long which I can't deny in the least. One industry snob though commented on his card that you could just get better information online. Seems like he was so busy having his nose up in the air that he missed the entire point of the panel. It was titled "Introduction to the game industry" not "Advanced game design theory". This was a very basic introduction as to how you would go about getting the ball rolling for an industry job. Also the internet comment.. come on, this was a speech at a con, what did he expect me to say? Would he have rather that I walked in with a laptop opened it to Wikipedia and then said, alright I'm done figure the rest out your own damn selves. But over all it was very positive.
Saturday evening I had my first and last case of con drama. Can't be a con without con drama now can it? Well kind of put a damper on my con, but I'm still trying to clear things up and work them out, though the other person involved doesn't even want to talk to me and has blocked me on AIM since the con..
Sunday was mainly relaxation, visiting with friends, wandering the con. I brought my Aperture Science Weighted Companion Cube for shits and giggles and walked around with it on Sunday. People went apeshit over it even more than I imagined they would which was fun. I'll probably bring it with me to other cons for fun. At about 7PM I had to pack up and leave because my flight back was at 9PM.
That was pretty much the con for me. Two days, some fun, some drama, and not enough time spent to really hang out. All in all what a con generally is.
Here are some pictures;
http://s16.photobucket.com/albums/b.....aniard/FC2008/
P.S. Oh and if anybody wonders what that picture of me with all those girls is there is a short story behind that.
I was in the airport waiting for my flight home when a group of cheerleaders ran up screaming OMG it's MYSPACE TOM! For some reason they were convinced I was this myspace Tom that I'd never heard of before. They were hysterical wanting pictures with me and such. I explained to them that I'm not only not Myspace Tom, I don't even have a Myspace account, which is ironic seeing as my company owns Myspace (Fox Interactive Media, which owns Myspace, GameSpy/IGN, etc). Well as hysterical girls often do, they only heard what they wanted to, "My company owns Myspace." and commenced screaming, "His company owns Myspace, see he admits it, he IS Myspace TOM!"
It was a very funny situation, but I was eventually able to sort it all out and we ended up chatting for an hour while I waited for my flight. And they still wanted pictures with me anyway.
So when I got home I decided to look up who this Myspace Tom was, I got my answer, but also one of the first results I got was this very funny video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXEfPFdll8Q
Upright Citizens Brigade FTW!
Anyway, left for the con Friday evening after getting up at 4:30AM for work. Didn't have to wake up that early but originally we had planned for me to come into the office a few hours early to help with a program launch. Unfortunately even though they found somebody else to do it my internal clock still woke me up at exactly the time I was should have if I was still going to do that project. Anyway it was a long exhausting day at work after which I left for the con and got there at about 9PMish. I got settled and mingled a bit, got to bed at about 4:30AM, so hurray for being up 24 hours.
Saturday was my first day at the con, quickly registered and went off to do my panel. It was fairly successful. Had an entire suitcase full of stuff to give out and I had so much that I still have some left over for the next con. There were about 35 people at the panel, there should be more next year because they said that they would put flyer's up advertising the panel outside of the gaming rooms. I felt the panel was a bit dry because It was just me by myself reading 12 pages of a speech, and since I didn't really have time to practice it didn't go as smoothly as it could. Now 12 pages is a whole lot to sit through and swallow from just one person, I think that there should have been at least one other industry fur up with me and we could have traded off making everything easier to listen to and digest. I think for next year I will shave just a bit off to make it a bit shorter. A lot of questions were asked, I answered most of them and several audience members with experience with the rest of the questions asked piped in and gave their input. They had a new thing this year where we had people fill out cards after the panel to describe how entertaining, useful, etc the panel was. I read over the cards afterwards and it was about 95% positive. A couple of folks thought the speech was too long which I can't deny in the least. One industry snob though commented on his card that you could just get better information online. Seems like he was so busy having his nose up in the air that he missed the entire point of the panel. It was titled "Introduction to the game industry" not "Advanced game design theory". This was a very basic introduction as to how you would go about getting the ball rolling for an industry job. Also the internet comment.. come on, this was a speech at a con, what did he expect me to say? Would he have rather that I walked in with a laptop opened it to Wikipedia and then said, alright I'm done figure the rest out your own damn selves. But over all it was very positive.
Saturday evening I had my first and last case of con drama. Can't be a con without con drama now can it? Well kind of put a damper on my con, but I'm still trying to clear things up and work them out, though the other person involved doesn't even want to talk to me and has blocked me on AIM since the con..
Sunday was mainly relaxation, visiting with friends, wandering the con. I brought my Aperture Science Weighted Companion Cube for shits and giggles and walked around with it on Sunday. People went apeshit over it even more than I imagined they would which was fun. I'll probably bring it with me to other cons for fun. At about 7PM I had to pack up and leave because my flight back was at 9PM.
That was pretty much the con for me. Two days, some fun, some drama, and not enough time spent to really hang out. All in all what a con generally is.
Here are some pictures;
http://s16.photobucket.com/albums/b.....aniard/FC2008/
P.S. Oh and if anybody wonders what that picture of me with all those girls is there is a short story behind that.
I was in the airport waiting for my flight home when a group of cheerleaders ran up screaming OMG it's MYSPACE TOM! For some reason they were convinced I was this myspace Tom that I'd never heard of before. They were hysterical wanting pictures with me and such. I explained to them that I'm not only not Myspace Tom, I don't even have a Myspace account, which is ironic seeing as my company owns Myspace (Fox Interactive Media, which owns Myspace, GameSpy/IGN, etc). Well as hysterical girls often do, they only heard what they wanted to, "My company owns Myspace." and commenced screaming, "His company owns Myspace, see he admits it, he IS Myspace TOM!"
It was a very funny situation, but I was eventually able to sort it all out and we ended up chatting for an hour while I waited for my flight. And they still wanted pictures with me anyway.
So when I got home I decided to look up who this Myspace Tom was, I got my answer, but also one of the first results I got was this very funny video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXEfPFdll8Q
Upright Citizens Brigade FTW!
