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May 04, 2004

Home from plokta.con

Steven said wistfully on the way home "Well, I enjoyed that. But I think I enjoy small cons that other people run more." And I don't think we can quite manage Convivial, which looks like a marvellous convention; the idea of three full days of Victorian dress up is a bit too much for me to cope with.

The house is full of pirate tat.

We put me on far, far too many programme items. Bad Alison. To the extent that one of the other caballeros got pissed off at me yesterday morning because they were looking for me and my powerbook and both were on the programme, I didn't get any time to prepare a couple of things properly, and I visibly frayed at least three times over the weekend because of lack of chill time. For Interaction, we are returning to the traditional and perfectly sensible rule that the cabal get to be on one program item each.

Charles Stross was a hard-working, entertaining and amiable guest. On Saturday, Cory Doctorow arrived, interviewed Charlie, did a pre-arranged interview with a journalist, held forth on a panel abut intellectual property rights and left again, all in the space of about four hours. On Sunday, Diana Wynne Jones popped over and sat around in the bar chatting to us all. Thanks to all.

Lots of people gave me presents! Thank you. All moose-related apart from a copy of Diana's new book.

Most of the programme worked well; I was particularly proud of the Photoshop panel, which managed to be quite serious about fan art despite technical problems.

The mac laptop count rose again; at least seven this time.

Posted by Alison at May 4, 2004 08:37 AM

Comments

I wish I could have been there. Really.

As your Jimminy Cricket, I can't, of course, forget how many people I knew in British fandom who used to tell me what an ass Charlie Stross was. What a striver, a pretender, a suckup, a guy trying to do something, an American-wannabe, practically a Thatcherite, it seems, given his evil ambition.

Hey, as I recall, that used to be the Groupthink on him.

Of course, I may be misremembering.

The shame is that there were (are) so many other talented folk in Scottish fandom. Where has the ethic of "success is evil, and, by the way, death to Thatcher" brought them? (I don't ask this as a fan of Thatcher; I ask this as a point regarding fanhistory.)

Posted by: Gary Farber at May 4, 2004 12:30 PM

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