Minicon 40

[mmerriam]

Despite being sick the entire time, Minicon 40 was the best Minicon I've ever attended. I really had a lot of fun this weekend. Spent some time with mrissa, pameladean, and dd_b during the convention, which was delightful. Enjoyed meeting carbonel and dlandon on Saturday, and cakmpls, ckd, and truepenny at the LJ party, which also included magentamn, who I've meet before at another event, and dsgood from The Twin Cities Speculative Fiction Writers Meetup. I also saw laurel, but never managed to say hello for some reason. I'll have to fix that next time we are at the same event. I also managed to visit a bit with minnehaha K and B, which was nice. And thank you to mplscorwin for making the nifty lj name tags!

I went to more readings than usual this year, including Jane Yolen, Hilary Moon Murphy, pameladean, and Adam Stemple, all which were delightful.

One thing I did notice this year. Most of the panels I attended were not for the panel information itself, but to either see someone I had never seen before, (Jane Yolen and Terry Pratchett, for example), or to support someone I knew on the panel (such as Adam Stemple and Hilary Moon Murphy). So I think next year I'm going to try something new at Minicon.

I'm going to volunteer.

There has to be some job the visually impaired guy can do. I'm sure they can find something useful for me to help with, within my abilities.

Some of the highlights of my Con:

Terry Pratchett musing about how the witches in his books would feel about the New Age section of a bookstore: "Witchcraft is not the same as shopping."

A sight you don't see everyday: The first time I saw Steven Brust at the con, he was in swim trunks. You don't see that everyday.

The delighted look on Jane Yolen's face when I went up to her and gushed in my fanboy voice, "Oh my god, it's Adam Stemple's mother!" She just laughed and laughed.

Paying for whiskey to get Folk Underground to play El Paso even though I didn't want to hear the song, because others did. (Though I must mention it was careswen who came up with the idea to bribe them with whiskey in the first place.)

I'm sure I'll think of more stuff later, but for now I need to take my sick self and go stretch out on the couch. I bought some books at Minicon, you see...

In Peace
Michael

Comments

[magentamn.livejournal.com]

You could probably do things to be helpful BEFORE the convention. I tend to do that because I don't know if I'll be up to helping during the con.

Phone calls. How do you feel about making phone calls?

This is totally unofficial, since I am not on concom. But let the organizers know you're interested.

[mmerriam.livejournal.com]

I'm good with phone calls. I also thought they might need pre-con help, such as putting together publications (sorting pages and stapling) or making decorations, that I could help with. Besides being a writer, I'm a veteran food handler and a former freight logistic coordinator, so I should have some skills that apply. I have some usable vision, so as long as I don't have to move quickly in a chaotic setting, I'm pretty useful still. This was my fourth Minicon and it has been a lot of fun each time. I feel like it's time to give something back.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

That "putting together publications (sorting pages and stapling)" is the fine fannish art of Collating, and we do it at the work parties on Wednesday or Thursday every year. We collated the Jim Young chapbook and the program book on Wednesday.

Signing up volunteers (it's a pyramid scheme!) is something that you could easily do. Also valuable is knowing the answers to things so that you can tell people what they want to know. You get that by hanging around. There's more; have to think about it.

K.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Oh, PS: nice to visit with y'all, too!

K.