Partially coherent thoughts about alt.polycon 12.

I'm still tired, and my cold is worse, so I'm not sure how brilliant and complete this is going to be. But I wanted to get some thoughts about apc12 down before the memories fade.

I enjoyed myself immensely, and I'm so delighted that other people had a good time. (Although, actually, on that front, I seem to be alternating between "proud" and "convinced that I personally did nothing and it was purely the unparalleled excellence of my concom that made it all come off so well.")

It was so good to see everyone. If I told you more than four times how happy I was that you were there, I apologize for the repetition - but the most frequently-occurring thought I had really was "Yay! ______ is here!" I hadn't seen most alt.polyites since Toronto, which was, um, August of 2003? And there were new people there I had never met, such as eeyorerin (with whom I got to have some great long conversations, yay!), and people I had only ever met for 30 seconds, such as the lovely, fascinating, and possessing-the-best-laugh-ever lcohen. So many great people! And not enough time, of course. There never is.

The most surprising thing about the weekend, for me, was how cherished I felt. A number of people brought me completely unexpected gifts - for example, dragon3 gave me a gorgeous ceramic gecko, because he knew I'd wanted to have a gecko at the con. kalmn organized a Secret Plot that culminated in the presentation of a beautiful silver-and-copper otter pin. There were gifts for the Li'l Critter and gifts for Michael and I as incipient parents. And then there were all the people encouraging me to sit down, bringing me drinks and treats of food, coming up at exactly the right moment to hold my hand or give me a hug... all weekend, I felt surrounded by loving care. It was beautiful.

There were some frustrating missteps with the hotel - the consuite wasn't available on Friday when we were told it would be (although we eventually got moved into another room ten stories higher up, which had a much better view, so that was just fine), the promised flip chart and markers never arrived despite repeated queries, there were ventilation problems in the programming rooms all weekend, an unexpected $100 charge was added to the brunch bill (which I managed to get removed again, fortunately), and the food for the brunch wasn't labeled with its ingredients, even though the contract spelled that out as a requirement and we confirmed it in person three different times. But in general, the hotel staff were helpful and friendly, the rooms were lovely, and the consuite was perfect for our needs. I'm still glad we chose the Tremont Plaza - I suspect that the problems we had would've been just as likely to occur at any other hotel, whereas the flexibility and courtesy might not have been.

Okay, I need to go to work - more later. I'll close with an explanation of my con badge.

Badge decoding: ( Read more... )

Alt.polycon 12 report: extended dance remix.

One thing I have to say in favor of apc12, compared to the other alt.polycons I've been to: it was much, much easier to get there. Compared to the cross-country flight required for apc7, or the long hot road trip to apc10, the five-minute drive to apc12 was a delight. I don't know why more con chairs don't take these location issues into consideration. *grin* ( Read more... )