Con stuff

[oyceter]

I just found out today that the next WorldCon is going to be in LA!! Which means accessability! So... it's a year away of course, but I sort of wanted to test the waters to see a) if there were any other Bay Area fans who wanted to drive down there, as I hate driving by myself and b) if anyone in LA would possibly want to put me up for a couple of days.

And since I'm pre-planning, I am going to book WisCon hotel rooms! I refuse to miss this one more year -- I've missed two now (Patricia McKillip and Robin McKinley, GRRRRRR!!!!!!), and I desperately, desperately want to go. I also want to wring someone's arm and make them include more panels on anime and manga, esp. with the comics market changing so drastically.

Anyway, I really meant to say, yhlee and I have decided to share a hotel room, and I figured I'd see if there were two more people who might want to room with us too. We are nice, friendly people! I can vouch that I am no axe-murderer, and neither is yhlee; Yoon, however, may be a sai-murderer. And I may sic roommates and force ten gigs or so of really bad, out-of-focus pictures of my rats on them.

I've also been going to a con the past few days for work, but one on the industry and the like. It's quite odd. I thought it'd be all professional and stuff, which it sort of is, but there are also the public camp-out spots with people desperately wi-fi-ing, along with late people, stupid panel questions, boring panels, and everything. And the final panel/clinic I went to today reminded me completely of a fan con (of which I have only gone to one, so am not expert). It was just a group of people gathered who were very interested in the web dev world; everyone talking knew certain jargon-ish terms and there was fond laughter about things like stupid linking practices or jokes about Google. I felt all fannish! Except, you know, professionally so. Anyway, it was a rather interesting brain space to be in.

Also, apparently I am an internet Fan and there is an internet Fandom, probably composed of people who read Wired and debate about file-sharing and web page best practices and whether or not Google's PageRank is a sign of the impending apocalypse or not. I bet there are even giant fandom wars on Creative Commons and whether external links should be in the same window or go to a pop-up.

But anyhow, parts of the conference were really boring, but the last panel got me really excited! Usability! Navigation! The annoyance of using unclear link text (my pet peeve)! Stupid shopping cart design!

There is a small tech geek inside me after all. Unfortunately, said small tech geek is also woefully uneducated and knows nothing. The inner small tech geek still gets ridiculously excited about things like dynamically generated pages, though. To quote coffee_and_ink, "Do not mock my trained monkey joy!" (the exclamation point is my personal addition, since I can't seem to write an entry without one. There are just so many exciting things though! Also, trained monkey joy! How is that not of the good?)

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Well, we're going, but we're thinking of flying to optimize the fannish time. Plus, our costumes this time will not involve large items.

I'll let you know as it gets closer and budgets get more real than idle thoughts.

[fresne.livejournal.com]

Wait that was me. Sigh. I must remember to login before I wander.

[oyceter]

Cool! And costumes! So nifty!