Boskone 43, a shark's-eye view (part 2 of ?): Saturday

[ckd]

Well, that's certainly suitable music; thank you, iTunes.

So, Saturday begins with the clock radio going off, so that I can make it over to the con in time to sign up for Cory's Sunday kaffeeklatsch and go to his talk. I make it over to the bus stop, see a bus coming, and within 90 seconds I'm on the #1 and headed for the con. I arrive at-con before 0930, mostly awake and at least vertical, then head to information to see if the kaffeeklatsch signup sheets are out early (Boskone uses a 24-hour advance rule so that the first person to arrive on Friday doesn't just book the entire set). They weren't, so I decided to wait; at about 0945 they decided that it wasn't worth making me wait, though I was still willing to, and they put out the signup sheets for the 1000 Sunday slot. I signed up and headed off to Cory's talk.

The schedule said Republic B. I and many other folks were in Republic B. Cory, on the other hand, was in the Grand Ballroom, which wasn't even one of the rooms Boskone had. Someone came in to Rep B and said "if you're waiting for Cory, he's across the hall" and there was a mass exodus. After some additional confusion and an intervention by someone on Program (I thought there had been a planned room change; Cory thought he was in Rep B, because the signs weren't too obvious) we all traipsed back into Rep B and the talk began, slightly delayed.

The talk was his anti-DRM talk, which I'd just heard at Harvard on Wednesday, but with some changes and tweaks based on the different audience; the Harvard talk had been sponsored by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, the Harvard Computer Society, and Harvard Free Culture. There was, accordingly, less talk at Boskone about how university network admins were being forced to act like copyright cops and more about how libraries and archives were harmed by DRM; also, Cory's a good enough speaker that hearing a nearly-the-same-thing presentation by him isn't a hardship.

After that, I headed to the sparsely-attended (approximately 1:1 panelist:audience ratio) panel on the Interplanetary Internet. Seth Breidbart had been added to the panel after the prelim schedule had been posted, so we wound up with both folks who had the deep space probe experience and Seth's Internet knowledge, which made for a really good panel. Probably not a panel for everyone, but I sure enjoyed it. I think many folks opted for the Jane Austen panel, which also sounded like a lot of fun (ConTiVo! ConTiVo!!!), or Myths and the Mainstream, or Is Science Fiction Necessary? (Where is my quadrilocation power?)

I had three possible 1200 panels, but the "get some food" option won out instead. After returning from a food court run, I entered the dealers room where I was viciously attacked by a pair of scalzi's books from Larry Smith's table, causing me to take several points of damage to my VISA card.

I then headed over to the Political SF panel, missing Genius Loci: How Setting Influences and Structures the Story (another advertisement for ConTiVo) for that. Tough, tough decision. I was pleased to hear Mack Reynolds get brought up as an example, though.

I took a bit of a panel break, checking in on gaming, peeking at the art show, and then heading to the con suite before the 1500 kaffeeklatsch with pnh and tnh. I wound up sitting in on the last bit of the 1400 kaffeeklatsch with naominovik, whose Temeraire (UK title)/His Majesty's Dragon (US title) sounds really interesting. I still need to read the sampler I picked up at the con.

At 1500, the oversubscribed kaffeeklatsch began, and had the idea density you'd expect from a bunch of Making Light commenters all around a small table. The hour passed far too quickly.

After that, I wandered back over toward gaming, while letting my brain finish working its way back down to a normal level of stimulation. Due to the tournament, there weren't many free gamers, so I didn't manage to get a game of Shadows Over Camelot going; I'll bring it along to SGS on Friday. Accordingly, I headed off to the 1500 blogging panel.

This was another high-quality panel. kathryncramer talked about how she'd been able to leverage her blogging to put together Google Earth resources to help with Katrina and Pakistan earthquake relief efforts, while using Making Light and Boing Boing as sources of technical savvy when needed. Blogging is still a force multiplier. Cory plugged the EFF and related blogs; I mentioned Freedom to Tinker and Lawrence Lessig's blog, and he added Bruce Schneier's. (I'd link, but the wrist is griping...commenters, please add direct links.) Kathryn's Google Earth work made the cover of Nature!

I then meandered out into the hallway to see who was interested in dinner. Various groups seemed to have been pre-formed, so I continued on to the con suite, wherein I heard Geoffrey Landis mention the word "sushi". Always happy to have sushi, I asked if I could join the group, and we decided on the very nearby Gyuhama. Much sushi and enjoyable conversation later (Geoff mentioned the AIAA conference's talk by Brian Binnie about SpaceShipOne) we returned to the con.

I spent some time in the con suite chatting with folks as they came by, then wandered out into the halls once again to see who was around. I eventually wound up heading to the party floor with veejane, farwing, and someone else whose name I have forgotten; I wandered through various bid parties, spent some time chatting with cheshyre in the KC bid party, and finally once again headed home before the T stopped running. (This time, at least, there was no service disruption on the Red Line.) I never made it to the awards ceremony or the Saturday Night Thing...yet another situation that called for bilocation.

Comments

[gingicat]

Was good to see you on Sunday.

BTW, what was the RSS reader you mentioned to Paul? I'm seriously considering using it as an LJ-reading tool, after just catching up with 30 hours of LJ.

[ckd]

FeedDemon (Windows) or NetNewsWire (Mac). You get whichever one you want, set it up, and then use something like this OPML generator to make a file to load into it with a list of your friends. To get locked posts, you need an OPML generator that adds auth=digest to the feeds as needed, or you can hand-edit the file if you need to.

[lesliet-ma.livejournal.com]

Nice seeing you at Boskone and thanks for helping finish my last turn of St. Petersburg. (Although Alex tells me that you didn't play it as cut-throat as you normally would have because you thought I wouldn't have done it that way. Little do you know...bwah ha ha,,,)

[ckd]

It wasn't so much not playing as cut-throat as realizing that it would just be piling on for the sake of piling on. The number of points difference it would make were just not meaningful.

[hr-macgirl.livejournal.com]

I'll agree, ckd can play games very cut-throat. Fair warning to those who might (otherwise) be tempted into a "nice friendly game". :-)