Better late than never, the Loncon3 report
Sep. 7th, 2014 04:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenayAs anyone following me on Twitter or Tumblr would have noticed, last month I went to England for my first Worldcon: Loncon3. And then I failed to write about it UNTIL NOW.
This is mostly because it was huge and overwhelming and awesome, and it's taken me this long to digest it and get homesick for it. I got to fulfill a long-term dream and actually watch the Hugos live. I met Seanan McGuire. I found out that Connie Willis and George RR Martin and utterly hilarious if you put them on a panel together.
Plus, I got to visit with lots of old friends and hopefully make some new ones.
I suppose this should really be put in something approaching chronological order, shouldn't it?
For various reason, I flew out to the con a day early and didn't leave until the day after it ended, so I was effectively in conspace for almost a week. It's really hard to get back to normal after that.
I flew out from Canada on Tuesday evening, arriving in London the following morning. Air Canada now flies into terminal 2 and holy shit, that is the biggest terminal EVER. Pack your hiking shoes, you'll need them for the walk from the gate to arrivals. But on the up side, it has a very large and lovely Cafe Nero so brekkie was easily achieved.
Getting across London to the Ramada Docklands was much smoother than anticipated and I even got to meet a couple of Worldconners on the DLR, so we hunted down the hotel and convention centre together. The rest of the day was mostly about unpacking, resting, checking in so that I knew what I was doing with the ops team, and hanging out with the lovely Gryphon.
Thursday was the first day of the con proper, and I was on the opening shift with the operations team. It was a mixture of huge fun and contained chaos, but it felt like we didn't do too badly. My biggest problem was that I was helping the security team at the entrance to the fan village, and people kept seeing my hi vis vest and thinking I knew things.
Hint: I did not know things. Apart from where the auditorium was, because the really big sign just behind me was a good clue :-D
After my shift ended, I made sure to do a complete tour of everything so that I'd know where stuff was the next time a member asked. Nobody asked me where stuff was after that morning. But at least I found the first programme item I wanted to see: The Changing Face of the Urban Fantastic. It was a terrific discussion (featuring Paul Cornell, Robin Hobb, and others) about urban fantasy and the changing trends, covering subjects like how to hide immortality ("Be really old, nobody notices how long old people stick around") and why vampires who eat broccoli are boring.
Then it was onto the big panel high-light of the day (for me): Connie Willis and George RR Martin in conversation, moderated by Paul Cornell. Poor Paul had to make a lightning fast dash across the Capital Suite to get there in time.
I'd mostly gone to it for Connie Willis, only realising (maybe a day or two before the con) that it was Martin that most of the people back at home would be interested in hearing about. I am not good at "selling cons to non-fans", okay? It was a fantastic panel and remains a highlight. They're fascinating people and they've known each other for thirty years, so they've got banter and hilarious stories, but without ever making the audience feel excluded.
Plus, they mock each other for the body counts in their novels. It was brilliant.
After that, I checked into the opening ceremony, hit a panel on Authors Who Pseud (fascinating insights into why and how they do it, featuring Seanan McGuire and Robin Hobb among others) and had a bite to eat in the fan village before going to a Tolkien quiz and finishing the night with a play. It was a slightly packed schedule :-)
Friday was just as busy. The first two programme items I was actually involved with were back to back in the morning: Geek Girls and Wonder Women, a get together for female-identifying fannish people, followed by Fanfic Through the Decades. The first one went well and there was a fun hour of women meeting and chatting, which was lovely. The second item didn't go badly, but the fan activities tent where it was held was in the middle of the fan village, which was a very noisy location. As much as I loved the village, it would have been better for panel items where people needed to talk to be held elsewhere.
I had a quick lunch break, and then it was into the fray for a panel on Teen Romance, which was fascinating and I came away with far too many book recs.
Feeling a wee bit wonky after making a crucial lunch mistake (salad is not enough for conventions, okay?), I took a brownie break in the fan village, where I got to meet and natter withbookmonster and Antiqueight. They're both utterly delightful and we had a marvellous time.
I rushed off for Seanan McGuire's reading after that, which also turned out to be an impromptu book signing afterward, and I think that I even managed complete sentences when it was my turn :-) Then it was into the bar to chat with Redemption friends...for half an hour, before heading over to the ops tent for my shift on the radio desk.
Which turned into a rather epic shift and I didn't get back to the hotel until 3am. This wouldn't have been a problem except...
On Saturday, I also did the opening shift on the operations desk. Um, yeah, SO MUCH CAFFEINE.
I took a short break in my hotel room after that, quietly reading and putting down a few words while I recharged a bit, and then set out to grab some lunch and attend the Daughters of Buffy panel. This was absolutely excellent, delving into issues around diversity and representation and why it's so fucking important. For a lot of people in the room, Buffy was the first place they saw strong female characters of different types, non-het sexualities portrayed positively, and a whole bunch of other great things. Even though Whedon isn't perfect, that show was where so many of us started to understand that women could be amazing and hold their own and we wanted more of it.
The sad thing is that we're still asking for it.
In a lot of ways, it was exactly the right panel to see just before appearing on my last one: Feminism and Sexism in Fandom. I got to appear with four other amazing women and discuss issues of diversity in media (again) and its importance in normalising diversity in real life. We covered the harassment women get at cons, the frustration of seeing female-centric fiction--and particularly fanfic featuring female characters--dismissed and given so little love. We discussed intersectionality: being a white woman is hard, adding another element (such as race) makes life even harder. It was, in short, a panel that could have gone on three times as long and we would still have had things to talk about.
What really impressed me was how well-attended it was, and how many men were in the audience. We could have filled that room three times over. People were standing and sitting in the aisles, despite the security's best attempts at chasing them out. We really, really needed a bigger room for it. As it was, I'd say we had well over two hundred people. And one third of that audience was male. If we're going to change things for the better, we have to engage the males of the fandom and this kind of panel worked really well for that.
I know it was a bit of a Feminism 101 for some people, but for a lot of people in that room, it was eye-opening. I brought up the fact that Seanan McGuire regularly gets asked when Toby Daye (female half-faerie) will be raped. Apparently it's impossible for women to be strong without having rape recovery or fighting off a rapist in their background. So many people (particularly the male portion) had never heard this happens or that it's a problem for writers with major female characters.
For the rest of the con, I had people approaching me every day (usually male) to ask about issues we'd discussed and learn more. All of them said it was the first time they'd heard about a lot of the problems and they wanted to know how to make things better. It made me really proud of what we did in that room.
I very nearly went to some more panels that day. Almost.
paranoidangel was attending Loncon3 that day, so we met up after the panel. We had this brilliant plan that we'd chat for a while and then she'd head out to another panel and catch a train home after.
*bwahahaha*
Yeah, no panels happened. We thought about one, but it was full. So we got supper together instead. And basically talked for five hours straight and concluded we need at least a whole day (but maybe more) next time I'm over because we still had so much to talk about after five hours. It was brilliant.
And then PA caught a train and I went to bed ridiculously early because I'd had three hours sleep and I was exhausted.
On Sunday, I had two goals: the Hugos, and seeing "Authors Accept and Encourage Fanworks Too". Both were done, yay me!
The panel was brilliant. Absolutely fantastic. I particularly enjoyed Seanan McGuire's explanation of why authorial intent means fuckall after something is published and that's why fanworks are awesome and shouldn't be controlled by the creators. There is a reason she's my author crush :-) Patrick Rothfuss surprised me by being incredibly good-humoured and loving fanworks, having come from a background of not understanding why anyone would do it until he did it. I really wish that panel was online, because it was fantastic.
(Yes, Seanan McGuire was and is a ficcer. And she reads fic. If anyone wants to know her AO3 pseud, PM me.)
After a quick lunch with Bookmonster, I was on to a panel about "The Fantastic Now", which was basically a discussion of SF/F in contemporary settings. Awesome.
I had another ops shift after that, on the radio desk, and I'm torn between whether reuniting a daughter with her lost, elderly mother or warming up a lizard was my favourite part of the shift. Radio desk was such a great job, even when I was dealing with four things at once and they were all urgent.
After I finished,, it was hanging out with Bookmonster and having some supper, which was a nice break. Then I rushed off to change for the Hugos before going to an Elizabeth Bear reading. Bear reads really well, and she's a lovely person :-)
And then, HUGOs. Katwhen lent kilbswhitecrow to me for the evening and we met up with Ian and Fiona, so I had some great company. Getting to be there and see the awards given, without having a livestream break down halfway, was brilliant. Plus, I got to see Mary Robinette Kowal in her amazing Regency ballgown, which remains a highlight. We headed out to the bar to party the night away, although I turned into Cinders not long after midnight and had to hit the hay. It's exhausting doing a con like this.
Monday was the last day, and I was flagging a little by then. I'd been taking daily "This is my t-shirt for easier identification!" pics and tweeting them, and doing that last one felt sadder than I expected. I'm blaming the tiredness.
I had a gentle start to the morning (I managed to word every day of the con, and that was my highest word count) and hit my first panel at 11am. "The YA Gender Gap" was interesting, discussing the whys and hows of the fact that girls read fiction by male authors but boys don't real fiction by or about girls. It vered off into general ideas about the way we gender children and children's products and how we can try to work on that, which was familiar territory to me but interesting to hear other viewpoints.
I hung out with Bookmonster and Antiqueight afterwards, which was mostly us slumping and moaning about our exhaustion levels!
We did make it to a panel about Robin Hobb's influence on assassin portrayals in SF/F, which was very interesting (more Patrick Rothfuss being lovely was a bonus), but I think we were all a little tired and glazed by then. We had a quick drink before they had to head out for trains, bitterly regretting that they hadn't known about the Dead Dog Party tradition. NEXT TIME.
I signed up for an extra ops shift because I knew they were busy and some of the Monday shifts hadn't been filled, so I spent two hours carrying lost items up to the Excel's information centre. Heh.
After that, it was time for one last supper with Gryphon at the hotel, before heading back for the Dead Dog. So much hanging out with people. I finally got to actually sit down and chat with Emma England. I hung out with my ops guys. We tried to drink all the free beer that had been donated to us, before finally letting the members help us out.
(A notice went out on the PA, causing an instant herd of stampeding con goers...who formed a neat line at the desk :-D)
And then the convention centre shutdown at midnight, so the party had to end and with it, Loncon3.
My dad met me at the hotel later and helped me to lug everything across London and down to the Home Counties, where I had a lovely week of visiting and touristing and recovering. More on that another day. Maybe.
In conclusion, I had a brilliant time. Excellent. Would do again. It was my first time working on operations, and I loved every minute of it. Even the hectic ones. I'd definitely do that again...which is good, because I've already been volunteered onto the team for Nine Worlds. Heh.
I can't speak to other peoples' experience of Loncon, but for me, it was excellent. I expected something fustier and filled with intolerant old dinosaurs, even though we'd been trying not to do that, and what I found was bright, fun, vibrant, and filled with great people and new ideas. A large part of this, I suspect, is because of how I chose to do the con.
Most of the panels I went to were not the kind that attracted that old dinosaur element: diversity, representation, urban fantasy, transformational works. I had a big group of friends there, and I met some new people. All of them are lovely. It felt like a world away from the Eastercon I attended a few years ago. I'd love to do another Worldcon, but only if it's like that. Sasquan doesn't sound like my kind of Worldcon. I might see if Dublin 2019 happens, and whether I can swing doing that one.
It probably helped that I didn't do it coming off Nine Worlds, which is a very, very different kind of con. I didn't have 9W to compare to and, for me, Loncon3 was one of the best cons I've been to. My opinion on some things might change after seeing 9W next year, but we'll see.
The other factor that might have helped, was being on the ops team and seeing the staff side of things for months beforehand. I knew how much work we'd put into the code of conduct and the team supporting it. I knew how many knots we'd tied ourselves in trying to make the con safe and welcoming to everyone. And I think we largely succeeded, which makes me feel incredibly proud to have been a part of it.
In short, roll on a Worldcon run by the next horrible, liberal, diversity-conscious, BLOODY FANTASTIC team to stick their necks out and try to take it on. Helsinki 2017. Dublin 2019. Let's make those happen.
This is mostly because it was huge and overwhelming and awesome, and it's taken me this long to digest it and get homesick for it. I got to fulfill a long-term dream and actually watch the Hugos live. I met Seanan McGuire. I found out that Connie Willis and George RR Martin and utterly hilarious if you put them on a panel together.
Plus, I got to visit with lots of old friends and hopefully make some new ones.
I suppose this should really be put in something approaching chronological order, shouldn't it?
For various reason, I flew out to the con a day early and didn't leave until the day after it ended, so I was effectively in conspace for almost a week. It's really hard to get back to normal after that.
I flew out from Canada on Tuesday evening, arriving in London the following morning. Air Canada now flies into terminal 2 and holy shit, that is the biggest terminal EVER. Pack your hiking shoes, you'll need them for the walk from the gate to arrivals. But on the up side, it has a very large and lovely Cafe Nero so brekkie was easily achieved.
Getting across London to the Ramada Docklands was much smoother than anticipated and I even got to meet a couple of Worldconners on the DLR, so we hunted down the hotel and convention centre together. The rest of the day was mostly about unpacking, resting, checking in so that I knew what I was doing with the ops team, and hanging out with the lovely Gryphon.
Thursday was the first day of the con proper, and I was on the opening shift with the operations team. It was a mixture of huge fun and contained chaos, but it felt like we didn't do too badly. My biggest problem was that I was helping the security team at the entrance to the fan village, and people kept seeing my hi vis vest and thinking I knew things.
Hint: I did not know things. Apart from where the auditorium was, because the really big sign just behind me was a good clue :-D
After my shift ended, I made sure to do a complete tour of everything so that I'd know where stuff was the next time a member asked. Nobody asked me where stuff was after that morning. But at least I found the first programme item I wanted to see: The Changing Face of the Urban Fantastic. It was a terrific discussion (featuring Paul Cornell, Robin Hobb, and others) about urban fantasy and the changing trends, covering subjects like how to hide immortality ("Be really old, nobody notices how long old people stick around") and why vampires who eat broccoli are boring.
Then it was onto the big panel high-light of the day (for me): Connie Willis and George RR Martin in conversation, moderated by Paul Cornell. Poor Paul had to make a lightning fast dash across the Capital Suite to get there in time.
I'd mostly gone to it for Connie Willis, only realising (maybe a day or two before the con) that it was Martin that most of the people back at home would be interested in hearing about. I am not good at "selling cons to non-fans", okay? It was a fantastic panel and remains a highlight. They're fascinating people and they've known each other for thirty years, so they've got banter and hilarious stories, but without ever making the audience feel excluded.
Plus, they mock each other for the body counts in their novels. It was brilliant.
After that, I checked into the opening ceremony, hit a panel on Authors Who Pseud (fascinating insights into why and how they do it, featuring Seanan McGuire and Robin Hobb among others) and had a bite to eat in the fan village before going to a Tolkien quiz and finishing the night with a play. It was a slightly packed schedule :-)
Friday was just as busy. The first two programme items I was actually involved with were back to back in the morning: Geek Girls and Wonder Women, a get together for female-identifying fannish people, followed by Fanfic Through the Decades. The first one went well and there was a fun hour of women meeting and chatting, which was lovely. The second item didn't go badly, but the fan activities tent where it was held was in the middle of the fan village, which was a very noisy location. As much as I loved the village, it would have been better for panel items where people needed to talk to be held elsewhere.
I had a quick lunch break, and then it was into the fray for a panel on Teen Romance, which was fascinating and I came away with far too many book recs.
Feeling a wee bit wonky after making a crucial lunch mistake (salad is not enough for conventions, okay?), I took a brownie break in the fan village, where I got to meet and natter with
bookmonster and Antiqueight. They're both utterly delightful and we had a marvellous time.I rushed off for Seanan McGuire's reading after that, which also turned out to be an impromptu book signing afterward, and I think that I even managed complete sentences when it was my turn :-) Then it was into the bar to chat with Redemption friends...for half an hour, before heading over to the ops tent for my shift on the radio desk.
Which turned into a rather epic shift and I didn't get back to the hotel until 3am. This wouldn't have been a problem except...
On Saturday, I also did the opening shift on the operations desk. Um, yeah, SO MUCH CAFFEINE.
I took a short break in my hotel room after that, quietly reading and putting down a few words while I recharged a bit, and then set out to grab some lunch and attend the Daughters of Buffy panel. This was absolutely excellent, delving into issues around diversity and representation and why it's so fucking important. For a lot of people in the room, Buffy was the first place they saw strong female characters of different types, non-het sexualities portrayed positively, and a whole bunch of other great things. Even though Whedon isn't perfect, that show was where so many of us started to understand that women could be amazing and hold their own and we wanted more of it.
The sad thing is that we're still asking for it.
In a lot of ways, it was exactly the right panel to see just before appearing on my last one: Feminism and Sexism in Fandom. I got to appear with four other amazing women and discuss issues of diversity in media (again) and its importance in normalising diversity in real life. We covered the harassment women get at cons, the frustration of seeing female-centric fiction--and particularly fanfic featuring female characters--dismissed and given so little love. We discussed intersectionality: being a white woman is hard, adding another element (such as race) makes life even harder. It was, in short, a panel that could have gone on three times as long and we would still have had things to talk about.
What really impressed me was how well-attended it was, and how many men were in the audience. We could have filled that room three times over. People were standing and sitting in the aisles, despite the security's best attempts at chasing them out. We really, really needed a bigger room for it. As it was, I'd say we had well over two hundred people. And one third of that audience was male. If we're going to change things for the better, we have to engage the males of the fandom and this kind of panel worked really well for that.
I know it was a bit of a Feminism 101 for some people, but for a lot of people in that room, it was eye-opening. I brought up the fact that Seanan McGuire regularly gets asked when Toby Daye (female half-faerie) will be raped. Apparently it's impossible for women to be strong without having rape recovery or fighting off a rapist in their background. So many people (particularly the male portion) had never heard this happens or that it's a problem for writers with major female characters.
For the rest of the con, I had people approaching me every day (usually male) to ask about issues we'd discussed and learn more. All of them said it was the first time they'd heard about a lot of the problems and they wanted to know how to make things better. It made me really proud of what we did in that room.
I very nearly went to some more panels that day. Almost.
paranoidangel was attending Loncon3 that day, so we met up after the panel. We had this brilliant plan that we'd chat for a while and then she'd head out to another panel and catch a train home after.*bwahahaha*
Yeah, no panels happened. We thought about one, but it was full. So we got supper together instead. And basically talked for five hours straight and concluded we need at least a whole day (but maybe more) next time I'm over because we still had so much to talk about after five hours. It was brilliant.
And then PA caught a train and I went to bed ridiculously early because I'd had three hours sleep and I was exhausted.
On Sunday, I had two goals: the Hugos, and seeing "Authors Accept and Encourage Fanworks Too". Both were done, yay me!
The panel was brilliant. Absolutely fantastic. I particularly enjoyed Seanan McGuire's explanation of why authorial intent means fuckall after something is published and that's why fanworks are awesome and shouldn't be controlled by the creators. There is a reason she's my author crush :-) Patrick Rothfuss surprised me by being incredibly good-humoured and loving fanworks, having come from a background of not understanding why anyone would do it until he did it. I really wish that panel was online, because it was fantastic.
(Yes, Seanan McGuire was and is a ficcer. And she reads fic. If anyone wants to know her AO3 pseud, PM me.)
After a quick lunch with Bookmonster, I was on to a panel about "The Fantastic Now", which was basically a discussion of SF/F in contemporary settings. Awesome.
I had another ops shift after that, on the radio desk, and I'm torn between whether reuniting a daughter with her lost, elderly mother or warming up a lizard was my favourite part of the shift. Radio desk was such a great job, even when I was dealing with four things at once and they were all urgent.
After I finished,, it was hanging out with Bookmonster and having some supper, which was a nice break. Then I rushed off to change for the Hugos before going to an Elizabeth Bear reading. Bear reads really well, and she's a lovely person :-)
And then, HUGOs. Katwhen lent kilbswhitecrow to me for the evening and we met up with Ian and Fiona, so I had some great company. Getting to be there and see the awards given, without having a livestream break down halfway, was brilliant. Plus, I got to see Mary Robinette Kowal in her amazing Regency ballgown, which remains a highlight. We headed out to the bar to party the night away, although I turned into Cinders not long after midnight and had to hit the hay. It's exhausting doing a con like this.
Monday was the last day, and I was flagging a little by then. I'd been taking daily "This is my t-shirt for easier identification!" pics and tweeting them, and doing that last one felt sadder than I expected. I'm blaming the tiredness.
I had a gentle start to the morning (I managed to word every day of the con, and that was my highest word count) and hit my first panel at 11am. "The YA Gender Gap" was interesting, discussing the whys and hows of the fact that girls read fiction by male authors but boys don't real fiction by or about girls. It vered off into general ideas about the way we gender children and children's products and how we can try to work on that, which was familiar territory to me but interesting to hear other viewpoints.
I hung out with Bookmonster and Antiqueight afterwards, which was mostly us slumping and moaning about our exhaustion levels!
We did make it to a panel about Robin Hobb's influence on assassin portrayals in SF/F, which was very interesting (more Patrick Rothfuss being lovely was a bonus), but I think we were all a little tired and glazed by then. We had a quick drink before they had to head out for trains, bitterly regretting that they hadn't known about the Dead Dog Party tradition. NEXT TIME.
I signed up for an extra ops shift because I knew they were busy and some of the Monday shifts hadn't been filled, so I spent two hours carrying lost items up to the Excel's information centre. Heh.
After that, it was time for one last supper with Gryphon at the hotel, before heading back for the Dead Dog. So much hanging out with people. I finally got to actually sit down and chat with Emma England. I hung out with my ops guys. We tried to drink all the free beer that had been donated to us, before finally letting the members help us out.
(A notice went out on the PA, causing an instant herd of stampeding con goers...who formed a neat line at the desk :-D)
And then the convention centre shutdown at midnight, so the party had to end and with it, Loncon3.
My dad met me at the hotel later and helped me to lug everything across London and down to the Home Counties, where I had a lovely week of visiting and touristing and recovering. More on that another day. Maybe.
In conclusion, I had a brilliant time. Excellent. Would do again. It was my first time working on operations, and I loved every minute of it. Even the hectic ones. I'd definitely do that again...which is good, because I've already been volunteered onto the team for Nine Worlds. Heh.
I can't speak to other peoples' experience of Loncon, but for me, it was excellent. I expected something fustier and filled with intolerant old dinosaurs, even though we'd been trying not to do that, and what I found was bright, fun, vibrant, and filled with great people and new ideas. A large part of this, I suspect, is because of how I chose to do the con.
Most of the panels I went to were not the kind that attracted that old dinosaur element: diversity, representation, urban fantasy, transformational works. I had a big group of friends there, and I met some new people. All of them are lovely. It felt like a world away from the Eastercon I attended a few years ago. I'd love to do another Worldcon, but only if it's like that. Sasquan doesn't sound like my kind of Worldcon. I might see if Dublin 2019 happens, and whether I can swing doing that one.
It probably helped that I didn't do it coming off Nine Worlds, which is a very, very different kind of con. I didn't have 9W to compare to and, for me, Loncon3 was one of the best cons I've been to. My opinion on some things might change after seeing 9W next year, but we'll see.
The other factor that might have helped, was being on the ops team and seeing the staff side of things for months beforehand. I knew how much work we'd put into the code of conduct and the team supporting it. I knew how many knots we'd tied ourselves in trying to make the con safe and welcoming to everyone. And I think we largely succeeded, which makes me feel incredibly proud to have been a part of it.
In short, roll on a Worldcon run by the next horrible, liberal, diversity-conscious, BLOODY FANTASTIC team to stick their necks out and try to take it on. Helsinki 2017. Dublin 2019. Let's make those happen.
no subject
Date: 2014-09-07 09:19 pm (UTC)I had such a fantastic time as well and I wondered if it was the types of panels/activities I was going to, a few iffy moments but nothing like I'd been preparing for! Roll on 9 worlds!
no subject
Date: 2014-09-08 10:46 am (UTC)Pretty sure that what people experienced depended a great deal on what they did. I know there were a few panels that I'd vaguely earmarked as sounding interesting but didn't make it to, which turned out to be a good choice because they sounded like I would have ended up intensely ragey.
I'd definitely been bracing myself for more iffy moments based on previous Eastercon experience, and ended up pleasantly surprised :-)
9W is going to be BRILLIANT. I can't wait :-D Is it summer 2015 yet?