FOGcon!

[starlady]

So, two weekends ago I went to FOGcon. Short version: It was pretty awesome, especially for a first con! I feel fairly confident in predicting that next year will be even more awesome.

What is FOGcon, you ask? FOGcon is a new SFF con that, I think, reminded me of something between a Wiscon or a Readercon West. This year the theme was the City in SFF, appropriately enough for a con more or less in Nob Hill.

What did I do that was so awesome, you ask? Well, I met up with a lot of awesome people, including many whose Internet names I never caught or have forgotten, but who included wintercreek, jesse_the_k, thaleia, lovepeaceohana, swan_tower, vito_excalibur, troisroyaumes, oyceter, and lots of others! Truly, I was impressed by the awesome quotient in the crowd; it was pleasingly high.

People are fine, but what did I do, you ask? Well, I went to a lot of awesome panels!

# My City Goes to 1011 - I modded this one, and if I do say so myself I thought it wound up going pretty well. The FOGcon panels were long, seventy-five minutes each, but luckily I didn't pre-set the panel format and about 15 or 20 minutes in someone in the audience raised their hand, and the format rapidly involved into a hybrid panel discussion/Q&A which ranged freely over a lot of topics having to do with digital communities. I can't take credit for the awesome contributions from the audience or from my fellow panelists, but hopefully I managed to wrangle the conversation decently. A++, would mod again!

# Building Cities Pt. 1: Cities of the Past - A really fascinating discussion about urban sites of the past, largely focused around Rome and Constantinope because many panelists were familiar with them, particularly Katherine Kerr--some of the stuff they talked about came up in my Roman armies & taxes seminar last week, which was an interesting moment of cognitive dissonance while I recollected how I knew it.

# Segregation in SF - Another interesting panel that could have focused a bit more on SFF than on the "real world," but some great information and discussion on both all the same.

# The Menace of the Spoiler - One of the things that fascinated me about this con was the invisible but palpable divide between the people who were evidently familiar with the LJ/DW/fandom nexus and those who…weren't. Hearing the two…camps talk to each other was particularly evident in this panel, which had a lot of good points.

# Regional SFF? - Honestly I thought this was the weakest of the panels, but I got some good reading recommendations out of it anyway. Apparently Molly Gloss is totally awesome; her books came up in multiple panels.

# I Saw You Palm That Ace: Rhetorical Argument in SFF - This was another fascinating panel, partly because it laid bare just how much knowing an author and/or reading their works in childhood leads people to be willing to forgive those authors saying some really heinous stuff (see: Orson Scott Card, Narnia). And even what people consider to be rhetorical arguments, and where the line between plot and politics lies, was fascinating to discuss.

I also got to have an impromptu Klutz Press reminiscence session/focus group with Pat Murphy and some friends and tell Ann and Jeff VanderMeer just how awesome I've thought some of their anthologies were, as well as hang out with various people at official and unofficial parties, and hit up a small but well-stocked dealer's room. Also, the quality of the discussions I had with my fellow guests was pleasingly high, I have to say. wintercreek and I cut out on the very last panels in favor of going to see the bison in Golden Gate Park (protip: they're not buffalo), which was a well-chosen, if bizarre and slightly recondite, adventure.

The other thing about the hotel is that there are SO MANY GOOD RESTAURANTS NEARBY OMG OM NOM NOM. A bunch of us (including Olivia's parents! You guys I had live Olivia's Parents Theatre and I nearly died laughing) ate at this divine Moroccan place on Saturday night and on both Saturday and Sunday some of us went to this amazing Greek/Mediterranean fries with the best lamb burger ever (I got it both times) and garlic fries like I haven't had since I left Hellas. And there were so many more options!

In conclusion: When can I register for 2012? Also, next time I'll probably spring for a hotel room with some people, shuttling over from the East Bay and back was a pain in the arse.

Comments

[cofax7]

And me! You met me, before the Illness of Doom took me down and Laura insisted I go home.

[starlady]

ARGH I did meet you and it was awesome! And I knew that if I tried to make a list of people I would inevitably leave people out, gah. Anyway, hi! Great to see you in person, hopefully the Illness of Doom has subsided!

(And thanks for the Katherine Kerr tip again.)

[jesse_the_k]

Great report, thanks. It's always better when you're staying in the con hotel.

Can you talk some more about the differences between the online nexus and those who are not on LJ/DW/FB/etc? (Don't worry, the latter group won't ever read it. *g*)

[starlady]

I may have said this at lunch, but some aspects of the Spoiler panel were very familiar to me from, well, living on the internet, particularly the tags vs. warnings debate and the whole "people need to make their own choices" defense in particular. That's what sticks out to me most, but one of the panelists on Segregation in SF and Regional SFF in particular was, as wintercreek put it, very painfully pre-Racefail. Which makes it sound like I know a lot, and I'm not saying I do, but I do know more than she did.

Yeah, I think the hotel next year is a go. We did wind up staying in the hotel Saturday night anyway, which worked well.

[merin-chan.livejournal.com]

Just out of curiousity, was the LJ/DW contingent more or less vocal on the spoiler issue? Spoilers actually seem to be more of a hazard irl than online to me. People are pretty good about using cuts or those mouse-over/"click for spoiler" thingies on LJ and the boards I visit, but once something slips out in an enthusiastic face-to-face conversation, there's no going back!

[starlady38.livejournal.com]

Mm, the discussion when I was in the room (see above re: long panels) focused on why spoilers seem to have become such an omnipresent fear in recent years, rather than internet vs. offline. The consensus was that this is the power of the Internet at work.