Swancon panels wot I went to

[sarren]

Thursday night

9.30pm I Am The Night: A History of the Caped Crusader
Great first panel to start off with. Interesting, fun, and about Batman. One of the panellists swore practically every time he opened his mouth which I found very off-putting. Plus he seemed to dominate the panel, but it might have just seemed that way to me because I was wishing he'd shut up.

Friday

Huh, didn't get to any panels at all during the day. Friday was about volunteering and socialising for me apparently.

8.30pm Channel Flicking
Grant and Sonia watched a lot of weird shit to bring us the best of weird shit. Some of it was hilarious, and some of it was very disturbing. Awesome!

9.30pm Magical Hat of Mysteries
Three talented and funny guys basically stand around for a couple of hours and riff off of suggestions made by members of the audience. I think this is the third year running they've done this - always good value.

Saturday

11am Ready, Steady, Genesplice!: Build a better Unicorn
So much fun! The audience called out creature parts/characteristics and then three artists with easels, each representing different labs (one totally ethical, one with some leeway and one black market)each had to draw the animal, and we voted on which one we'd buy.

12pm How does technology create society?
Very interesting panel. But mostly memorable because the Swancon newbie I'd brought brought along just for the day got annoyed at what she perceived as one of the other panellists being rude to the GoH who was on the panel. I was like, 'what, that's just how fans are, we don't have good social skills' but my friend wasn't convinced. I must admit there was one bit where Stephanie and Richard both tried to talk at the same time, stopped, did it again, stopped, then just looked at each other and Stephanie did this thing where she just opened and closed her mouth several times and then Richard kind of raised his hand and said 'sorry! sorry!' which made me wince. *shrug*

5pm The Year - 1969
Interesting panel - a truly astounding amount of things happened in 1969 as it happens, not just the moon landing!

8.30pm The Collapse of Civilisation
For some reason I only caught the second half of this, which was mostly discussion by then, but it was really interesting anyway.

10.30pm Geek Sing-along
OMG AWESOME FUN. A room full of fans sitting around singing along to theme tunes, with the words on the screen. There was one song I didn't know at all, but sang along with the words on the screen anyway because it was awesome - an AI singing about how it'll still be alive when the humans are dead. What WAS that???

11.30pm Swancon Idol
Lots of fun. People who could sing competed for a prize, and then the rest of us who just sat around and sang along.


Sunday

10am Holy Respectability, Batman!
I think I may only have caught half of it. I don't really remember much about it, except it had Batman in it, so I liked it.

11am Plagues: Culture Versus Culture
Very interesting panel. Learned lots of stuff!

12pm Guest of Honour Speech - Trudi Canavan
I haven't read any of her books, and also she talks really quietly and I was sitting at the back so I couldn't hear some of it, but she was very lovely.

3pm Video Quiz
Lots of fun as usual. Who doesn't love a quiz? Damien shows clips from shows/movies and then asks a question like what was written on the door the characters walked past. This year there was a clip from Get Smart where a guest character kept having his coffee spilled and everyone got totally distracted by the fact that it was John de Lancie, and I was like 'Focus, people!' and then I still got the answer wrong.

5pm Swancon 2010 Launch
Missed the beginning, arrived in time for the free thumb drive and John Robertson being dragged from the room. So, good value then.

8.30pm Writing SF - Tips & Techniques
This was a bit disappointing in that the panellists pretty much talked about how to write a book that will appeal to editors and how to increase your chances of getting it published, which was all really useful and interesting except I've been to panels that teach you that before. I did sneak in a question at the end where I asked if they had any tips specifically to writing SF and Stephen said Yes! and quickly listed a couple and then they gave out free books to people who'd asked questions, so I scored a free book. Yay!

9.30pm Fine Fellows of (Spec) Fiction
The only reason I stayed for this panel was because I was already in this room and there was nothing else I wanted to see enough to wander back downstairs. It was basically the game "Marry, Shag, Cliff" - there was a powerpoint of sundry attractive fictional male characters. I don't even play this game online so I wasn't expecting much. I was expecting the audience to be entirely female, so was very amused when it turned out to be two thirds male. The guys claimed to be there to "observe" but really, when the first character up for grabs is Captain Jack Harkness, and the next is Legolas, there's no resisting. By the third one they were all considering the marriageability vs shaggability of the guys just as seriously as the women were. Ah, fans. In conclusion: much fun was had by all.

10.30pm Shakespeare themes in SF
I was expecting a more structured, analytical panel - the panellists got the audience to list themes found in Shakespeare and then name shows that had those themes. I was tired and I had to go home to feed the pets and get some sleep and be back early in the morning, and the panel wasn't compelling enough to compete with that so I left half way through.

Monday

9am Proto-panels - how to run a panel
I figured if I'm going start actually volunteering for panels as opposed to just kinda finding myself on them and hoping for the best, I should probably learn how to do it proper-like. Discovered, not to my surprise that Swancon has a tradition of very relaxed informal panels, where nobody gets too fazed if it wanders off topic. (There are some more structured panels, which tend to have a moderator (or an effective panellist who keeps it on track). I learned a few things about running a panel, and got a lot of good advice on how to moderate a panel, which I have since utilised to good effect.


10am How come vampires are heroes now?
Missed the beginning, can't remember why. One of those rambling unstructured panels where we all just ramble on about shows we like. Nothing wrong with that. At one point we'd all been bagging Twilight and one of the panellists said, oh, I still think Twilight's not that bad, and I said, go on, defend it then, but she couldn't, and then I felt bad for putting her on the spot like that.

12pm Writing Fantasy - Tips & Techniques
Much more useful than the SF one. There were four writers and they all had interesting tips about writing fantasy. I did find Dave Luckett's habit of shaking his head and making disapproving faces when the others were talking and sometimes actually picking up a magazine and flicking through it quite disconcerting, but it's possible I might be biased because when he gave out free books for "interesting" questions at the end mine didn't rate. *is miffed*

2pm What's New in SFF for Kids & YA
Interesting run down on what's coming up.

3pm Swancon QI
Lots of fun as usual. Dave always has interesting subject matter. This year He ran out of questions way before the end for some reason but I took that as an opportunity to ask something that had been bugging me for ages, ie, I'd been told that they make you assume the crash position on planes it wasn't to increase your chance of survival but to make the body easier to identify. Not true, apparently!!! I don't know why that makes me feel better but it does!! And then we just talked about weird facts til the end. Good value!


4pm Closing Ceremony
People won awards and prizes! And people made speeches! And then it finished and we were sad and had to go back to our real lives...

Comments

[cricketk.livejournal.com]

'Still Alive' is the end song of a game called Portal, which was a massive success and in the running for best game of the year in 2007. It's basically a first person shooter, but instead of shooting people, you solve puzzles (how do I get out of this room alive?) by using your portal gun and companion cube.

'Still Alive' was written by Jonathan Coulton, who has a number of other very geeky and funny songs. One of my favourites is 'Re your brains', which is a zombie song.

[sarren.livejournal.com]

Oh right, I've got that Coulton song where he's made a half monkey half pony monster for the girl he's kidnapped.

Do you have Still Alive?

[zebra363.livejournal.com]

Juffles posted a link to it in my Swancon post.

[sarren.livejournal.com]

Yay thanks.

[victorian-tweed.livejournal.com]

Oh wow, I am having serious con envy right now! Sounds like so much entertaining and informative fun.

Thank you for posting this! :-)

[sarren.livejournal.com]

Swancon is very cool, though the theme/atmosphere is different each year as different committees have different emphasises (emphases?) on things they want to promote. There was one year I didn't go a few years ago cos the panels didn't really appeal, but I've never gone and then not enjoyed myself.

[angriest.livejournal.com]

Hopefully the guy who was swearing a lot at Batman was Travis and not me. I don't think I swear too much at panels... cripes.

[sarren.livejournal.com]

How many times have I had to talk to you about your potty mouth, young man!

Travis is the only person I've ever seen swear like that on a panel. I am an old fogey and Did Not Approve.

Plus he talked a lot, and loudly. I would have liked to have seen that young girl on the panel get a word in edgewise.

[angriest.livejournal.com]

That was Zoe, and it was her first panel, and she was a bit zonked out on painkillers at the time. She and I are hopefully doing a Robin and Other Sidekicks panel at next year's con.

[sarren.livejournal.com]

Cool. I'll be there.