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solarbirdWell, that was a hell of a thing, wasn't it?
Norwescon 33 is in the can and epic, in mostly the best but also a couple of times the opposite senses. I am wiped the fuck out. Our music guests were awesome incarnate this year and I particularly want to call out newcomers Death*Star for rawking the goddamn haus because 20 people standing in the hallway listening through the door = awesome. I bought their EP, they bought mine, I wish there had been a little more mixing between the subgroups, and I got a whole list of band names to check out. Damn I wish I'd been able to get a chiptunes band. Next year!
I had a bunch of panels I put in place because I desperately wanted to attend them but then being unable to actually get there, so if anyone took notes at Home Recording I and Home Recording II - particularly II - I want copies! Please! Particularly Home Recording II! The one panel I was officially on as a guest pro - It Ain't All Geetars and Mopy - filled the room, which I loved, and people were telling me later they really enjoyed hearing about all these bands. (I, too, took notes, and now I have a new listening list! Yay! I got more from Alec later. Plus some songs I want to learn. ^_^ But I digress.) I'd brought little plug-in speakers so all of us on the panel could play excerpts from the bands we were talking about, so we'd play all sorts of stuff - some Death*Star (hee), some Frontalot (of course), some Anamanaguchi, some KOMPRESSOR, some she, some South Side, Unicorn Dream Attack, and and and. Lots!
This year's experimental panel - Fone in the Filk - actually worked! I was so worried - particularly after some of the test runs I did - but it worked! It took a long time per song and was pretty labour-intensive for yours truly, but panelist Mickey Phoenix had the seriously good idea of running Mad Libs Filk games while the audience was playing telephone with song lyrics, and the combination kept everybody happy and busy the whole time, and increased the distraction factor, making for funnier telephone. I make a joke at the beginning about making a big mistake by not scheduling it for 11:30pm in the bar, and I'm halfway thinking, "well, we do have Maxi's upstairs, and they do make awfully good kamikazis..." ^_^
I didn't get to all the concerts, particularly not the Friday night concert block, about which I am sad! I did get water up to them, though. (Honestly, sometimes it felt like half of stage management consists of getting water to people. At least half. But really it's not.) John and Jen did hugely great work with sound, and I am so bringing them in next year if I get to do this again. SJ Tucker and Vixy and Tony filled the second-largest room at the convention to capacity, and Tricky Pixy filled the largest, and really, I didn't see a single badly-attended thing in the whole track. (I didn't get to everything, of course.) Sure there were mistakes - most notably speakers not making it up to the Buffy singalong at first - but we mostly fixed them.
I'm really glad I'm not doing this and the daily 'zine again next year. I'm done with publications for a good long while, and the new publications head wants to take things in a different direction anyway, so it's a good time to be done. I have some ideas for NWCmusic 2011 that I didn't get to try in 2010, and focusing just on the music track, I hope I can pull some more of them off.
I had a lot more work to do at convention than I anticipated, and I feel like I was holding a lot of it together at the end of wires and strings, but despite that - and maybe a little because of that - I had a great time. I hope all you guys did too!
Norwescon 33 is in the can and epic, in mostly the best but also a couple of times the opposite senses. I am wiped the fuck out. Our music guests were awesome incarnate this year and I particularly want to call out newcomers Death*Star for rawking the goddamn haus because 20 people standing in the hallway listening through the door = awesome. I bought their EP, they bought mine, I wish there had been a little more mixing between the subgroups, and I got a whole list of band names to check out. Damn I wish I'd been able to get a chiptunes band. Next year!
I had a bunch of panels I put in place because I desperately wanted to attend them but then being unable to actually get there, so if anyone took notes at Home Recording I and Home Recording II - particularly II - I want copies! Please! Particularly Home Recording II! The one panel I was officially on as a guest pro - It Ain't All Geetars and Mopy - filled the room, which I loved, and people were telling me later they really enjoyed hearing about all these bands. (I, too, took notes, and now I have a new listening list! Yay! I got more from Alec later. Plus some songs I want to learn. ^_^ But I digress.) I'd brought little plug-in speakers so all of us on the panel could play excerpts from the bands we were talking about, so we'd play all sorts of stuff - some Death*Star (hee), some Frontalot (of course), some Anamanaguchi, some KOMPRESSOR, some she, some South Side, Unicorn Dream Attack, and and and. Lots!
This year's experimental panel - Fone in the Filk - actually worked! I was so worried - particularly after some of the test runs I did - but it worked! It took a long time per song and was pretty labour-intensive for yours truly, but panelist Mickey Phoenix had the seriously good idea of running Mad Libs Filk games while the audience was playing telephone with song lyrics, and the combination kept everybody happy and busy the whole time, and increased the distraction factor, making for funnier telephone. I make a joke at the beginning about making a big mistake by not scheduling it for 11:30pm in the bar, and I'm halfway thinking, "well, we do have Maxi's upstairs, and they do make awfully good kamikazis..." ^_^
I didn't get to all the concerts, particularly not the Friday night concert block, about which I am sad! I did get water up to them, though. (Honestly, sometimes it felt like half of stage management consists of getting water to people. At least half. But really it's not.) John and Jen did hugely great work with sound, and I am so bringing them in next year if I get to do this again. SJ Tucker and Vixy and Tony filled the second-largest room at the convention to capacity, and Tricky Pixy filled the largest, and really, I didn't see a single badly-attended thing in the whole track. (I didn't get to everything, of course.) Sure there were mistakes - most notably speakers not making it up to the Buffy singalong at first - but we mostly fixed them.
I'm really glad I'm not doing this and the daily 'zine again next year. I'm done with publications for a good long while, and the new publications head wants to take things in a different direction anyway, so it's a good time to be done. I have some ideas for NWCmusic 2011 that I didn't get to try in 2010, and focusing just on the music track, I hope I can pull some more of them off.
I had a lot more work to do at convention than I anticipated, and I feel like I was holding a lot of it together at the end of wires and strings, but despite that - and maybe a little because of that - I had a great time. I hope all you guys did too!
