Oh my God, it’s Thursday. When did that happen? I swear I didn’t mean to skip Tuesday. I blame the snow day on Monday.
So! MileHiCon happened last weekend. How did it go?
Well, first of all, I felt like my panel went pretty well. Hopefully that’s also objectively true! (It’s up on YouTube, actually.) And the bigger, mobile one was mostly quiet during it, huzzah.
Normally I do 2 or 3 panels per con, and I haven’t moderated before, but I talked to a couple of other people, and it seems like, with the exception of the guests of honor, everyone was down to fewer panels, or only one, in many cases. I think that comes down to fewer “rooms” and the need to space the panels out, so tech issues could be dealt with in between in case panelists were having problems.
Overall, I felt like the con was well run. The addition of a Discord channel for panelists and attendees to continue discussions was a good idea, and it also allowed the staff to provide real time updates, which was essential, especially on Friday, when the website crashed and was inaccessible for about twelve hours. (So it turns out that having multiple ways to access the panels was also a good plan.)
They said, during the closing ceremonies, that they’d sent people to every virtual con they could for the past several months, so they could see what was working and what wasn’t, and the result was a well-run convention with very few hiccups (aside from Friday).
I wish I’d gotten to spend more time on it. As expected, being unable to distance myself from my responsibilities by being physically present at the con made it hard to focus on it. Friday would have been the day I could have focused the most, but the site being down limited what I could do. I was supposed to be manning the chat room on the Turtleduck Press page in the Authors’ Row, but alas, it was not to be.
Saturday was full of real-life activities, and I didn’t even get to sit down until dinner time, let alone do con things. (I made a nice Little Red Riding Hood cloak in twenty minutes flat, which I’m pretty proud of, not going to lie.)
Sunday morning was also busy, so I didn’t get back to the con until about 2 (and closing ceremonies are at 3). I did make the most of it, though–I went through the Authors’ Row and chatted with some of the other authors (nobody’s chat rooms got much use so maybe it wasn’t worth it to have sprung for one), looked at vendors and the costume pictures people had sent in, went to a panel, chatted in the Discord.
So! For a virtual con, it was good! But I much prefer the real thing, and I hope next year we can be back in person.
Other than that, oh man, November starts on Sunday! Planning for my mystery is coming along, but do I feel ready by any stretch of the imagination?
Nope!
I hope you’re having a good week, squiders! I’ll see you next week and next month.
