Last post of the “summer-of-writing-experiences” series: Worldcon 2024 in Glasgow. My impression in one word: Oof!

As the title says, I’ve never been to a Worldcon before. In fact, my con experience has been limited to games conventions, smaller, local ones around mostly board games. We would spend half a day walking around, looking, trying out a few things, maybe buying. More of a family outing.

I’ve been told that this Worldcon wasn’t that large compared to earlier ones. I don’t know whether that’s true, to me it felt huge. Not just from a visitor standpoint — 7k people? 8k? I have no idea — just the sheer amount of things to do was overwhelming. The organization was simple enough: the day usually started at 10, with 90 minute slots consisting of a one hour talk/panel/whatever and a 30 minute break that allowed you to get to the next venue without hassle.

The first day, I tagged about 8 things I wanted to do, half of them parallel, and I ended up doing 3. The rest of the time, I spent digesting the information I got.

Key word: digesting the information. Experienced con-goers will smile at this, but for me it was new: information overload is a thing. And you have to pick your battles. Fortunately for me, it didn’t take me all that long to realize that to choose what I would be going to, themes would be best. Unfortunately, the main theme I had been hoping for, “craft aspects of writing”, wasn’t well represented, or at least not in the way I wanted/needed. So the two themes I went with were topics around YA writing and publishing, and… cats: [1]

How your cat is trying to kill you

There were a few other things I quickly learned. One was to check room size when going through the agenda, and not to bother with the sessions in small rooms; in Glasgow that meant the conference rooms in the hotel next to the convention center, especially if there were big names billed. The waiting lines there were long, and even if you made it in (I got lucky on the very first evening), the claustrophobic air of rooms filled to capacity isn’t for everyone.[2]

Another was that I seem to prefer talks to panels. Not that some of the panels weren’t fun; the one on Economics in SFF with Charlie Stross, Naomi Kritzer, Scott Lynch and Stew Hotston was right up my alley.[3] And “Best Cats in SFF” was hilarious, although for some reason they failed to mention Gentza, the hero of “A Basquet of Cats”, the best SFF cat of all. Still, it’s something I also found in conferences I’ve been to for my day job, I like the structure of a talk compared to the rambliness of a panel. Left brain talking.[4]

Oh, and the best “talk” at Worldcon? John Robertson’s “The Dark Room”. Check it out if you can. Live.

Last but not least: when/if there is a next con (logistics are still going to be tricky), I should try to not go alone. Digesting information seems to be easier in a group for me. Some of my new friends from the WX Retreat were in Glasgow so I had a chance to meet up again, but a dedicated “we’re at this thing together” group felt like it would have been nice. There were whole writing groups from the UK that visited the con together, and that sounds like a fabulous idea.

Next time, I might even try to get ON a panel. I might not be the most accomplished of writers (yet), but I do know, and have an opinion on, a lot of stuff. For a gathering of nerds and geeks like Worldcon, that’s a good combination. We’ll see.

Maybe I’ll see you at a future Worldcon.

Notes:
[1] That talk was actually REALLY cool.
[2] And I’m not even claustrophobic.
[3] Even if it wasn’t in one of the two themes.
[4] Incidentally, I’ll be at a conference next week, ITC in Las Vegas, and talk on a panel. Go figure.

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