Another fine Mo Starkey Cover! It makes me happy that I get to runthem!So, there was a BayCon last weekend and it was a great time. The bestrun convention I’ve ever been to? No, but the GoHs were great, especially Mr. John Picacio and Mary Robinette Kowal. They were both great and I was luckyenough to get to hang with them for a significant portion of the weekend. Idoubt that anyone will contradict the statement that the two of them wereeasily among the best guests BayCon has ever had.Me? I was working one of the days, so we had a Fanzine Lounge only inthe evenings. They couldn’t afford to give us a room on the party floor, whcihwas far deader than it has been in recent years, so we had a boardroom onthe Mezzanine level. Not optimal, but we had a great time, especially on Sun-day when we sat around at various levels of intoxication, played some cardgames with GoH Mary, recorded some Westerconversations (including onewith Dave Gallaher that had me on the floor) and generally had a real goodtime. It was the people, like Espana, Leigh Ann, Andy, Kevin, Fred Moulton, TheLovely & Talented Linda, Jason Schachat, Bob, Milt Stevens, Digby and so on,that made the place lively.I did a few panels, the best of which being a great panel on Steampunk Literature which just had me and an author and we managed to keep thecrowd rolling. I did one on Computer History where Bobby Toland, SteveSavitsky and andother guy had a great time. The best panel I’ve done on bookswas 5 Recent Books You Must Read. it was on current-ish SF (the last 10years) and there were four of us, so we talked about impressive books thatwe loved. I had The Dervish House by Ian McDonald, Perdido Street Staionby China Mieville, The Half Made World by Felix Gilman, Soulless by Gail Car-riger and The Yiddish Policeman’s Union. I would have had Anathem by NealStephenson on there, but Leigh Ann had it on her list. Jeremy, the publisher atNight Shade Books, was on the panel too. it was a good bunch of folks.The parties were down, the attendance seemed low, as I understandroomnights were off from previous years. Art Show sales weren’t great. Deal-er’s Room did OK, it seems from the couple of dealers I chatted with. Thefood in the buffet was hit (the Meatloaf was great) and miss (thin hockey puckswith ketchup for Chicken Parm) and the drinks at the bar were hella pricey.Still, the staff has always been very good to us and the rooms are nice save forthe funky bathrooms.Does BayCon need an injection of new blood, new management, newattendees? Yeah, that’d help. The next chair is set (Cruz, who has a PleasureCruise concept down) and there’s already talk about getting some new folksinto new positions. This is a good thing, but they need to work in three areas:getting a party culture happening again, making a real masquerade happenand making it worthwhile for costumers, and attracting younger attendees.This can be accomplished by having more guests who aren’t in the higher agebrackets. Getting the folks from xkcd or Schlock Mercenary would be a start,maybe some significant Cosplayers as GoHs. The Costumers used to be a bigpart of the event and now it’s a costume dead area for the most part.Still, check out http://johnnyeponymous.podbean.com for Westercon-versations with folks like Milt Stevens and Dave Gallaher and other Audiofrom the con!Other news is that I’m running another Fanzine Lounge at Westercon
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