Flutterby™! : Dear Chattacon

Chattacon was this weekend, and I took Nancy. I was originally excited about taking her to her first 'Con. Now I'm apologizing. Let's start with Registration. It's a Sci-Fi con, you'd think registration would be high-tech and automated. I got off work early, thought I'd pop over and get registered early Friday afternoon, check out the dealers room, etc.. say Hi to a few friends, then pick up Nancy at work, go home, change and do the 'Con thing. Nope. Not possible, because they are using an Access database on an SMB share, and for some reason, it wasn't sharing.. so they only had 1 PC that could read the database and print a badge, and it was being M$-Flakey^(tm) at it. It took 3 hours to stand in line and register. At least, like much of the con, the line became a social event and I ran into a lot of old friends. It also made a lot of other people not register, not attend, and was a good indicator of things to come.

Cost, at $50/head or $100. Nancy and I ingested 1 beer, 1 hot cocoa, 1 peanut and butter sandwich, 1/2 baloney sandwich. Yea, I drank a bit, but from room parties (tipped well) and from what I brought. It's time to stop subsidizing cheap drunks, lets cut the fee, and BYOB, which is what most people do anyway. And if other things at the 'Con had gone well, the cost would have been worth it. Which brings out:

Schedule/Staffing/Organization. Why print a schedule out when it is not even loosely followed, staff and operations were a disorganized mess. The minor schedule there was was un-intelligible, the panels/events un-findable.. and actually happened hours later than scheduled, overlapping with things they should not have.

Facilities. I can't complain enough about doing Chattacon at the Choo Choo. It was incredibly spread out, impossible to generate critical mass of people at an event, room, area, region. The Consuite was.. well Consuite (smelling of spilled beer) adjacent to next to it, with a poor PA system and bright florescent lights was the dance area and gaming area combined. No one dancing, not even us. No one gaming either. Worse, the bad loud music made it hard to talk or game in the ConSuite. Only sheet plastic seperated them. To get to room parties, someone had to have a room key to get into the buildings (Hah!). Everything was, somewhere else.. far away, hidden in a corner. The Read House and the Clarion (Other venues) concentrate everything into a small enough area you -feel- the buzz, know what's going on, bump into everyone/thing/alien and makes things happen.

There were room parties with a cover charge. WTF? There was at least one we saw, heard of others. Few were inside, Hmm.. wonder why?

Discussions: Didn't find any hard core science fiction people. Into dragons, fairies, pirates? No problem. Stargate 1 was huge, its about dressing up like a National Guardsman and killing aliens. Hmm, very American right now. Saw 2 decent Klingon outfits, a couple of Trekers, 1 incredible alien outfit, lots of fetish wear.

There was some good things: Some decent room parties, Fan's in great costumes and sometimes even in character. And the shuttle bus drivers at night were timely, cheerful, friendly and very helpful. They should be: scantily clad cute girls asking for rides would put any guy in a good mood.

I've worked Chattacon and other 'cons before.. taken a crappy Elevator Security/Doorman role from 6pm to midnight, met everyone, missed the "events", and hit the room parties after midnight. Maybe that's why I liked Chattacon. That was the best part.