Ethics in SF Panel at Illogicon 2012

Had a great time at the inaugural Illogicon this weekend. Plenty of good vibes and interesting, friendly folks. I never heard on official attendance count. But I’m guessing in the neighborhood of 200-300 people.

I’d registered many months ago, practically as soon as registration opened and so I was a little afraid they’d lose my registration. But no. Not only did they have my registration, I knew the guy running the registration table. That’s a very good feeling at a con.

Con suite was a friendly, relaxing place with equal amounts of comfort food and healthy food. The folks running it were diligent about keeping things picked up and clean without being overbearing about it. Truly a nice place to hang out.

Dealer room didn’t have many companies / organizations. But you did have good opportunity to browse and talk to folks. I particularly enjoyed talking to the ConTemporal folks who are putting on a steampunk con event in Chapel Hill Later this year.

The programming had several highlights, notable the guests of honor Joe and Gay Haldeman. They were the epitome of good guests of honor. In addition to doing multiple panels and making thoughtful contributions, they mixed and mingled with the fen in the con suite and other areas.

There were several panels I really enjoyed. Probably my favorite was theSciene Fiction and Ethics panel with moderated by  Bull Spec‘s Sam Montgomery-Blinn featuring Joe Haldeman, Kij Johnson, NCSU’s John Kessel, and Gray Rinehart.

I also really enjoyed the Baen traveling roadshow. Not only because I won a David Drake book, but because they did a really good job of getting the audience involved in the discussion.

I sat in on several panels that had John Kessel and he’s always got something interesting to say. But the John Kessel highlight was a reading he did on Saturday Afternoon, an amusing time-travel-commercialization-of-the-past story.

Being a podcaster, I was happy to discover that Rich Sigfrit of Geek Radio Daily is a local guy and was on several panels. I was glad to get the chance to shake his hand and make plans to touch base with him later.

Another programming highlight for me was the e-publishing talk by James Maxey. It was very interesting to hear from someone who’d actually jumped through all the hoops necessary to get a book on the various platforms. Complicated, but not impossible and the business possibilities are very interesting.

Kudos to Con Chair Chris Hensley, Vice Con Chair Brandon Ulick, Operations Director Chris Ross, Con Suite Director Reesa Robie, and Programming Director Warren Buff for givng us a great weekend of fun and fandom. I look forward to many more years of Illogicon.

At Illogicon!,