Back from Dragon*Con
I have survived Dragon*Con. All three of my panels went well, most notably the one on Bose-Einstein condensation. My room was nearly at capacity, I had a lot of questions from the audience, and I got to whirl a ringing alarm clock over my head. Good times.
The two space panels were okay, but the audience was indicative of how uninteresting space is to most people. At my first space panel, I and a friend of mine were nearly the youngest people there by a decade. Sadly, I neglected to take this fact into account, and used lolcat-style pictures for my Hubble history talk. When I showed the first picture with kitty pidgin caption, two guys in their mid-twenties went “snrk.” The rest of the audience was lost.
Our Dragon*ConTV bits went well this year, most notably our music video for Re Your Brains by Jonathan Coulton. That particular bit of insanity culminated in the most surreal moment I experienced: being on stage during the Masquerade intermission, leading the crowd in singing the final chorus.
When the audio from my talks is available, I’ll post those and PDFs of my presentation, so you can experience the magic from your own computer. Since the talks took an hour, you might want to double the audio’s speed so it takes half the time and you can enjoy hearing me sound like Alvin.
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Comment by Marc V
I was at the panel and I thought the random lolcat pics were hilarious.
I’ve been trying to describe it to my wife, who loves cats but hates the whole entire space program (”What are we spending billions of dollars on THAT for?”) I keep telling her, the space program benefits us all, and science talks can be entertaining…
Posted on September 5, 2007 at 1:54 pm
Comment by Kismet
You were the bestest Doc. I had a wonderful time getting to hang out with you and I look forward to Misty being able to come and hang with us all again.
Thanks for being a hell of a boss.
Posted on September 5, 2007 at 4:15 pm
Comment by Joyous
I’m sorry I missed your panels; I was having a heavy case of “it’s just too much trouble to get anywhere on a schedule” this year, and hardly did any organized con activities at all.
The music video was *very* well done, excellent editing work on that!
Tell Misty I got hennaed again, and missed the girl bonding.
Posted on September 5, 2007 at 4:46 pm
Comment by Limax
I love the Dragon*TV pieces this year! It is my goal to eventually make it there and see these live, and also to see you on a panel.
Posted on September 5, 2007 at 4:57 pm
Comment by Stephen
Marc, I do try to make my talks entertaining but with a hard crunchy center of science. Glad you stopped by!
Not that I can say the same for you, Joyce.
Though I completely understand not being able to make places on a schedule.
(See, Misty? I told you people would miss you.)
Posted on September 5, 2007 at 7:37 pm
Comment by siliconchef
Our resident rocket scientist kicked ass at con this year. Yay for Doc!
Posted on September 5, 2007 at 8:19 pm
Comment by Geof F. Morris
I’m trying to decide if I want to watch you be contrarian or not about manned spaceflight.
As long as you don’t claim that we faked the moon landing, I think I’ll be okay, though.
Posted on September 5, 2007 at 10:34 pm
Comment by Danielle
And of course there are photos of the singalong (which I missed) - http://flickr.com/photos/tk0667/1331478302/in/set-72157601884372511/
and
http://flickr.com/photos/tk0667/1331476390/in/set-72157601884372511/
Posted on September 6, 2007 at 9:21 am
Comment by Pop
“The rest of the audience was lost.” You mean, if one isn’t a twenty-something one doesn’t get lolcat? WHUT?
Posted on September 9, 2007 at 5:27 pm
Comment by Stephen
I think the likelihood of you knowing about or getting lolcats drops off with age. You’re just lucky enough to have a lolcat-obsessed son.
Posted on September 10, 2007 at 9:20 am