Seeking Ferret

Heliosphere was, um, by some definition, a convention. Guest of Honor Peter David referred to it euphemistically as 'underattended'. If there were a hundred people at the con I'd be surprised. The biggest panels had about thirty attendees, and a number of panels barely had more audience than panelists. It was held at a hotel that was undergoing serious renovation, with entire wings gutted and blocked off for additional navigational challenge. My hotel room was fine, but others told me that theirs were not quite finished, with pipes sticking out and so on. And there was no printed program, just an online listing and some postings by the actual rooms, so when I showed up in the lobby another observant Jewish fan spotted me and said, "Ah, I had the front desk print out a few copies of the panel list, here's one you can use on Shabbos."

By and large, I had a good time, but it will not go high on my list of favorite conventions. I attended a couple of interesting panels. I had a good time playing Splendor and Bananagrams and solving crosswords in the game room. It was nice to see a few con friends for the first time in three years. And it was nice to be back at a regional convention, to feel like these pleasures could be in my life again. But also I spent more time in my hotel room reading than I normally do at a convention- sometimes there just wasn't anything interesting happening at the con I wanted to do. That's not the worst thing in the world, but it was a bit of a letdown.

On the other hand, the con was two miles from work and six miles from home. It was an extremely low effort investment and I got enjoyment from it, so... yay!