Belated Arisia Report I: The Panel

[slipjig3]

It was bound to happen eventually: on this, my sixth Arisia and my tenth or eleventh con overall, I finally got the shiny green "Program Participant" label on my con badge. (Benefits as follows: access to real food in the green room, the ability to point and say, "Hey, look! Program Participant label!") I felt a bit of a sham, as I was scheduled exactly one (1) panel, but at least I made it a doozy: Religion and Kink. As avivasedai and asim commented on my way to the room, I seriously jumped into the pool with both feet.

There were just a few problems:

1) 12:30 a.m. on Friday night / Saturday morning. Yes, you read that correctly. We were scheduled in the con witching hour, when the grid was showing Rocky Horror, a filk sing, a hentai screening and us. Luckily, being the only game in town meant a pretty decent turnout, which was pleasantly surprising.

2) I felt like a question mark in a sea of exclamation points. My fellow panelists were all longtime members of the kink community, and brought with them fascinating insights on cultural and scientific backgrounds, as well as their own personal tales of, "This is how I incorporate my spirituality with my BDSM play." Meanwhile, I was the guy on the end whose stated purpose on the panel was that I didn't have any answers, and whose background where religion and kink intersected was a matter of "tab A seriously does not fit into slot B," in the form of, "Being a Dom and a Quaker pacifist at the same time is, like, really hard."

That said, I think I did pretty well. The panel itself was fairly subdued (probably because zomigod 12:30 in the flippin' morning), and I did less talking than the folks who knew what they were talking about, but I got across what I wanted to get across, and it generated some interesting dialogue, and I got to meet archangelwells when she came up afterward to start a lively discussion on the topic, so all was well.

As a side note to those of you who dove into schedules with eight or more panels for the weekend: How?! And for that matter, why?!

Comments

[archangelwells.livejournal.com]

Besides, the panel needed a question mark to balance out the exclamation marks. You're not the only one (and I say that because I know non-Quakers who also have such issues), and I'd be willing to be you helped SOMEONE there... Plus, I got to meet this awesome person. Who blushes really similarly to me =P

[ckd]

How/why? I didn't. IIRC I asked for no more than 5 panels, and wound up on exactly that.

Of course, two of them were at 0930....

[norda.livejournal.com]

I am hardly a veteran panelist.... I have only attended three conventions where I have been a panelist, as opposed to the various cons I've attended as behind-a-table-dealer or as an on-foot-networker.

But...

I felt like a question mark in a sea of exclamation points.

That's not unusual. There are an awful lot of exclamation points around. And that's no bad thing, but it can make one feel small. I get to a point during the course of each and every convention and trade show where I feel like a sham, even when I am as close to being "at home" or "in my groove" as it's possible to be. Just human nature.

As a side note to those of you who dove into schedules with eight or more panels for the weekend: How?! And for that matter, why?!

I can only speak for me, but there's two reasons I like to be on many panels at a con [although I prefer six as my limit... I've done eight over a three-day weekend, but it's a bit of a stretch]:

1] Conventions for me are work-first-then-play. I can't feel like I've earned my play until I have done a certain amount of work.

2] It's far easier for people to find me if I am on a panel than if I am wandering about randomly. Even conventions with the vaunted Lobbycon atmosphere seem to have me missing out on too many opportunities to meet-and-greet, and there have been too many times where I've been stood up for meals or abandoned for get-togethers if there isn't a hard-and-fast "find me at this room at this time when I'm done with my panel" arrangement in place.

[asim.livejournal.com]

Like norda, I don't go to cons to relax and hang out first and foremost. I got to work -- it's a way for me to get out and talk about things important to me, thus the importance of cons like Arisia and Wiscon on my to-do list.

I enjoy panels, and talking, and generally making stuff happen like them. So it's not like a pain for me, either.

Sorry I had to duck out, there was some stuff going on I needed to look into...