Most unfortunately, I was sick during the con. I still had fun, I just had fewer hours of fun than I would have had otherwise. One of my con roommates was getting about four hours sleep each night. The con rule as I know it is 5-2-1, for 5 hours of sleep a day, 2 meals, and one shower, but she swore by 3-2-1. Even if I had been in full health I couldn't have pulled that off, but she's only 23. ;-)
Dragon*Con is really big. It runs basically non-stop all weekend. I don't believe there are any scheduled events between 6 am and 9 am, but otherwise, there are usually at least twenty things going on. I don't know the official attendance numbers, but it is some multiple tens of thousands of people, which just sounds utterly ridiculous. The minimum I usually hear is thirty thousand people... and yet I still managed to randomly run into people who I didn't even know were at the convention. D*C is basically twenty different conventions all happening in the same five hotels over the same weekend. There are some events that are run by the main convention staff, like the costume parade and the masquerade, but most events come from the fan run tracks. Some of them are pretty standard, like the Star Trek, Star Wars, and anime tracks, but some tracks have a larger showing at Dragon*Con than at most normal cons, like Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series or Anne McCaffrey's Pern series. I think it's self fulfilling, Pern fans know that Dragon*Con is big for Pern, so they keep coming, and it stays big. (It does help that the author used to come to the con and not to most other American cons.) I like that bottom-up feel to Dragon*Con, even if I don't go to most of the more niche tracks, I am glad they are there and the programming isn't all determined by corporate interests. (*cough* San Diego Comic-Con *cough*) I've been to a *lot* of cons, and I really do love Dragon*Con. One of my other favorite conventions is just a few weeks before D*C every year, and that one is only 140 people, so I really do experience a wide range of conventions. :-)
Dragon*Con is like Burning Man in that you have to resign yourself to the fact that there will always be cool things you are missing, no matter what you do. I actually have compared D*C and BM a lot. They are of roughly similar sizes in terms of attendance, happen at the same time, there are many people who are devoted to going every year, people plan for it all year, people show up in crazy costumes and get very intoxicated and many of them seek out (and find!) casual hookups amongst the other attendees. I've been to both, and I have to say I really do love the air conditioning at Dragon*Con. :-) I'm considering trying to do several days of Burning Man next year then heading straight to Dragon*Con, which my friends all say is ridiculous, but it's the kind of crazy idea I like.
Dragon*Con is full of crazy costumes. Would you like some pictures? This year I was too tired to attend the costume parade, but I did catch a rebroadcast on TV. The police shut down several blocks of downtown Atlanta, and I think something like 2700 people participated this year. It's quite the scene, and you can see my 2008 Parade pictures on flickr.
This one is perhaps not quite worksafe if you look closely, so you'll have to click.
I organized a group of ten people from Boston this year, here are three of them in their Steampunk versions of Team Fortress 2.
Rum cake is a tradition for me at d*c. I might have gone overboard this year?
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