Notelets about WisCon (and Thereabouts)

[bcholmes]

I'm gonna write more about panels soon, but I want to talk about various non-panel things going on.

I arrived at WisCon on Thursday evening. I drive down from Toronto every year, and on my trip there, I usually make two stops: one in Sarnia to have lunch with my grandmother, and one in Chicago to have lunch with a good friend. This year, my Chicago friend moved to San Juan, so there was no dinner. That meant that I arrived in Madison a bit earlier than I usually do. Not that early arrival changed much. I think I briefly saw redbird doing the LobbyCon thing, but otherwise I saw no fans that I knew on Thursday night.

Lunch with my grandmother was a bit different: my aunt and cousin were present as well. I haven't seen my cousin in, oh I don't know, fifteen to twenty years. She was, like, two then. She's much taller now. Meeting her was a bit weird. I mean, unlike most people in my family, she's bookish and a bit of an sf geek. She's also in university -- possibly only the second university student (after me) on that side of the family.

My aunt was interested getting rid of some of the stuff that's been in my grandfather's office, and she's also kinda keen to make sure that I get a shot at hand-me-downs (she seems a bit protective of me, where the family is concerned). The one thing that I have my eye on is my grandfather's genealogy research. Back when I was in grade 7, I had an assignment from school to construct a family tree. I called my grandfather to help identify some of my ancestors. He never stopped trying to fill in the holes after that. He hired people in the UK to pull records from various registrars. He has a ton of research all put together in binders (with his almost-OCD label-maker labels) and no one in the family really cares. Me, I want this stuff computerified.

And one of the things that I got was a book my grandfather wrote. It's obviously typed up on a typewriter, and spiral-bound at kinkos, but it's a fascinating document. He's writing about the political history of Lambton County, where I grew up. But it's also about his campaign to be an independent Conservative MPP in 1971. I've known the most skeletal parts of this story -- I knew he was a candidate (as well as being former Reeve of the township), but I never had the full story. Now I've got the story in his words. Fascinating. Even more fascinating (if a tad frightful) are the photocopies of letters from high muckety-mucks in the Conservative parties. There's a personal letter from Prime Minister Diefenbaker, whom my grandfather describes as "a friend." Me, I'm like, "what? You knew Dief? How am I only just discovering this now?"

I dropped back in on my grandmother on the way home, and picked up more gossip about the extended family.

WisCon itself was awesome. I feel, though, like I got less socializing in. I failed my saving throw versus scheduling and seemed to fail to get together with most of the people I usually dine with at WisCon. Some meal times had pre-planned events slotted in them: there was a panel-like thing for the WisCon DB app, and Saturday night I went out to a trans and genderqueer dinner. It was a good dinner -- at first, we were all kind of awkward with many of us not knowing each other very well. But by the end of the meal, we were mostly comfortably sharing chit-chat. I think this could be a Good Thing to develop over the next few years.

Another meal with a friend went awry, and didn't happen. That friend and I seem to have very different approaches to scheduling, and we seem to cross wires at many WisCons. It is, sadly, a truth about me that I'm not especially tolerant of being stood up.

But good stuff: I got my contributor's copy of the WisCon Chronicles. That made me kinda happy. raanve and wrdnrd have a good piece in it describing the origins of Friends of Dennis. I think that Jess and Chris have been the heart of the class conversation that's been emerging at WisCon over the last few years. There are other good pieces, too. Ian and Nalo's exchange about the Carl Brandon Society was pretty powerfully written. I feel weird talking about it: on the one hand, I support the goals of the Carl Brandon Society, and want to be the kind of ally who stands against those who would attack it. On the other hand, I've been friends with Ian for a long time and I understand his hurt and anger about the incident that he's writing about. It's a complex story. And, I guess, I stand by the comment made in one of this year's panels: that your real friends will tell you when you have spinach in your pronouns.

Other good pieces: Liz's piece about using pattern language to unlock the clubhouse and Gretchen and Ariel's perky conversation about fandom. And Skud's piece. I think there are a couple in the book I haven't read yet. A good year for WisCon Chronicles. Must be the able hand of editor Alexis Lothian.

Once again, the idea of attending the parties terrified me. I can manage about fifteen minutes on the party floor before I find myself thinking: "I don't know anyone except for a coupl'a people who are already busy." I missed almost all of the auction, between doing party volunteer stuff and having a 9:00 pm panel.

Oh, and I wrote a mobile app this year. I confess that I'm not without ego; I was hoping that someone would say something nice about it over the weekend. In truth, I got a lot of people thanking me for the app, and I got really bashful about all the comments pretty quickly. But I guess some people liked it.

On Sunday night, after the guest of honour speeches, they made this special mention of the app dev team. They called people up to the stage and I thought, "Did they just say my name? Why would they do that? I haven't touched the WisConDB." But, sure enough, Deb was all, like, "Is BC here?" and I suddenly got it and I darted up to the stage quickly. In retrospect, well... uh... I'm kinda stupid. Plus, they gave me chocolate, which, hey, how can you turn that down?

I found myself reflecting, after the fact, that I'm fortunate that in my day-to-day job, I don't actually experience impostor syndrome. I'm pretty confident that I know what I'm doing at work. It was kind of strange to suddenly re-encounter imposter syndrome in a programming context. Part of that, I'm sure, is that I feel like I didn't get as much done as I had hoped. I meant to have the Android version of the app ready months ago, but my busy work schedule threw off my plans. I'm really grateful, though, to Jim and Piglet and the other app dev folk who were totally supportive of this thing I wanted to do, even after I went MIA for months during my busy work period.

One last anecdote of the trip stands out. As I was crossing the border to enter the U.S., a customs guard asked me where I was going and after I gave him my standard answer about a science fiction convention in Madison, WI., he asked me if I was a writer. I immediately said, "no," which was probably the best answer for customs purposes. But some part of my brain immediately got mad at myself, thinking, "how can you say you're not a writer. Of course you're a writer." Y'know, even if I only have a handful of professional publication credits. Whatever. I'm a writer, damnit!