Balticon Reactions!

 First of all, I'm not going to talk about the bad stuff. Those who are on my Facebook know what happened.

Instead I'm going to focus on something else.

We need to find a way to do more hybrid conventions. I was able to, in the same day, get vegan lunch at a Hare Krishna festival, hang out in the bar with my friends...and do a panel with a multinational group of people including an amazing man from Nigeria. (Nigerian SF is a thing, people, and it's a thing we need more of). This was a panel on Class Structures in SF & Fantasy and we had a panel who came from places with different class structures.

I got literally the best of both worlds.

Hybrid cons require more volunteer time, they are more expensive, and there is always the risk of technical or technical related issues (The first five minutes of the Doctor Who panel were not streamed out from the hotel because the tech assigned to the room got stuck in a massive traffic jam and was late. Not his fault).

But as we do more of this we'll work out how to do it better.

Those who couldn't afford to travel to Balticon were still able to get a good chunk of the programming; we weren't able to record and stream everything because it costs in volunteers and equipment. Those who could actually got a better experience. (One person talked about how amazing it was to attend a virtual panel in their pajamas while munching breakfast in their hotel room).

Maybe one day I'll be invited to do panels...at a convention in Nigeria. I still have some issues with virtual conventions (associations with lockdown).

But the world is opening up in ways that we would have tried eventually, but were pushed to by recent events.

Let's do more of this, people. The possibilities are just so awesome.