Dragon Con 08

Dragon con was awesome and I was completely overwhelmed within the first 24 hours.
So, I went to Dragon Con (www.dragoncon.org) last weekend and it was amazing. For those of you who do not know, Dragon Con is the largest multi-media, popular culture convention focusing on science fiction and fantasy, gaming, comics, literature, art, music, and film in the US. The rumor was that membership this year topped 40,000. Thats 40,000 geeks all descending on a 3 block area of downtown Atlanta for 4 days of bliss. It was crazy. As of right now there are just 362 day left till Dragon Con '09.
We (wife, daughter, mother-in-law) got to Atlanta Friday afternoon at around 4 pm. Got checked in to our hotel then went to The Varsity to get a bite to eat (Trader Vics, where I was supposed to be meeting the crew from the FarPointForums was going to be just too expensive for me to eat there). The family had their own plans so we parted company at just before 6 and from there the fun began.
I went off in search of registration on foot, I should say that we were staying at the Wyndham, one of the overflow hotels which was right behind the Sheraton and just a block away from the 3 main hotels. Because our hotel was so close, I spent the whole weekend on foot. A 4 minute walk or wait 30 minutes for the complimentary shuttle. A no brainer for me. The walk to registration was somewhere between interesting and amazing as people were already in costume and wandering around. I passed super heroes of every sort, beasts, monsters, SG-1 personnel, Starfleet Officers and about 100 fairies all in the first hour.
After wandering around for a bit taking in the sights I found registration pretty quickly. Registration was a huge room set up like a queue for a Disney ride with different sections roped to form fantastically long lines to all the different forms of registration. It was terribly well organized and very empty by the time I got there. I walked right up after about a 5 minute wait and got my badge spent a little time at the flyer table (which was about 20ft long) and then set off in search of Trader Vics.
It took a little wandering and some time but right at 7 I found Vic's. I wandered around a bit both inside and out looking for any familiar faces but I didnt see anybody I recognized so figured it was a wash.
Time for Plan B. But before Plan B let me say this: go with a friend(s). I say this because there were several times that I either got intensely lonely or felt I had to leave something or could not participate in something because I had no one there to share it with. I am not saying this for pity, I'm just saying that I had a great time but I would have had a MUCH better time if I had someone to share the experience with. So, on with Plan B
From Vic's I went to the little bar inside the Hilton (really nice place the Hilton btw) grabbed a Sam Adams and an empty chair and began to plan.
The program took a bit to figure out. It had several breakdowns of the weekends events that were easy enough to figure out but coupled with the atmosphere, well, I struggled a bit with it. A word of warning here: after I arrived and started to get settled in I got a bit overwhelmed by everything that was going on around me and missed a lot. Were I to do it again... I should say WHEN I do it again I will have a much firmer grasp on what I want to do and see and I would also allow a bigger budget. It may be that first timers just get swamped and thats just it, which is fine because I still had a blast but I did miss quite a bit.
So from there I went to the elevators to check Trader Vic's one last time and ran into Ray Park (http://www.raypark.com/homepage.htm , http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0661917/ ). REALLY nice guy. He was very gracious and seemed to be having a nice time. In spite of what apparently happened to him later.
I spent most of the rest of the night (and the weekend really) being lost in the hotels. Just trying not to be overwhelmed, see somethings and figure out the lay of the land. Lots of booths set up throughout the hotels. The band booths were probably the best. The Brobdingnagian Bards (http://www.thebards.net/) Voltaire (http://www.voltaire.net/) and The Cruxshadows (http://www.cruxshadows.com/) had some of the best booths but the were probably 100 or more through out the Con. Didnt catch any of the concerts but I heard that they were all packed and great.
The next day, standing outside the Marriott looking at the batmobile I met famed comic book artist Mark Texeira. Really nice guy. The Marriott, by the way, was AMAZING! I have been a lot of different places but the inside of this place was SciFi all the way. Find pictures of it.
From here I had hit saturation and everything starts to blur together some I am going to hit the highlights and be done.
The Firefly (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0303461/, http://www.fireflyfans.net/, http://www.scifi.com/firefly/, http://signal.serenityfirefly.com/, http://fireflytalk.libsyn.com/) shindig was awesome! The shindig, for those who dont know, is a big family party put on by Firefly fans. Music, singing, dancing, drinking and more! But, I was there by myself and as I am a complete introvert all I did was take a few shots, hang out for a bit and leave. It was still a great time though.
I sat in on the live WhatTheCast (http://www.whatthecast.com/) and it was hilarious and very informative.
I also sat in on the live I Should Be Writing and met Randy Chertkow of Beatnik Turtle. I asked a stupid question about personality in podcasting and he gave me some GREAT advice. I also got great advice from Rich Sigfrit (http://www.outcastmultimedia.com/) and Rick Stringer (http://www.variantfrequencies.com/) but Randy took some time to pull me aside and talk to me at length. And I cant thank him enough. He has some great advice and some just general "pick me up" things to say. Great guy.
After playing Twitter tag for the better part of the weekend I finally met up with Adam from the Back Seat Producers (http://www.backseatproducers.com/ , http://podgecast.com/ ). He was standing in the mile long line for the Firefly panel. We talked a bit but I didnt want to start a riot by breaking into line there. So I went to the front of the line and accidentally got right in.
I think thats it for now. Looking forward to next year!

Oh, here are my pics from D*Con. Click!