My actual PHILCON Schedule...

[logisticslad]

I arrived at the new Philcon hotel in Cherry Hill around 7pm and found the Green Room where they had my registration info. There was a moment of confusion when I was calling myself a Guest and they thought that meant that I was related to an invited pro. I was informed that in their terminology, I am a Program Participant. I wandered around to find where everything was and did a quick tour through the Dealer's Room. It was rather small and filled predominantly with booksellers this year. I bumped into hughcasey who asked if I would be willing to sub for the moderator of an 8pm panel titled, "Tracing the Superman Theme: From Neitzche to Iron Man." Sure, why not? After all, I've been reading comics since 1975. It turned out that the moderator was driving in from Boston and could not quite make it to the panel. There were two other panelists, one who was another scientist/comics geek and the other who had actually read Neitzche. We had a lively discussion about how various heroes from comics, books, and film met the characteristics of the Ubermensch. It turned out much better than I could have hoped.

Then I went to my friend John Ashmead's talk on "How to Build a Time Machine" along with several other members of my SF book club. He covered the time machine in both fact and fiction, including describing several physics papers that have been published on the subject. Very interesting (and he kept his quota of puns to a minimum). Next I wandered through the Art Show (also very small) and the Meet the Pros party, which was held between the art and the gaming tables. I saw the Program Chair, who apologized to me for having been put on 10am panels on both Sat and Sun, when I had requested no panels before noon, and that was unexpectedly nice of him. I saw most of the usual suspects who go to Philcon. I stopped by the Con Suite, where there were only 2 people and at that point decided to head home.

So several of my panels have been moved, but alas not the 10am one. They did tell me that they have found someone to sub for me for the Sat morn panel, so I'm not going to stress about making it (although several of my friends have told me that they were looking forward to seeing me on it). Here's where I'll be as of the last schedule change:

Sat 10am Redrawing the Tree of Life: the New Taxonomy
Sat 3pm Super-Mega-Crossovers and the Fans Who Hate Them
Sat 5pm What Does a Scientist Do, Exactly?

Sun 10am Xtreme Neurology

The Sat 5pm panel is supposed to be part of the Children's programming track, and they asked me to make it interactive, so I've brought a model of a brain (instead of an actual brain). It does seem a bit odd that they scheduled something for children at 5pm, which is well known to be the hour of melt downs, but we'll see how it goes.

Got gas for $1.75 Full Service - the real bonus to having the con in New Jersey!

Comments

[alikander.livejournal.com]

They sound like awesome panels. Haven't we reached the era of beaming recorded events directly into our neural implants? Drat.

For the kids one: a bowl of goldfish (the crackery, not aquatic variety) might be a good move to avert hunger-related meltdowns.

[sympullminedead.livejournal.com]

So, how did it go? I'm interested to hear about the Neurology panel myself. I should see what Arisia holds in store. That's only a month and a half away.

[logisticslad.livejournal.com]

While my panels were fun (at least for me), the con itself was pretty lame. Attendance was way down and there didn't seem to be any parties worth hanging out at. The rest of the program didn't hold much interest for me, mostly because they had waited so long to invite people that they didn't get many pro authors to attend. X-Treme Neurology was fun, though. We talked about advances in neurorobotics and neurophramacology. We discussed why the SF concept of being able to download one's personality into a computer has a long way to go. The panel consisted of me, two biologists and an author, so I was the only one with up to date knowledge on the topic.