Tag: dragoncon

Spending a long weekend among 50k+ of the geekiest and nerdiest and generally awesome(-est) people around takes a while to recover from, especially for introvert types like me.

This year my friends and I dressed up for the first time. Nothing grand, but my friend said we should wear bathrobes in the grand Hooligan tradition. Then I found these Star Trek bathrobes at ThinkGeek.

They were pretty awesome and got a great reaction from other people. We were the away team in bath robes. People wanted to take photos of us. It’s very interesting to be on that side of DragonCon where people are asking to take photos of you instead of taking photos of others in costume.

We also had some Jedi robes with us, but they didn’t get nearly the reaction that the Star Trek robes got.

DragonCon seemed a lot more crowded this year. One of my friends also seemed to think there were a lot more DragonCon newbies this year too. Registration was orders of magnitude better this year than it was last year. Kudos to the organizers for making changes to improve the registration process. To manage the crowds for panels and sessions, I think organizers moved the lines for the more popular sessions and panels outside, rather than have lines of people snaking around inside. That resulted in really long intimidating looking lines heading outside and around buildings. Made it a little easier to move around inside, but it was a little confusing.

As usual, I spent most of my time in the Space and Science tracks. All the sessions I went to were packed this year with lots of people being turned away once the rooms were full. Didn’t do much autograph seeking this year, and only made one trip through the Walk of Fame.

Lots of photos were taken, lots of cool costumes. It kind of seemed like there weren’t quite as many people in costume this year, although I didn’t spend a lot of time wandering around like I did previous years so I probably just didn’t see them.

My complete collection of photos for DragonCon 2011 and the parade are over in the gallery.

My second DragonCon turned out to be an epic adventure full of awesome and win.

First there were epic lines for people that preregistered. When we got there, the outside line stretched all the way around the entire block where the Sheraton was. Once you got through that line, you got to wait in another line that zig-zagged back and forth through a large ballroom. A couple hours later, you get to the registration place under your last initial and then had to flip through a binder to find your name. Really? Flipping through a binder? So much for the digital age.

Fortunately that was the only really painful part of DragonCon. The fan panels were always packed. The only one I made it to was the B5 panel on Friday with Jason Carter and Claudia Christian, which was enough for me. Awesome.

Thursday I met up with my 2nd cousin, who I only found out about a couple of years ago even though my mom and her mom (both cousins) apparently talk to each other all the time. Very cool.

Saturday was the parade, then science and space track sessions and The Amazing Randi Q&A session. Again, awesome. Also got to meet Jewel Staite and got a picture signed. More awesome. Unfortunately I was too star struck to ask if I could get a picture taken with her, which would have been totally epic. Bought an Astronomy Cast CD and got both Dr Pamela Gay and Fraser Cain to sign it. Bought The Guild DVDs and got them both signed by Sandeep Pradikh and Jeff Lewis. Full of awesome.

The highlight of the day was walking up to Garrett Wang‘s table (Harry Kim from Star Trek: Voyager) and having him greet me with “Hello fellow Asian!”. Epic, just epic.

Sunday turned out to be the most epic day of this year’s Dragon*Con (at least for me anyway). Astronomy Cast podcast recording session where they were taking audience questions. One of my questions got asked (about radiation exposure in space, woot!). I also won the Galileoscope door prize! Can’t wait to hear the episode. Then I got to meet and hang out with some coolfunamazing twitter people: @physicistlisa, @geeksoap, @fubbleskag, @capsteverogers and @geekleetist. Then it was BBQ at Fox Bros BBQ with my cousin and her husband (yum) followed by one of the most entertaining science track sessions I’ve been in (Strange and Unusual Research Strikes Back – The Workshop). People were given ice cream to test brain freeze, toilet preferences were discussed and a survey on nose picking was conducted.

Monday was wind down day with just one session on Ham Radio tricks. Almost makes me interested in getting into ham radio just for the antenna design aspects. Wandered through the exhibit hall picking up a few things, photo ops with my cousin (apparently the food pictures she kept taking weren’t enough) and finally the road trip back home.

Many pictures to post soon. I have just under 500 pictures that I need to filter through.

Tomorrow my friend Rick arrives (hopefully).

Aside from going in to class, I have the next week off. Then Thursday it’s off to Dragon*Con!

Time to start planning out what I want to do.

woohoo!