SMOFCon: Keynote Speaker

[kevin_standlee]

The wireless connection here in the function room was not giving me an outside connection for a long time now, but it's up again. I'm sitting here in the Keynote Panel with Tyra Hilliard (scroll down on the linked page for the info about her). She's been giving an interesting presentation about meetings and contract law, in particular going through some real proposed contracts and the many "gotchas" in them. The room is once again packed out, with a substantial majority of the attendees present.

One complaint I've heard about SMOFcon is that it is too Worldcon-centric and there is insufficient value for local and regional conrunners. I'd say this talk is equally useful for all of these people. I think most of the people here are getting something out of this talk, even Ms. Hilliard, who seems impressed at how well we know ourselves and the number of interesting "gotchas" we spotted that weren't necessarily in her examples.

Comments

Summary...

[hazelchaz]

Did she have any handouts, or anything you can take away from the panel apart from what's in everyone's heads?

Re: Summary...

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

There were handouts, but I ended up not getting a set for myself, so I can't say much more about them.

[phoenix14159.livejournal.com]

As a local conrunner who has not (yet!) made it to a WorldCon, I can definitely say that there was plenty for me here. WorldCon stuff was certainly part of the mix, but the experience would have been less for me without it.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Hey, that's great to hear. I've always felt that SMOFCon needs to serve a mix of Worldcon and local/regional needs. There will certainly always be a strong Worldcon element -- it's a unifying theme, and at least half of us attending have it as a common experience -- but it shouldn't be the only one.