I was at Norwescon last week(end) and it was quite the experience. I have never been to a con like that before. In fact the only convention I’ve really ever gone to was the recent AWP convention (more here) and that was nothing at all like Norwescon. I enjoyed myself but didn’t feel like I truly got to experience the con because I was not there at night and I didn’t know anyone but my lobby booth buddy Jeffrey Cook.

Here’s a list of the pros and cons to Norwescon for me

Pros:

– Getting to see all the wonderful costumes

– Meeting people who came to our lobby booth

– Being able to talk about FVP and MVW books

– The cool vendors

– the free munchies in the Hospitality room

– People were nice and friendly

– the con environment seemed relaxed and not policing

– Valet took care of parking my car when I couldn’t find a spot

– Our booth had a lot of traffic

– I had a place to be (our booth) that I could feel safe and like I belonged to a particular spot for comfort’s sake

– I got to dress up! (and no matter what I dressed in it would not be the oddest costume out there)

Cons:

– Saturday admission was $45 (I even had to pay to just man the booth)

– parking was a nightmare as by 9:00 in the morning there were no spots left

– It was raining so going outside was not happening

– Our lobby booth was hemmed in by the superfluous amount of Larpers in the neighboring booth

– The two panels I tried to go to stunk, as the presenters were not very prepared, treated the audience like morons, and cursed in front of children

– The wrap-around enclosed nature of the hotel with spread out places to go was a little unnerving for first time con-goer such as myself