arisia | My Arisia post (Reply)

I had a great time this year for many reasons, most of them personal but many because of the con itself. I was on three panels this year and all of them were well attended. I had many people come to speak with me after each panel and continue the conversation. This shows that the people there were engaged and interested in what was going on. The only feedback I'd give to this is that I think there might be a need for a "how to moderate a panel" booklet that gets distributed to people who have never done it before, is a single sheet put in with ALL programming packages, or is available at the programming office for those who may like some tips.

The three panels I was on were:

- Coming Out of the Poly Armoire Fri 10:00 PM (this one I was pinch hitting for drwex)

- Explaining Polyamory Sat 3:00 PM

- Psychology of Geekiness Sun 12:00 PM

I found the first two overlapped significantly and we covered many of the same topics as the audience for the first one had collectively made the decision that the panelists should assume that they did all want to be out or more out and wanted to know how. Thus we got into the subject of how to explain it and come out. Kudos to Jon for picking up that trend from the audience and running with it. He did an excellent job of time management (both floor time and any one person. including himself. He also came in with a general framework but allowed it to be flexible in places).

I did get requests to have a poly 101 level type thing. I do not think that it should replace the higher level stuff we have been doing but it might be nice to put it back in as it's been a few years.

For future panelists on poly panels I received MANY requests for information on where else panels and discussions about poly happen. It might be good if we had some information to give out, even if it is just a list of web sites. Mostly I pointed people to the Loving More website as they collect information on poly conventions that happen around the country and may have other good resources.

The last panel, Psychology of Geekiness, went extremely well. Aimee Yermish did an excellent job of moderating though she didn't realize she was supposed to be moderating until she sat down with us at the table. Sunday panels need microphones. All of them. We all had laryngitis and had trouble projecting to the back of the room. Last year's panel with the same subject devolved into an Asperger's support group type meeting with many of the stories that go along with that. I mentioned this to Aimee who agreed that this was a bigger issue than that one and worked very hard to keep our view more broad without discounting anyone's point of view. It was wonderful having someone on the panel who was versed in "cultural" geekitude and not the mental health point of view. The composition worked really well and the panel could have gone on for 2 hours. We had one woman come up to the table after the panel was over and tell us this particular panel made the con for her. We had some excellent conversations going that we had to shoo out of the room so that we could let the next panel get started.

Thank you everyone who worked really hard to put all of this together and herd enough cats to get panels together no matter how cranky and strong-willed the cats might be about what you are trying to do. Thank you to programming for specifically doing stuff to help our family work things out so we could do our bit at the con.

Lastly, for registration, when there is last minute registration, if there could be a non-paypal way to pay for the con, if we do not get enough panels for the comp, that would be great. Not everyone has a functioning paypal account or the means to make/get one.