I’m terribly grateful, first of all. To have this event at all is a testament to the dedication of its committee members, volunteers, and possibilians (invented: those who make it possible).

It was a big year. They moved houses, for one thing. The Sheraton is a step up in class, no two ways about it. (Some of) The guests were for-real famous.

It’s not my event, I know that. This is a place for the kids to revel in their youth and their nascent nerdiness. To don their armor and vanquish whatever foes may have tormented them over the course of the long dark months of midwinter.

Nonetheless, I keep going back to this event, and to similar events in town. It’s an expensive endeavour.

The workshops mostly fall flat for me, although I want to give props to the committee for doing an excellent job with both diversity – from depression to armour building – and organization (this year there were relatively few workshops I would have wanted to attend simultaneously, which is fantastic).

The cosplay was, as usual, incredibly deep and almost surreal in its quality.

The vendor room still needs a fair bit of work, but if I’m completely honest I’m not sure what I mean except that having established shops and artists comingled doesn’t work for me, the quality of the art on display is still massively uneven, and there isn’t quite enough content in that part of the convention to really hit the high note of self-sustaining excited browsing. Having said that, I brought (connived, dragged, what have you) LGW this year, and she did find some stuff she was interested in for the nerds in her life, so that’s a vote to the positive.

All told, I spent 20 minutes at the con this year. Old age has brought my time low, and also life was just busy. But it was nice to get out and see even the small bits I did.

Thanks folks.