READERCON 20
July 9-12, 2009

My Readercon 20 Experience started way before the convention itself commenced, and it's continuing afterwards, in a not entirely comfortable way.

Like all conventions, my first Readercon, in 2008, had ups and downs for me, but I was quite impressed by it and mostly enjoyed it. In fact, I was so impressed by Readercon 19 that I stayed for the final "de-briefing" meeting, chatted with the committee members and offered to help out the following year. I pitched a workshop proposal to Eric M. Van, and I jotted down Anita Dobbs' contact information to help with the Souvenir Book and/or Program Book.

My life got fairly insane this spring--raise your hand if yours didn't! Anita and I traded multiple pings in April and May before we finally managed to solidly connect on June 6. At that time, Anita's non-Readercon life had become extremely demanding and she was overwhelmed with the work involved in producing the special edition, expanded version of the Readercon Souvenir Book.

I began by taking on the task of laying out the back of the book, the "20 Readercons" retrospective. This involved, along with articles, footnotes, and images, a great many tables filled with the names of committee members and guests, Readercon stats and summaries of the Kirk Poland Memorial Bad Prose Competition. I was soon spending hours every day working on the Souvenir Book layout. Anita's non-Readercon life refused to cut her a break, and I ended up doing the layout of the front of the book, as well. Although this was more pages, it was actually simpler, because it didn't have any...[taking a deep breath] tables.

More than one night saw Anita collecting, editing and scaling image after image and shooting them to me by e-mail, whence I caught them and immediately placed them in the ballooning Souvenir Book. I spiffed up the WOW-Art ad, did the Committee bio list at the end, placed all the black-and-white cover images for the cover gallery, balanced out white space, cussed out footnotes that wouldn't number themselves properly, fine-tuned formatting and...well, let's not say anything more about the...[taking a deep breath] tables. They look terrific, they're a gift to posterity!

The second week in, I was up far past my bedtime most nights, and at least once, didn't get to bed until the sun was rising and it was full light outside. Anita and I needed to get the 99% complete PDF proof online so Richard Duffy, David Shaw, Sonya Taaffe and Eric could proofread it. Whilst doing this, I still found time to amuse myself with little graphic riffs. I got a flash of inspiration while laying out the Kirk Poland material and made the "typewriter bomb" illustration on page 113, and I created the background graphic for page 84 and the header for "Wonderwall" on page 17. The proofreading copy went online on June 24, all the corrections and changes from the proofreaders were implemented, and the final press-ready PDF went to the printer on Friday, June 26--all 124 glorious pages of it. Whew.

At that point, I couldn't exactly relax and take a break. Not only was I backlogged disgracefully in my own publishing work, I was on the Readercon program this year. I had been given a two hour time slot for my proposed workshop on acting techniques and writing, and also was on a panel. This was the debut performance of my solo workshop and I needed to get it put together and prepped. I also took on organizing and emceeing the Broad Universe Rapid Fire Reading. When I uploaded the finished Souvenir Book, I didn't slow down, I just changed direction slightly.

It was smack in the middle of all this that I designed the flyer for Readercon 21. Um, yeah. That flyer.

On June 14, when everyone on the Committee was in a hyperspatial frenzy working on whatever aspect of the convention they were responsible for, Eric sent around the general request, "who is designing the Readercon 21 flyer?" It needed to be a handout and also be included in both the Program Book and the Souvenir Book. Crickets chirped for a couple of hours, and then I raised my hand and said, "Yeah, I can do that."

So I created the background graphic and laid out the text just as it was given to me, and added the page to the Souvenir Book, and sent a PDF to the people doing the Program Book and the handout. I thought it looked rather nice, actually. I certainly never dreamed that it would evoke the response that it did. I'd have found a picture with a lot more kittens in it.

My lack of foresight probably has several sources, chief among them my very long experience both attending and working on conventions, gatherings and similar events. I've seen several occasions in the past where burned-out organizers decided to give themselves a break and do a scaled back version of their event, especially after a landmark anniversary like the 20th in a row. So, the "Readercon Lite" concept didn't give me pause. I thought the idea of "everyone" being the "GoHs" and collectively designing a simplified program sounded intriguing and democratic.

As for the "This is your father's Readercon" line, I honestly didn't read a single thing into it beyond a pop culture joke. The new Star Trek movie had just used the same reference with its slogan, "This is not your father's Star Trek." I'm neither male nor straight, but I didn't give the line a second thought.

By the time the convention started, I had been living and breathing Readercon prep of some kind for the past four weeks--as had everyone on the Committee. I was dreaming about that...[taking a deep breath] Souvenir Book, and once that was done, all I could think about was my workshop and designing the flyer for the Rapid Fire Reading. My friend Trisha Wooldridge was staying at my house and we were commuting to the convention together, so I was also getting ready for a house guest.

By Thursday, I had the workshop and Rapid Fire Reading sufficiently structured that I wasn't waking up hours early with panic attacks about their being complete disasters. That doesn't mean I was relaxed about them. I was preoccupied and having fits of anxiety over the workshop right up until it started, which meant I was tense, absent-minded, and didn't really absorb much of the convention before Friday afternoon. Anyone who ran into me before 3:00 p.m. on Friday and thought I was snubbing them, my apologies! It wasn't you!

The best thing I can say about the Boston Marriott Burlington, after attending two Readercons there, is that it's a convenient drive and has free parking. These are very strong points in its favor from my perspective. But I can fully appreciate the hotel's disadvantages for people who don't drive, or who fly from a distance and don't have a car at the con. The hotel restaurant and bar are appallingly expensive, alternatives can't be reached easily on foot, public transportation to the hotel is inconvenient and costly, buses and shuttles around the area are unreliable. Even for drivers, navigating is tricky. I have a long familiarity with the Burlington Mall area and I had trouble getting my bearings.

But more than anything else, I've come to regard free wi-fi as a deal-breaker, and virtually every convention I've been to since World Fantasy '07 has had "complimentary" wi-fi available somewhere. Even Boskone's pricey hotel, the Westin Waterfront, has free wi-fi in the main lobby. The Autumn Inn B&B in Northampton, the Super 8 motel in Saratoga Springs, Arisia's hotel, the Hyatt Regency Cambridge, 3Pi-Con's hotel in Springfield and 4Pi-Con's hotel in Enfield, Albacon's 2008 and 2009 hotels...free wi-fi, every one of them. Evidently the Boston Marriott Burlington has no lack of guests and no incentive to offer such a minimal perk. They could certainly make up for the cost by turning down the air conditioning. The function rooms are far colder than reasonable comfort level, even for people who don't hate air conditioning like I do.

I arrived at the Marriott at about 7:30 on Thursday evening. I immediately met sister Broad Universe members Elaine Isaak and Justine Graykin in the lobby. Shortly afterwards we were greeted by sister Broad Jennifer Pelland. Elaine and Jennifer had readings at 8:00 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. respectively, and I attended both of those. Jennifer read her short story, "Ghosts of New York," which I had seen her talk about on her LJ and was interested to hear. I met Trisha in Jennifer's well-attended reading (I was sitting in back on the floor because all the chairs were taken), and also chatted with Patricia Cryan and Mike from Mike's Comics.

At 9:00 p.m.,Trisha and I went to "The Origin of Character in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" with GoH Elizabeth Hand, Peter Straub, Daryl Gregory, Eileen Gunn, Ellen Kushner and moderator James Patrick Kelly. I was familiar with the book that inspired the topic, and I found many of the things that the panelists said to be relevant to my workshop theme, especially the discussion of how to let your "subconscious mind" flow into your conscious writing process, and how movement can stimulate this. I know that the book is controversial and regarded as debunked by some, but even as a metaphor it's interesting to consider. I've heard so many writers talk about "the voices inside their heads." In my case, it's more a situation of me getting inside my characters than vice versa, but I certainly have streams of consciousness and "voices" that seem to be coming from somewhere else.

At 10:00 p.m. Trisha and I went up to the Goblin Fruit Launch Party, where Amal El-Mohtar and Jessica P. Wick, editors of the online poetry magazine Goblin Fruit, literally launched the Summer, 2009 issue from their laptop computer on the dresser, as we all counted down in unison. They'd provided unique refreshments, including home-brewed mead, cheese-stuffed dates, and exotic homemade cookies. The room was jammed with people and spilling out into the hall.

(This impels me to a short digression about the problem with room parties. Hotel rooms are mostly filled with furniture, making any party good enough to be well attended a traffic jam. You can't move, you can't hear conversations, you can't circulate, it's not even easy to sit and talk to one or two people if you're on one edge of a queen size bed and they're sitting on another edge. I'm an exceptionally fit, agile and flexible person, and also small. Room parties present even more of a challenge to people who are large and/or differently abled. I enjoy room parties and have been to many good ones that were dampened by space restrictions, and I'd love to come up with a creative solution. Could smaller function rooms be assigned to parties after programming was over? Wouldn't it be worthwhile for the hotel to accommodate that and avoid complaints from other guests about con room parties and associated hall traffic?)

Trisha and I both had work to finish up, so we inched our way out of the party and went back to my house after the launch. Of course, we were then up until past 3:00 a.m. gabbing and eating popcorn, but I still managed to finish and print the Rapid Fire Reading flyer and go over my notes and materials for my workshop.

Friday morning Trisha and I were up early--very early for us--and on the road with the intention of getting to the hotel before Registration opened at 10:00 a.m. Unfortunately, Trisha forgot her books for the Broad Universe table, and in attempting to come back for them, I took an unfamiliar exit off Rte 3 South and proceeded to get so lost, we were over an hour late to the con, arriving just past 11:00 a.m. You'd think I hadn't lived here for twenty years, gods! Did I feel stupid! We went through Registration, which was very quiet by then, and I got all my program participant information. I was pleased to see that I had a sheet of stickers for the Meet the Pros(e) Party. Up to that moment, I wasn't sure whether I would have them or not.

I was too wired about my workshop to focus on much else. I wandered around figuring out the program locations on the schedule, which I admit confused me a bit. It took a while before I realized exactly how the schedule was laid out, with some columns changing room designations at the horizontal break. (If you puzzled over this, too, you know what I mean--otherwise, explanations elude me.) I went to the wrong place a couple of times, but even without that, I seem to be pathologically incapable of getting to a programming event on time. I was late to the Special Kaffeeklatsch with Barbara Krasnoff on "How to Write for a Living When You Can't Live Off Your Fiction." I enjoyed that very much, but the room was so full, I ended up standing for half the hour, because people kept having to squeeze behind me to take a cell phone call or get coffee from the refreshment table.

I was surprised and flattered at how many people attended my 1:00 p.m. workshop, "How Acting Techniques Can Enhance Your Writing." There were so many people, it was a challenge to do the physical exercises I planned. When I do anything that involves "performance," I'm a wreck until I step in front of the audience and start, and then, boom, I'm in the zone. The downside of that is that I'm not second-guessing myself and critiquing, I'm just doing. I do notice reactions and adjust accordingly, but only up to a point. The participants in my workshop seemed to really be enjoying it, but this was its first outing, and I learned some good lessons for future iterations. For one thing, I'll talk much less and have a lot more participatory activity. I'm always nervous about planning too much participation because some audiences are very shy about that. But audiences at cons clearly love it--I saw that in more venues than just mine.

It was very fun to hear people reading a piece of fiction I'd written. I'd had the darnedest time finding a piece that worked for the variety of reading styles I wanted people to try, and I knew this one could use some polish. But I learned a lot listening to the readers, too.

Once my workshop was over with, I was able to heave an enormous sigh of relief and start decompressing. I still had a panel and the Rapid Fire Reading to do, but those were a cakewalk compared to the anticipatory angst the workshop had inflicted on me. Trisha and I were starving, so we went over to the Mall Food Court where I tossed my Draconian dietary regimen out the window and celebrated a successful workshop with crab rangoon and lo mein. It was such a beautiful summer day, too!

When we got back to the Marriott, Trisha helped staff the Broad Universe table. Still "coming down" after my workshop, I found a quiet chair in the hallway outside the "States" salons and read through the Program Book, highlighting items I wanted to see or was committed to attend. Tarot expert Rachel Pollack's talk was scheduled opposite my workshop, and I was sorry about that because I use her Tarot books and hold her in very high esteem. At 7:00 p.m. I went to the wrong room looking for her reading and had to hurry all the way back across the hotel. I ran into my friend and sister Broad Morven Westfield, explained that I was on my way to a reading, and then didn't see Morven again until the next day! I was one of about four people who attended Rachel Pollack's reading, from her short story collection The Tarot of Perfection, which was just wonderful. Her story was engaging and she is an excellent reader--expressive, understated, smooth, she held us mesmerized. But, silly me...I was too intimidated to talk to her afterwards!

I accompanied Trisha to Mary Robinette Kowal's reading at 7:30 p.m. and was glad I did. Mary reads very well and her story was surprisingly sweet. I got a little choked up at the end of it. At 8:00 p.m. I went to Lev Grossman's talk, "The Pleasures of Sacrilege: Rewriting Lewis and Rowling into The Magicians." This was listed as a 60-minute talk but only went for 30 minutes. If Lev explained why when he started, I missed it, because I arrived, as usual, slightly late. It's too bad, because I was very interested in his stories about how he discovered different classic fantasies, all of which I've read and loved, and how he wove them into his own fiction. His talk was too short!

I hung out, with people and alone, until the Readercon 20 Grand Ceremony at 10:00 p.m. I felt a sense of personal pride in Readercon 20 because I'd worked so hard on the Souvenir Book, and was the newest member of the Readercon 20 Committee. I enjoyed the Grand Ceremony, and I got more out of the Meet the Pros(e) Party than I did last year. I can sympathise with the several people who have said in their con reports that the Meet the Pros(e) Party is too loud, too crowded, somewhat overwhelming, and not very satisfying for ordinary attendees. That's how I felt last year. I don't collect autographs or fawn over celebrities, and of all conventions, Readercon seems to be the least "fannish," in any sense. The Meet the Pros(e) Party is like an autograph party-cum-scavenger hunt, with no organization. It's a lot more fun if you have stickers yourself and can go around trading them. But having experienced it as both a convention member and a "pro," I think the Meet the Pros(e) Party could use some tweaking. The hotel bar needs a quieter credit card machine, or better timing!

Nevertheless, I did have a fun time, even writing (by request) a quote on someone's back (I honestly can't remember whose!), and the cake was delicious. The retrospective slide show, set to Barry N. Malzberg's suggestion of Beethoven's The Consecration of the House, was a nice touch and well done. Trisha and I left at around 11:30 p.m. while I was still awake enough to drive home safely. "Decompress" was rapidly reaching the stage of "crash." We didn't gab nearly as late before we got to bed.

Saturday tends not to be my best day at Readercon. We got to the Marriott in time for the 10:00 a.m. panel, "History and Fictional History," with Christopher M. Cevasco, Suzy McKee Charnas, David Anthony Durham, C.C. Finlay, M.K. Hobson and Howard Waldrop. It was an interesting discussion about how history and fiction overlap--how veridical real life recorded history really is and how we think about history when developing alternative realities. But I was so tired, I didn't absorb much of the panel.

After that, I checked out the dealers in the Bookshop, and bought copies of Susan Hubbard's The Year of Disappearances and Charnas' collection, Stagestruck Vampires. I'd read Hubbard's The Society of S earlier this year when someone told me that I was mentioned in it by name, and I'd been looking for the sequel.

At 12:00 p.m., I sat on the panel, "Boom and Bust in Genre Publishing and the Economy," with Paula Guran (of Pocket Books), Gordon Van Gelder (editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction), Jacob Weisman (Tachyon Publications) and moderator Lawrence Person (of Nova Express). This was the first time I'd sat on a panel in a "big room:" up on a platform, no safe skirted table to hide behind, and with microphones. I'd had minor concerns that I'd be self-conscious and inarticulate, but I was perfectly comfortable and enjoyed the panel immensely. I just love talking about publishing. The panelists had a great mix of opinions on the topic, too. I'd thought we might get a bit more into the history of how economic trends have related to genre books, and I'd done some research on that. But we had plenty to talk about with the present and future as themes.

After that I went to "The Invention of Fantasy in the Antiquarian Revival," but sleep deprivation caught up with post-panel decompression and I was almost falling asleep--no fault of the panelists! I was just way too preoccupied or way too tired for most of Readercon 20 to give the programming the attention it deserved.

I was committed as a "participant" for Ellen Klages' workshop at 2:00 p.m., "Where Do You Get Your Ideas? Improv for Writers." I was rather excited about this workshop and it ended up being the biggest disappointment of the convention for me, possibly because I was just too tired. But I was in a very sour mood indeed by the end of it, partly because everyone else seemed to absolutely love the workshop and I seemed to be the only one who did not, and hence felt out of sync and alienated on top of being frustrated and disappointed. I don't know what I expected. I guess I'll just say that I would have made different choices if I'd been planning that workshop, and leave it at that.

The long break on Saturday is another criticism of Readercon I've seen repeated many times and have to agree with. Not being a celebrity-hound, I'm not attracted by two solid hours of one-on-one GoH interviews. A one-hour roundtable with both GoHs together would be much more interesting (especially if the GoHs don't agree on everything!). I don't know how the GoHs feel about it. That's a long time to be on the spot. An additional two-hour-long "dinner break" after the interviews is wasted time and no more necessary than on Friday, in my opinion.

In any event, I booted up my netbook and chilled in an empty function room journaling for while after the Improv workshop. The hotel staff came in and straightened up the room and very respectfully didn't pay me the least attention. When the Bookshop closed, I helped stow the Broad Universe table and then went over to the Mall Food Court with Trisha and Morven. This time I stuck to my diet and ate the food I'd brought from home. We had a great time, and also discovered that the Mall has free wi-fi, so at least we know where to go for our wi-fi fix next year if the Marriott doesn't relent. (Come on, B.M.B...even the Mall, for pete's sake!)

We returned just in time for the Kirk Poland Memorial Bad Prose Competition. That was the second biggest disappointment of Readercon 20 for me. I wanted to enjoy it. I'd heard so many raves about how hilarious it was, and I'd spent so much time laying out the article about it and designing the funny graphic. Trisha and I had a seat far over on the left side of the house, which might have been part of the problem. But...I couldn't understand almost anything that anyone said. This had a lot to do with the enunciation and inflection deficiencies of the readers, a couple of them in particular. But it wasn't entirely that. I have constant, progressive tinnitus, but it's atypical because I don't have hearing loss. In fact, my (medically tested) hearing is better than the average person's my age. In Kirk Poland, I felt like one of those little old grannies who won't get a hearing aid and keeps telling everyone to stop mumbling. The audience would roar with laughter and I didn't have a clue what was just said. To make it worse, I love to analyze text puzzles and figure out who really wrote something or what piece of prose really goes to something else. I couldn't hear well enough to make an educated guess and vote. By Round 3, I just stopped voting. From the audience's reactions, I never would have suspected that anyone else had a problem.

So, if I left the Improv workshop feeling down, I was really in a bad mood after Kirk Poland. To top off the day with a cherry, it was deluging rain when Trisha and I walked out the front entrance and dashed to my car. Trisha and I were up very late trading Tarot readings and talking, partly because we were dealing with my crappy mood. She cheered me up, though, and we worked on her poetry readings for the Rapid Fire Reading next day, and got to bed very late.

By Sunday morning, I'd gotten over myself (more or less). Trisha and I slept in a little later and arrived at the Marriott by 11:00 a.m. for a meeting with Broad Universe members. At noon, we all went to the Rapid Fire Reading, which went very well. With ten readers (Justine Graykin, Phoebe Wray, Trisha J. Wooldridge, Helen Collins, JoSelle Vanderhooft, Lyn C.A. Gardner, Elaine Isaak, Jennifer Pelland, Shira Lipkin and Morven Westfield--I emceed) people had to keep it short, and several people read poems and used only a portion of their time. There was quite a bit of variety in the readings. We had a good audience and they seemed to be very entertained.

Several of us went directly from the Rapid Fire Reading to Mary Robinette Kowals' workshop, "How to Give an Effective Reading." I already knew most of what Mary presented, but I enjoyed the workshop. Unfortunately, she could easily have exploited a two-hour time slot, and one hour simply wasn't long enough. The workshop crammed in piles of information and felt rushed, through no fault of Mary's. Her explanation and demonstrations of how to position your voice, get different voice tones, create characterizations and deliver prose effectively were all fascinating.

Trisha and I helped pack up the Broad Universe table and load books into Phoebe Wray's car, then went to Kari and Tui Sutherland's Special Kaffeeklatsch, "Beyond Sparkly Vampires: Current F&SF for Young Readers." That was a very interesting discussion, and they also had fantastic cookies. But there were two well-attended and lively Kaffeeklatches going on in the same room, and the noise from the other table made it hard to hear people at our own table. Even so...I noticed that I could hear a lot better than I could at Kirk Poland! I had to concentrate, but even with the high level of background noise and the large table, I could hear and understand every word that was said.

We stayed for the "debriefing" at 3:00 p.m., which seemed to have far fewer convention members than last year. If for no other reason, however, I was glad I went, because other people commented on problems with the sound system at Kirk Poland. I wasn't the only one who couldn't hear or understand the speakers! I had to stand up and say out loud that I was so glad to hear people bring this up--I wasn't going deaf, after all! Eric even said that now he understood why the vote numbers dropped off so much from the first round--I wasn't the only person who stopped voting because I couldn't follow the readings. Whew! I guess this will be something to be aware of next year.

That's if anyone even remembers this tiny detail next year, given what happened next.

I had tons of backlogged work, personal and professional, to tackle after the four-week run-up to Readercon and the convention itself, so I didn't write a con report right away. I was pleased when Kate Nepveu began collecting and posting people's Readercon-related blog entries, Twitter streams and photos on the official Readercon LiveJournal Community. That is, I was pleased for about five minutes, until the whole #flyerfail controversy blew up. The bulk of the negative commentary began with this post by Catherynne M. Valente, which others linked when they continued the topic on their own blogs. But a number of people spontaneously made similar remarks. It seems that the Readercon 21 flyer that I designed was being wildly over-interpreted. The chief issues were the idea of holding a scaled-down Readercon at all, and the joking slogan, "this is your father's Readercon."

I'm not going to get into a lot of discussion of the points raised here. Anyone who is interested may access all the con reports that Kate collected on the Readercon LJ Community and make up their own mind. But I certainly didn't feel very happy to think that I was at least partly responsible, from the sound of it, for completely ruining Readercon 20 for some people--the ones who said everything was hunky-dory until "someone passed out a flyer on Sunday." (Evidently, they hadn't yet read the Program Book as far as page 36 or the Souvenir Book as far as page 120, because the flyer is reproduced in both of them.)

It was somewhat bemusing to see people accuse Readercon of being sexist and ageist on the basis of a pop-culture joke, when both GoHs and the Memorial GoH for Readercon 20 were all women. Several individuals complained that the pop-culture reference was so old that younger fen wouldn't know it and so it was ageist on that basis alone. Not one single person seems to remember the recent use of that slogan for the new Star Trek movie. The bitter debate that the flyer evoked led to the airing of many other complaints about Readercon--the lack of diversity (racial, gender, orientation, etc), problems with accessibility, unfriendliness to younger fen, the distribution of the program events over the days of the convention, elitism, resistance to change, shutting people out of programming, the hotel...it was like #flyerfail had lanced a huge festering boil. One attendee even ranted that too many fen are obese and need to get themselves in shape.

The Readercon Committee posted some clarifying information and by the end of the week, things settled down. There were certainly attendees who wrote glowing con reports and appeared unconcerned by (or unaware of) the Readercon 21 flyer. But the Committee's response dodged the question of the flyer's essentially harmless intentions. There was absolutely no deeper meaning or subtext to the flyer than the inevitable disconnect in perspective between the people who had been working on organizing Readercon for weeks and months, and the people who were attending (and who obviously care about Readercon very much).

Catherynne Valente speculated, "...that flyer, the source of all the trouble, seems to have been a rogue agent not approved by the Com." Um, no. The flyer was done two weeks before the convention and was in both the Program Book and Souvenir Book. If I was that good a "rogue agent," I'd give up publishing and join the CIA. Then Catherynne asked Sonya Taaffe, "Can I ask: who made that flyer?" and Sonya replied, "You can ask: I don't know. I suspect it may be one of those embarrassing secrets whose authors take them to their graves." Um, no. I didn't have input into the wording, and I'm distressed that people got so upset, but I'm not going to pretend I didn't have anything to do with it. Besides, anyone with an eye for design can see the similarity in style between the RC21 flyer, the BU RFR flyer and the Souvenir Book.

With all the bandwidth, time and verbiage devoted to posts and comments about #flyerfail and Readercon's faults, I was disappointed that no one--that I could find--posted any feedback, positive or negative, about the programming events I did--the workshop and the genre publishing panel. A couple of people mentioned the panel in passing, but that is all. No one has mentioned my well-attended workshop. No one has mentioned the Souvenir Book. The sole lasting impact I've made on the attendees of Readercon 20 is, apparently, 100% negative--at least as far as anyone has yet felt inspired to post on a blog. Given how hard I worked on the Souvenir Book and how many hours I spent on it, this is rather...depressing.

But, hey. I'm now an official member of the Readercon 21 Committee, and I'm happy to do the Souvenir Book again--I rather enjoyed the job. I hope we can resolve some of the concerns that have been expressed and have a great Readercon next year.