This Hotel Room: COBbies talk about conventions

• Bring a water bottle. Drinks are stupidly expensive at cons and all the talking makes you thirsty. Water bottles can be refiled at water fountains for free. It's very easy to get dehydrated.
• Wash your hands a lot. Con germs spread easily.
• Set a budget ahead of time. Make sure you know how much you intend to spend and don't go over that.
• Bring healthy snacks. It's easy to find junk food at a con. Healthy food not so much. It's easy to get sick just eating junk food. I recommend things like dried fruit that don't spoil.
• Always have a pen. You will need one.
• Read the con scheduled ahead of time. Otherwise you miss what you're interested in.
• Make sure you have a photo ID when you're getting your badge. A lot of cons check them to make sure you are who you say you are.
• Wear comfortable shoes. You'll be on your feet a lot.

edited 4th Jul '12 10:40:20 PM by shimaspawn

• Don't eat or drink anything anyone hands you, unless you paid them and they are some kind of professional.
• Sleep is for the week. The week after Con.
• Caffeine is your friend.
• Don't sell yourself to the slave auction.
• If the hotel has a hot tub, avoid it at all costs.
• Beware of strange drink.
  • Or embrace it.
• You WILL get sick. Save your days off for AFTER Con, do not take them before.
• What you spend on a badge can get you drunk for at least three days. Slipping into a Con unnoticed takes a few minutes.
• drink water.
• Bathe. Even if you do it in the hotel fountain, you are head and shoulders above most other Con-goers by Saturday.
• Sunscreen. Even if the Con is indoors. Those boobs won't grease themselves...
• The more tattoos the girl has, the more available she is.
  • Unless she's in the SCA. In that case, watch your ass.
• And if you want to get laid...
  • Use a condom.
  • Check I Ds.

All I got for you.

Lessee... cons near me: Gencon, Starbase Indy, In Con Junction, and Chicago TARDIS (and probably a lot of other Chicago cons).

Cons I have attended: ...

I want to change this.

Adding to the suggestions (serious or not) above:

• If you require prescription medicines, bring them along with you, don't rely on the local pharmacies to take care of your medicine needs. If possible, try not to let anyone see you taking them. Most con goers, statistically speaking, aren't going to be dicks and swipe a person's medicine, but it only takes one asshole to ruin your weekend.
• If you do decide to imbibe in adult beverages to any significant degree, if at all possible do so with at least one friend (preferably more) who is not going to get fit-shaced. Ideally, they will be there to help you realize you're about to do something incredibly freaking stupid. Or they may help you do it, depending on what kind of friend they are.
• Stuff an empty gym bag in your luggage or use a suitcase larger than what you actually need for bringing clothing. Anyone who wanders the dealer's room for more than a few minutes is very likely to wind up buying something. Have cargo capacity available to accommodate those impulse purchases, it will make you much happier.
• If you're going to take pictures, have lots of extra film or storage devices (regular and digital cameras, respectively) handy, as well as any batteries or charger required for the camera. Little sucks more than seeing an awesome costume but then find out your camera's dead, or you don't have room for any more shots.
• On the subject of money, keep it where you can keep track of it. The odds are against being pick-pocketed, but in large crowds where you won't know more than a small handful of people, it's better to be safe than sorry. Front pockets on pants are generally easier to keep tabs on than back pockets.
• If you have a cell phone, bring it. They're invaluable in coordinating group activities, in addition to the obvious emergency value.
• If you get there a little early, familiarize yourself with the general layout of the areas of the various tracks (groupings of panels on certain general subjects, like B5, ST, SW, Pern, etc) beforehand.
• Take a few minutes to sit down and go through the panel grid, and mark some of the panels you're considering attending. It's hardly impossible that you'll wind up having to decide between two panels in the same time slot.
• Related to the previous point, don't forget things like scheduling eat times, either. You can only do so much on that box of pocky you picked up down in the dealer's room. Depending on where the food places (not just restaurants, but things like mall food courts) are, with a decent dodging ability and some running you can even grab a bite to eat between panels, during the buffer period. Most panels don't say anything against bringing in food to eat, but try to apply common sense... or find someone with that rare quality and ask for their advice. Don't bring in 5-course meals or otherwise be disruptive with your quick meal. Remember, when you pay for the ticket that means you have the privilege of being there (not a right to be there), and they have no qualms about tossing disruptive people out of panels. Read the con paperwork if you don't think they are allowed to boot your ass out.

The next few are if you're staying at a hotel for the con, and not just going back home at the end of the day.

• Bring a towel. Not just to be a hoopy frood, but because — let's face it — hotel towels suck if you're not going to some super-spiffy (read: stupidly expensive) hotel. It'll also be easier to identify your towel if splitting a room with others (recommended, cuts down on costs).
• Bring a small-ish trash bag (kitchen trash size should be fine) to collect your dirty/wet clothes in so they don't mess up the rest of the stuff in your suitcase. And no, do not try to make one set of clothes last the whole con, even a relatively short one like NAPPAcon. If nothing else, unless everything's completely enclosed in air conditioned comfort, southern summers mean sweat, and sweat leads to stink. You don't want to be the scuzzy asshole everyone talks about that smells like a locker room that's never been cleaned.
• And also, building on the last: Use the shower for something more than another place to dump extra crap. While "con funk" is somewhat exaggerated (shocking, I know... exaggeration on the internet), the whole "stinky con-goers" stereotype does have a pretty strong basis in fact.

That's all I can think of for now.

edited 5th Jul '12 7:23:44 AM by Nohbody

Oh, something else, statistically, you are not going to be robbed by con goes. Most con goers are surprisingly trustworthy people. The same can not be said of hotel staff, hall staff, or people who wander in off the street. If you need to trust someone, you're going to have better odds trusting someone with a badge.

In all my years going to cons, neither I nor the people I work with have had anything taken by fellow con goers. We have had things stolen by hotel staff, convention hall staff, and outsiders. That's not saying all con goers are perfect. Just pointing out the odds.

Wow, thanks for the advice, well yea, its a shorter con, and its in my town, so i will know were I am at and all. Also, its Alabama, and its hot as balls right now, so no heavy cosplay for me, i have a simple pink shirt BADMAN, yellow pants, Vegeta cosplay

So... is anyone going to Dragoncon this coming weekend besides me (and apparently Claudeng over on the Girl Genius forum here)?

Apparently the answer to is "no".

Either that or I'm a plague bearer to be avoided.

Anyway, heading out now for a friend's house near Atlanta, as a staging area (they're splitting the hotel room cost with me). I may pop in the forums at some point if the hotel has internet access (don't remember, offhand).

Kinda difficult to go to Georgia conventions from California. Also, expect the hotel internet to be retardedly slow, as everyone there will also be trying to upload photos/videos to facebook, continue their torrenting, maintain their World Of Warcraft/Lo L/Farmville accounts, etc.

Turns out they do have complementary WiFi here, so at least that's not an issue. All registered and badged-up, but nothing's really going on tonight as far as scheduled activities go.

So that's where you find a room party and start drinking.

Alas, no can do. Prescriptions for after dental work say no alcohol.

(Also mean I can't give blood at the donor drive LifeSouth runs every Dragoncon.)

You are at a con and you can't drink?? You have my sympathies, sir/madam.

FWIW I'm back. Got pix, but they'll wait until I can get some free time that doesn't have me wired from two Cokes, a cup of coffee, and a full sized can of Monster.

The morning is evil.

Sleep is for the weak, nohbody. The week after con.

Yet another round of Dragoncon, starting tomorrow. Multiple costumes standing by, though two may not get any airtime (so to speak).

Go go useless post...

edited 27th Aug '14 1:26:06 PM by Nohbody

Forgot this thread was a thing.

I went to InConJunction a couple of months back (Independence Day weekend IIRC) as my first con ever, and I was surprised at how intimate it was. At all the major cons I've seen things come out of, a "panel" is a handful of people talking on stage and maybe there's some Q&A afterward, but at InCon, the panels are two or three people leading a conversation with the handful of people who wandered in.

Also I wish I'd been brave enough to ask the senior woman crossplaying as the First Doctor for a photo, because that was awesome.

I learned the hard way going to Origins 2006 that White castle is not appropriate fare for long distance driving. It's also not cool for the round after lunch. We don't have that in our area, I was curious about the hype. . .nobody told me about the unfortunate side effects..

Chat with the folks at the booths. You don't just get swag, if you talk about the right things, sometimes you get full on games or books for free.

At Origins, there is a store in the convention center that sells the best peanut butter in the universe.

Ha ha HA. Allow me to tell the tale of the first Comic Con in Poland.

No, really, this time it's gonna work.

Last year, there was an idea to organize a Comic Con in the backwater town of Kielce, in November. November in Eastern Europe, as you can imagine, is far from pleasant, that's one thing, the people behind it got screwed over several times, there was no Comic Con Kielce.

This year, it seemed there are gonna be TWO Comic Cons in the capital, weekend after weekend. One was organized by an expo hall owners, planned to be four days long from June 1 to June 4, the other one - by some German company who apparently ran their posts through an automatic translator, providing some hilarious results like "the 7th physician" (The Seventh Doctor) or translating "Snake" as in Metal Gear Solid protagonist, literally, as the animal. Then, the Germans fell silent.

Turns out they fucked up spectacularly, their con was called off, and everyone who bought a ticket is entitled to convert it to a ticket to the last con standing.

And the last con standing will have Charles Dance and Carice Van Houten, the weird warlock guy from The Vikings and some chick from Teen Wolf. Sadly, I couldn't spare 25 bucks extra to get a photo, but if I did, I'd have to borrow a crossbow from someone and/or source a wolf medallion because it just wouldn't be me not to sneak a reference to Dance's two most recent roles.

Do tell us all about it come Monday (or Tuesday or Wednesday), Notso.

After the German con failed to invite Lindsey Morgan, the Last Con Standing announced they'll be inviting someone from the cast of The 100.

I'll piss myself laughing if it's Lindsey Morgan.

So in about 9 hours I'm going to be starting a five hour drive to Chattanooga for Libertycon (literary sci-fi con, kinda-sorta the official-unofficial "con home" for Baen Books authors, several of which live in the area including the 30th anniversary GoH John Ringo^* Obligatory: OH JOHN RINGO NO). And I can't sleep, after getting all of about four hours of sleep total yesterday.

Boy this is going to be fun...

Should be interesting especially given how crazy the Baen crowd can be. Though given recent events like a certain president your likely to run into Trump fans and MAGA types among the usual odd balls that haunt the Baen scene. Especially Ringo and Correia fans.

Eh, nothing really new. This isn't my first LC trip, I've kinda adopted Barfly Central (suite reserved by a Baen contributor for a general hang-out and decompression zone) as my "home away from home" (so to speak) at Dragoncon, and I follow the FB feeds of several of those authors including Ringo, Correia, and Michael Z Williamson.

[edit] Also, without getting into a political discussion, Ringo is the only one who's an outright Trump supporter, of the Baen authors I follow. The rest (and their fans) are a mixed bunch, from all-up #NeverTrump, to "better than the alternative", to "don't care for him but enjoy watching the freak-out from the left", and various other positions.

edited 29th Jun '17 7:14:17 AM by Nohbody

True but those two tend to be the worst. I have interacted with Correia in the online sphere and saying it is toxic would be an understatement. Well Ringo is Ringo so no real surprises. I like Weber and Drake well enough they don't wear it on their sleeve like those two do. The other authors are like you said a mixed bag.