*stumbles out of steaming Dalorean*

Listen. There’s something you need to see. It’s CONVergence 2016, and everything’s, well. C’mon, you’ll see.

*slams head on stupid Dalorean wing doors.*

Never mind. I’ll just tell you about it. It was great. I met a lot of incredible people, learned a lot of great stuff, and saw some really unbelievable costumes. This was my first ever experience being on panels, and, apart from some slight nervousness beforehand, I enjoyed it a lot. Other panelists were respectful, clever, and quite supportive. Every panel I was on was well moderated, too, which helps quite a bit. One of the things that CONVergence does very, very well is prepare panelists for their role. I appreciate that.

CONvergence Highlights

• Being on a panel with Melissa Olson and discussing how you really can’t trust horses ever. EVER.
• I was on a panel with Lee Harris (Grand Editor Supreme of tor.com’s novella program) and Crystal Huff (co-chair organizing the Finland Worldcon) in which I realized that yes, I have things to add to the discussion, and yes, cool people are also regular human beings.
• Meeting the esteemed Patrick S. Tomlinson, who was selling books with Michael Underwood. Both cool guys. I walked away with more books than I should legitimately be able to carry.
• Realizing that there are a ton of Gargoyles fans out there when I had to fill some time and wandered into the Gargoyles panel only to discover that damn, it was packed.
• The Westerns in Sci-fi panel was standing room only, which gives me great confidence for the sub-genre.
• Solarpunk?
• All the Waldos. So many Waldos. Not hard to find at all. There was even an outstanding Carmen Sandiego.
• CONVergence has the best diversity and harassment policies I’ve seen at a convention. This is important.
• The passion for Hamilton in the geek community is just incredible. I approve.

CONVergence has outgrown its space. My only complaint is that I probably missed most of the convention due to the distributed nature of it. It no longer fits in the hotel, but rather spreads out across several hotels in the area. It’s not a huge complaint. If I had been more adventurous, maybe I could have seen more. I didn’t need to, though. There was plenty right there.

CONVergence is a great convention. I’m definitely going to keep going back. Having an amazing local sci-fi convention is a benefit to the whole area. In fact, I think I’ll go take a look at CONvergence 2017 right now.

*climbs back into Dalorean*

*backs into the TARDIS at 88 MPH*