DragonCon '07: Best Science Fiction Convention Ever: A Staffer's View of This Year's Convention

It's Monday evening and we are driving home from DragonCon 2007. It's the end of my tenth year of volunteering for DragonCon staff. I'm so tired I can hardly sit erect in the car seat.

"Where do you want to eat?" My husband queries.
"I don't care," I answer. And then, instead of telling him I don't care what kind of food, I add, "And I don't care what genre, either."
There's a barely perceptible pause. "Ok," he responds. "I'll take non-fiction."

And we both burst into near-hysterical giggles.

That's what comes of spending 4 days working in the new Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature track at DragonCon 2007. We spent some time talking about genre issues in there, see..

But don't get the wrong idea. DragonCon is so far from a dry, academic sort of Con. I mean, we were in the middle of a panel, and the director and I looked toward the door and suddenly there was a pirate ship..not a pirate, a pirate SHIP going past the door. There were pirates, princesses, Klingons, Storm Troopers, men in kilts, and, in the evening after the kids had gone home, women walking around in bikinis made of duct tape.

George Takei from Star Trek and Summer Glau, from the beloved, deeply missed Firefly and the movie Serenity, were among the major guests. My director let me plan my five hours of work time a day around the Sci-Fi channel's Ghost Hunters' scheduled appearances. Jason Hawes, co-founder of TAPS, called me a "lovely lady" in the Walk of Fame.

And people sure were buying things, me included. On Friday, September 1st, before the Con had even quite officially started, I walked through the Marriott to the Hyatt on the way to my track (a track is a room devoted to one show or subject. ) Before I reached my track 10 minutes later, I'd purchased two CDs and two t-shirts. There's always a dealer room at the Con, but I tend to spend most of my money at the vendor tables in the Marriott and the Hyatt and in the Exhibit Hall and Art Show.

Then there was the free stuff. I get mostly books and magazines because I am a reader and writer first and foremost, but there were also buttons, dice, pens, and lots and lots of posters.

During the day, when my husband and I weren't putting our five hours of staff time, we checked out the panels. Some people go to DragonCon and never even visit a panel, but we are true geeks, and we do. This year a lot of the panels I wanted to see were in my actual track and I loved seeing Peter S. Beagle, a Hugo winner this year and the author of The Last Unicorn. MaryJanice Davidson, author of the hilarious "Undead" series of books starring reluctant Vampire Queen Betsy Taylor, was on one of our panels and she and the other two "paranormal romance" writers were a total riot.

Outside of the Science Fiction Literature track, we also caught the Ghost Hunters, of course, and followed the highly amusing Brogdingnarian Bards around between times. The Bards are a contemporary Celtic music duo from Austin, Texas who do play some beautiful, serious music, but it's their basic insanity that keeps the crowds coming, even at midnight. Being mostly past the age for intensive late-night parties, we joined them in the "filking" track (a "filk" is a parady of a folk song) most nights.

There's lots of music at DragonCon. Most of it tends to the Goth, of course, with a liberal sprinkling of contemporary Celtic. The Celts have been mostly represented in recent years by the above-mentioned Bards and Emerald Rose, another American Celtic groups from right here in Georgia with an intensely loyal fanbase. There are performances throughout the day in the Concourse area of the Hyatt and late-night concerts by groups like The Last Dance and The Cruxshadows. The lines for these concerts have to be seen to be believed, especially at 1 in the morning.

The Con is entirely different at night than it is in the daytime. In the day, there are a lot of children running around and DragonCon is very family-friendly. At night, when the children have gone home, some of the costumes get quite a bit more "adult." Nudity is not allowed. Outright vulgarity is frowned upon. But people do push the limits. It is a lot of fun and this year, as always, there was a tremendous amount of photo-taking going on day and night. And, of course, with over 20,000 people in attendance, there was also a great deal of alcohol consumption going on.

DragonCon does not provide alcohol at any function, but there are bars in all three host hotels and people have rooms. Security does a fantastic job every year of keeping order, though, and the crowd is, for the most part, in such a euphoric mood that in ten years of volunteering for staff, including several in Security, I've never seen or heard of a really serious injury or incident.

One of the things I personally love about DragonCon is that all of the entirely volunteer staff (I believe there is only one paid employee) and nearly everyone else in attendance really wants everybody to love the Con and have a good time just like they do. At every panel, someone always asks the new celebrities or other panelists, "So what do you think of the Con?

Are you enjoying the Con?" and almost always, the answer is something along the lines of "The Con is amazing. I can't believe how nice everybody has been, and the organization is fantastic." There are always some complaints about logistics, of course, from staff, guests, and participants.

That was inevitable this year, too, with a record thirty-one tracks, two exhibit halls, autograph sessions, a Walk of Fame, and thousands upon thousands of men, women, teenagers, children, and aliens all divided among three hotels on Peachtree Street. Escalators broke, lines got long, some people couldn't get in to every where they wanted to go. You just can't do it all. But then there's always next year!

DragonCon has something for everyone, but that does not mean everyone should come. There's one major rule to remember. If you don't like crowds, DON'T come to DragonCon. You will not have fun. It's packed, twenty-four hours day and night. Aside from that, my only advice would be not to be too hung up on seeing any one person or event. Be flexible.

Some celebrities or other guests always cancel, often at the last minute. They get work or a filming schedule gets moved up, they get sick, they miss flights..stuff happens. There's plenty of other stuff to do. Be prepared to stand in line if you want to see anyone from a really popular show at the moment, or for nighttime concerts and events.

This year my husband and I thought again about trying to get into the Serenity Shindig until we saw the long, long line, just like last year. The Masquerade, DragonCon's costume contest, is so popular they open up extra rooms for the overflow crowd. So understand that you just may miss some things.

If you get hungry or thirsty, don't forget there's a ConSuite on the second floor, run for most of the ten years I've been there by the estimable Joe Campbell, which always has plenty of free soda for Congoers and staff people and some sort of consumable snack, depending on what time you're in there as to how much.

This year was a blast; it's the day after and I'm still recovering. But I'm already planning for next year! Come and join us next Labor Day weekend!