I had a great time at Balticon, but still seem a bit tired from all the fun. It was my first time attending this Science Fiction Con and I look forward to returning in future years. The panels I spoke on were the Parsec Awards and Copyright and Social Media.

The Parsec panel was great for explaining the awards process and answering questions. The face to face interaction made me realize I have only started to do the outreach to educate people on the Parsecs and it's a segment that has been neglected in the past because most of our efforts were directed at working on the program itself. Through the conversations I had in Baltimore there are a number improvements for the 2010 awards I want to see implemented, that's right, we haven't had this year's awards and I have a To Do list for next year.

The Copyright and Social Media panel turned out very informative for attendees. Thomas Gideon did a great job leading the panel, while I tried to check the assumptions and make sure that while we used terms we that were commonplace to us, the audience understood their meaning. I have to agree with Thomas post that it could have been a much longer panel and we wouldn't have probably answered all the questions. More material next year I suppose.

It was a great practice for public speaking which frankly I have not done enough of lately and so the next time I have an opportunity to participate in such discussions I won't hesitate to jump onboard.

Last and most important was the side conversations, frankly that is usually the best part of such events. The chance to connect online names with faces and hangout with old friends. A few times I stopped myself looked around the room and just amazed at the people I was able to hangout with, it's a new age of digital storytelling and these are the first generation of this movement, an exciting and unique time. I can't wait until next year.