Capricon
Capricon was this past weekend, obviously CST isn’t the ideal timezone for me, but paying just $10 for a convention allows a certain casual approach to it, so I figured why not.
It started Thursday, but as this was also First Thursday, I decided to Tun instead, which was a good time.
On Friday, I popped back to the Discord for intermittent chatting. Staff was clearly keeping an eye on channels, being social as well as helpful. The first panel item I decided to go to was a reading, but unfortunately the reader in question could not be found, whoops. I did make a couple of other panels and readings over the weekend, they were done on Zoom with integrated Discord chat, which worked nicely imo. There were two channels for each panel, the current Live room discussion and then the after-panel Hallway where people could spill out to continue the discussion, I thought the naming convention was a nice touch.
The art show looked good, although I didn’t get my act together in time to submit. There was also a charity auction, handled by having a channel for each item to be bid on. There were some of the other standard channels; fan tables, bar and consult, pet photos, cosplay, crafting, a section for the Cafe track (kaffeeklatsches and the like), and even a film watching channel. There were even several voice channels which seemed busier than I’ve seen at previous online conventions.
Something they clearly put effort into was the parties, with Friday and Saturday Zooms with breakout rooms for various bids and groups, plus a Scalzi DJ dance on Saturday. Of course this was at 3am my time, so although I did set an alarm just in case I couldn’t quite face dragging myself out of bed for it – partly because I would have had to set myself up in the living room in order not to wake John. Still, from peeking at the Discord it does look like they were well received.
I definitely didn’t get the most out of what the convention was offering, but that’s entirely on me. Capricon is for sure on my radar now for conventions I would someday like to attend.
Next up, Boskone.
3 Comments
Peter Sullivan
Parties were, I felt, the one thing that virtual conventions initially struggled with.
I don’t think it was really until Punctuationcon that there was a virtual con that really grokked them.
And you can tell John and Alison I said that.
Geri Sullivan
With apologies for posting a correction as my very first comment here at all, the convention’s name is Capricon. Only one “r”, not two.
I *am* enjoying your website!
admin
Oh! Of course it is, spelling corrected! Thanks 🙂