I first wanted to say thank you to my friend Anbon for coaxing myself and my wife Pam to show up to Convergence this year! I saw many interesting people and sat through some pretty amazing sessions. Some people that I met were John Kovalic, Kenneth Hite and James Kakalios. I ended up learning a lot about gaming and role-playing that I did not even consider. As being a newbie to Convergence I would like to mention that I felt that the hotel they used for the Convention was too small to accommodate the amount of people that showed up. I will post photos from this when I get my photo gallery extensions figured out.
Thursday July 3rd 2008: D&D: 4th Edition - I ended up missing this one because I did not get out of work as early as I had wished. Video Game Blogs and Podcasts - I do not remember too many details about this session, but I can say that I enjoyed listening to everyone rip on Kotaku. I also learned that when creating a video game blog or any gaming blog for that matter, you should strive to provide unique content. One way to do this would be to provide your opinion of the game rather than a walk through or summary of it. Cereal Mascot Smackdown - I ended up arriving to this session about half way through it. It was really amusing to listen to 8 panelists describe which mascot they thought would provide the smack down to the other. They also had to open the box of the winner and eat a bowl of that cereal. You can imagine how much of a sugar high they were on after 12 rounds. 9 pm and on - Ended up getting my bearings straight so that I could identify where everything was.
Friday July 4th 2008: Casual vs. Hardcore - Ended up missing this one because I slept in until 11 am. I had a very difficult time sleeping from 3 am to 11 am. Superhero Laws of Physics - This was brought to us by Dr. James Kakalios. I will admit he was a very down to earth and coherent speaker. Everything that he stated made complete sense to me. One thought that I had was that if I had him for Physics 1301 at the U of MN (no he does not teach it) I would have gotten a better grade than a C-. I was also amazed to realize that comic designers do take into consideration some things about the physical world in relationship to their heroes. He was really convincing with certain aspects of super heroes that made me wonder why we do not have such 'toys' yet. Whither OGL? - I personally don't like the Open Gaming License because I feel it is too restrictive. The counter points though for saying that it allows independent game design companies to generate materials was a neat angle that I never really considered with it. During this time we went to the main lobby floor and played Munchkin. Fireworks - This was incredibly crowded. I did not get to see many fireworks before my game started at 10:30 pm D&D 4th Edition, GM was someone from the source - This was FUN! with a capital F. I had a blast running through one encounter of the new system. Everyone keeps posting about how crappy it is and such. In my opinion yes it is a new system, but it is not terrible. I had a blast and so did seven other player characters in my group. Alas that is a topic for a different post though.
Saturday July 5th 2008: Evolution of Social Networking - The one comment I have for this session is that it is unfortunate that the younger generations did not show up. The only people who showed up were the 30 - 50 year olds who all reminisced the good old days of the TRSH80. It was at this point in the day that I went home to take a short (turned into 4 hours) nap so I could get caught up on sanity. Then several of us went up to someone's room to watch the Masquerade on the hotel TV. Then several of us went to TGIFs for some much needed food. Then a few of us went to the 1st, 2nd and 4th floor Cabanas to party it off.
Sunday July 6th 2008: Game Mastering - Got some welcome insights on how to run my games from Ken Hite. Also enjoyed all of the feed back they were giving to everyone who was there. Local Gaming - Got some information about where to find good gaming locations near my house.
Overall it was a blast, I am sad for all of the panels that I missed. I plan on being there for 2009. The list of conventions I will go to in 2009 will be Convergence, Con of the North and maybe one more...