I was tempted to make a second joke post consisting of “God my legs are sore”, but I prefer not to drive my friends away. My calf muscles did get very sore after I had walked so much with a heavy backpack on. But that’s not what this is about.
I think I do better with one-on-one than with crowds. I don’t know if there’s a skill I can acquire that will let me level up my crowd-interacting abilities, but I’ll have to look into that. I did spend most of the weekend in “stunned” mode but, amazingly, I had a great time. I got to see a bunch of presentations, talk with a bunch of really bright folks (including a bit of a chat with Don Woods!), watch a bunch of cool-looking videogames, and, in all, it was an absolutely wonderful experience.
I couldn’t really have written anything substantial until now: three weeks after the actual PAX event. A quick summary of my time: Friday, drove to Boston, stopped by the IF suite, missed the Wil Wheaton keynote by around ten feet, got into the IF Storytelling panel through subversion, ate sushi with Iain, Emily, and Jacqueline, got into the Get Lamp premier without any versioning (sub or otherwise), and then I had to crash. Saturday, got up early enough to get into the Bill Amend presentation, headed to the IF suite to hang out, had lunch with Iain, Rob, and inky, then back to the suite to chat with IF folks (see Don Woods(!) above), attended the IF Outreach panel, played a bunch of SpeedIF entries, crashed again. Sunday, one more event at PAX (Kris Straub & Scott Kurtz doing a Blamimations presentation), then back to the suite to hang out some more.
The “holy cow” joke post I linked to above pretty much summed up my entire experience. I meant it to be funny, but it’s also accurate. I felt overwhelmed… in a *very* good way. I’m so glad that I’m part of the IF community; I’m so glad that I’m fascinated by something that so many brilliant people are passionate about. It’s inspirational, really. I love hanging around people that are smarter than me (ok, so the bar is set low, but that doesn’t change my feeling). I wish I had been more social, and that’s something I definitely see I need to work on: filtering out the distractions so that I can just *talk*. I remember chatting with Rob and inky, but I can’t remember the topic. I remember being very interested in what Emily was talking about over sushi, but I can’t remember what she said now. I remember seeing baf in the IF Suite, and having to push “introduce myself” onto the stack so that I could finish doing other things, and then not being able to pop that item off the stack until the following day. Insert image of sad markm here for missed opportunities.
I’m glad Sean Huxter’s “got lamp?” buttons went over well. I’m sorry I missed out on the PAX East scarves. I’m happy I finally got a chance to meet maga. I’m sorry I didn’t get to talk with Sargent more. I’m thrilled to have gone, and I came away more energized and more psyched up about IF than ever before.
I met so many people I only know as names on the mud, or in game credits, or in film credits. All my memories are a giant jumble, much like this post is.
PAX East 2011 has a great deal to live up to, but if it’s half as good as ’10, I’m going to have an awesome time.