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Monday, April 1, 2013

Minicon 2013

Minicon weekend!  Minicon 48 to be exact.  Held once again in Bloomington at the Radisson/Sheraton/DoubleTree Hotel - which the convention re-named the RadiShTree.  Hehe!


Guest of Honor was Julie Czerneda.  I thought she was a fabulous GoH - fun, bubbly, entertaining, enthusiastic, outgoing, engaging.  I did regret not signing up for "Breakfast with Julie" - I brainfarted the opportunity then it was too late.  Alas.

Panels I attended this year included:
O, Canada! - was a discussion on how Canada is different from the States.  Since I live 150 miles from the Canadian border, nothing I didn't already know.  I was hoping for someone to bring up Canadian authors, but I left before that could develop. 

The Hero(ine's) Journey - how a woman's quest is different than a man's from the beginning to the end. 

The Year in SF - a major dud.  Ended up being one panelists discourse on how students aren't reading anymore.  Not sure how that relates to books in 2012.  I think the panel member's need to be canned and replaced. 

Wait, What Do you Mean Pluto's Not a Planet - a panel of five dominated by one fellow who left three hours of notes at home for a one hour panel, yet he managed to ramble on about the Cuniper system for a half hour anyway.  Moderately interesting.

GOH Interview: Julie Czerneda - best panel hands down.  Love listening to her.

Community in the Info Age - point was lost.  I knitted.

Striking a Pose - a discussion of Jim C. Hein's popular blog of the unrealistic poses artists put women into on the covers of books.  Decent slide show, annoying audience.

My friend and I did find ourselves with several hours of downtime over the noon hour on Saturday so we popped up to 50th and France in Edina and hit a clothing store and a kitchen store before lunch at the extremely busy (note to self...) Edina Grill.  A cupcake from the Cupcake Shoppe across the street topped off the excursion. 

Sunday's panels didn't enthuse my friend or myself so we called it a weekend and parted ways at 1130am.

The BIG EVENT was the live announcement of the 2013 Hugo Nominees.  (Full listing can be found here):

BEST NOVEL
BEST NOVELLA
BEST NOVELETTE
BEST SHORT STORY

3 comments:

Gail O'Connor said...

I thought The Heroine's Journey was the high point of the con, myself. Interesting panelists, mostly interesting discussion, not too many idiots in the audience.

Kristin said...

Whoops! I forgot to highlight that one so I missed it in my original list. Added now.

In retrospect, I have to agree on all accounts, tho I did thoroughly enjoy the GoH interview.

Interesting, I went to more panels than I realized even with the long lunch in Edina.

Anonymous said...

Our son always went to MegaCon in Atlanta and Orlando. This year he passed on both. He said it was same old/same old.

Last year he got to meet some really interesting sci-fi writers, but I guess no one was really on the docket this year.

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