What do I mean by “three and three,” you ask? Why, that’s the number of presenters on my panel and the number of brave souls who came to listen to us talk. Actually, it was about what I had expected for a 9:30 AM Saturday morning session, especially since I think our panel title could have just as easily been “miscellaneous.” Don’t get me wrong– the other two people on my panel (Elizabeth Weiser and Rita Hadin) had good talks; it’s just that was essentially no connection between these things. The basic reaction to my comic was “Huh. He made a comic.” Still, it was a friendly chat, which is about all I’m looking for out of most conference presentations.
I decided I needed to go to at least one “real” panel, sort of a combination of both a certain amount of “guilt” at my bad participation and a desire to get my money’s worth. Generally, I go to three kinds of panels at the CCCCs: ones with “stars” of the field, the ones with a bit of a “rock concert” feel; very specific computer topics I am interested in by people I know who are likely to have good things to say; or panels about some sort of topic I really don’t know anything about but which sounds kind of interesting. I picked the last type for this panel and saw Debra Hawhee give a talk in the eyes and the “vision thing” in Aristotle’s Rhetoric and Jeffrey Walker talk about declamation. Both were great talks, and I very much appreciated Walker’s ability to connect the particular declamation he was discussing to current events.
And that, as they say, is how she wrote– well, at least for official things. The unofficial/”fun” in New York side of the trip will come on the unofficial blog after I get back to Ypsilanti. Kind of a short conference for me made all the more short by Northwest Airlines, which still sucks. See everyone in New Orleans; I might even drive….
As it happens, I picked up a copy of “Making Comics” in the convention hall, and your presentation inspired me to read about 4/5 of it on the train.
When I first showed up at my present job, the CIT folks put “PIA” on my record (which another staff member translated as “Pain In Ass”), but since then I’ve developed an excellent relationship with the tech folks, serving with several of them on a committee, getting funding for my own academic blog and the student blogging website, and getting emergency help from them when the student paper’s servers aren’t functioning well.
Hearing of your IT troubles (including the theft you described) made me appreciate even more how good I’ve got it here.