Really.
This is late in coming because I have been asleep for two days. Really. But I have just awoken from the madness that was Norwescon 32 and boy am I still on cloud 9!!!
Here’s the quick and dirty breakdown…
Thusday was my first panel: it was on how to make hard science “sexy”. I was on this panel with a pair of scientists and we were ALL female: which ROCKED! I loved that I was on a hard science panel with two other women. It wasn’t the best attended panel ever, but apparently Thrusday afternoon at 5:00 isn’t prime time. But then again, Thursday at 11:00PM was our screening, and I had been given an apology by the organizers as to the time they had available for us.
So we fast forward to 10:30PM and I was already doing stand-up for a full house. Seriously. By the time we hit the switch and turned on the DVD, we had run out of standing room. There were folks laying on the floor looking straight up at the screen and people on each others’ shoulders against the back wall. And there was laughter and applause; and it was INTENSE. It was marvlous, really.
Friday our whole cast got together for a panel appearance and we packed that room, too. Most of the folks there hadn’t seen the preview, so Leo got up and said a few things about the pilot and the premise and we had a great discussion with more than 100 fans about the direction of the series and just how much fun we were having. Roy was there in his full Romulan glory and he spent a few hours at our table in the lobby in his uniform after the panel, much to the delight of the fans. Our Captain was a big hit, too. More panel appearances and wonderful parties led me into Saturday.
And Saturday got even better! As I stood there in my uniform for my incharacter shift, we were approached early in the morning by the convention to let us know that they’d had a band cancel and they wanted us to show our preview AGAIN!!! I changed hats from in-character to PR director in a heartbeat and dashed off to the business center to print out some flyers. And I was stopped no less than fifteen times by fans who wanted a photo or an autograph while I was running around in uniform.
They gave us a double room this time and I was actually able to count the people who came. There were 254!! I was stoked. We had also had a request for the whole cast to be in uniform, so we decked ourselves out in our Starfleet best and attended. We were able to answer fan questions afterward and met even more people down at the booth once the Joss Whedon sing along took over the space.
I had another panel after that and then it was a night of serious fun. The Merchants of Deva and the Shockwave folks throw some serious parties!
All in all I had a blast and I can’t wait to do it again. Next year we’ll have more footage, more people on more panels, and more fun for all. Make plans now for Norwescon 33!