Up in the Aether: Convention Report

On my own this time. Leave by about 6:30.

For several years now I have been driving to Detroit for these steampunk cons and when crossing into Michigan there has been an intriguing billboard: “Beef Jerky Unlimited. We are not a gas station.” This year I did not pass the exit by and ended up buying $50 of dried meat.

They also carried an assortment of hot sauces that I decided not to buy. Most of those are extremely hot and you would cook with them, adding a drop or two to a pan full of sauce, rather than something you would add to a finished food and, since I don’t cook very often, the bottle would mostly sit in the fridge. I did, however buy some BBQ sauce and season salt from PETA. People Easting Tasty Animals.

“Loving all God's creatures . . . next to my potatoes.”

My first task on arrival at the hotel was to check in, but as I had arrived so early and had also requested that my bedding not have feathers, it wasn’t ready for me yet. I took that opportunity to check on the room that I would be presenting in. Did it have a white board or would I need to bring my own? Was there a projector or would I need my own.

There was a presentation beginning and the presenters were at the front hoping that people could see what they were doing on their laptop screen. They had told the hotel that they would like to have a projector and the hotel had interpreted “like” as “do not need” and thus there was no projector available.

“I have a projector.”

And, with that, I became the hero of the weekend, loaning my projector to the cause. Anna, the person running the history track, apparently took up a collection to thank me for my donation. $45.

Impressive. Most impressive.

I later found that several university groups involved in the tracks had a decent budget available from the university and so the money they paid me wasn’t as amazing as I might think from otherwise impoverished college students attending a con. The people coming up to me and thanking me for the use of the projector meant much more to me than the cash. Graf Georg von Ziger in particular sang my praises, citing my unselfishness in making conventions successful without drama and politics.

Oh, I’ve had my share of drama and politics (more of that later) but just because I have a degree in political science, doesn’t mean I like politics. And since I am only a presenter and not involved in the making of the convention it is much easier for me to be one of the good guys.

My persona is a dime novel hero, after all.

When I ran into Aloysius Fox promoting next year’s Symposium his first comment was “You have eyes!” As I had not gotten into my room and had thus not changed into my con clothing yet I also was not wearing my typical goggles so that he could see my eyes. He said he thought he had never seen them before.

I went back to my car and got my goggles to restore the Vitruvius Pike mystique.

My room wasn’t ready for two and a half hours.

I had considered going back to Greenfield Village at some point over the weekend (probably Monday) to get another tintype photo. I had tried to email the photographer to set up an appointment but never got a reply. I wonder if it’s still going on. There was a tintype photographer set up in the hotel lobby, though, so I wouldn’t have to make a special trip. Even so, I still wasn’t sure I wanted to spend the money. And since tintype photographers are becoming more common at these events (there were photographers at TeslaCon, Gettysburg and the World’s Fair) I don’t have to make a special deal of it.

In the end, though, I chose not to have a tintype done. Perhaps next time.

My first program, Mystery Airships, was scheduled for 7:30. All of my programs for the weekend were in that evening time slot. As my most practiced presentation it went as expected. Throughout the weekend I had people complimenting me on it. *squeee*

Saturday

During conversation while I was getting lunch at the Wendy’s up the street, I found out more about what had been the downfall of the World Steam Expo besides their overspending on big name artists, going into debt and being cut off by their patron, Youmacon. However, I have forgotten what that was specifically. That’s too bad because I am involved with cons, more than just an attendee and a presenter, but as an organizer. I have seen first hand how politics and personality conflicts can affect the running of a con and like to “look behind the curtain” of other cons so, hopefully, I can prevent such things with the cons I am working on.

Like is probably the wrong word to use.

Unfortunately, prevention is probably too much to hope for. At best, I can not be “that guy.”

I have become quickly comfortable with the retooling of my airships presentation, dropping the chronological ordering in favor of the technological elements. It still needs some tweeking but I am pleased and consider it mostly done.

The same goes for my Victorian Spacecraft presentation. I need to look a few things up for clarification but I’m pretty much done with it.

With the spring con season ending, it’s time for me to turn my attentions to new programming. I did a H.G.Wells/War of the Worlds presentation several years ago that I want to clean up and have available again. I also have an aether presentation I want to develop and finally a presentation on Victorian pseudo-science, hoaxes and charlatans.

Sunday

I am not a foodie. I prefer good food over bad food but I don’t cook much and don’t think very much about what I eat. Even so, I went to von Ziger’s cooking presentation because I knew it was going to be an entertaining and informative presentation no matter the subject matter.

I’ve been going to cons of all stripes long enough that I have seen most presentations and it is now more often that I choose a presentation or panel based on who more than what. I want that reputation. To have people choose to attend my presentations as much for my reputation for presenting as for the subject matter. It’s possible that I already have a bit of that as both Ziggy and Mark Donnelly have expressed their desire to see my presentations even though I have never seen them in the audience (mostly because they are busy doing presentations of their own).

I wore my clockwork fez for most of Sunday and received many compliments. I saw a Fez-o-rama Freedonian fez around the con and a number of more conventional fezzes. Yes, I know, thanks to the Doctor fezzes are cool now. They were cool before the Doctor, though, people just didn’t realize it.

I spoke with another befezzed man about fezzes and he indicated that he wanted to submit a custom design to Fez-o-rama which would have an ordinary bicycle with the name “Fezzes of Anarchy.” I liked his illustration and appreciate where he’s going with it but probably wouldn’t wear one. I think it’s the name or rather that there is a name at all. I found an ordinary illustration that I liked better and would probably wear a fez with only a winged ordinary embroidered on it.

I have done my beard program several times and at each one I realized that I was going to run over my time and then rushed the end. At UitA, programming had hour and a half time slots so I wasn’t worried about going over and could allow the program to run as long as was necessary. In doing so, I would now have a clear idea of how long I was over time without rushing so that I know how much I need to cut to fit the program into a one hour time slot.

It’s a lot.

I’m going to really need to tighten things up. Keep only the very best beards and perhaps formalize the script a little more to make sure I cover what I want to cover without spending more time than I have. Then, what I think I will do is add stuff to the end of the presentation so, should I have more than the customary one hour allowance, I can show more beards. An encore of beards.

I spoke with Mark (I think that was his name) for several hours on Sunday night about a number of things including airships. He was under the mistaken idea that airships could not operate in heavy weather. While the US lost three of its four airships in storms, it was not the storms themselves that did them in. The Shenandoah failed to vent gas properly when a squall took it too high. The gas bag expanded too much and broke the superstructure, allowing the front end to tear off. The Macon had some structural damage that should have been repaired but was put off when a storm tore the back end off the craft. And the Akron crashed into the ocean during a storm because of a miscalibrated altimeter.

Airships, properly designed, soundly built and well operated can handle some very serious weather, as the Graf Zeppelin, though damaged, survived two separate storms during its first trans-Atlantic flight.

And also remember that the Los Angeles, the fourth American airship and the one that was not crashed, was built in Germany. Largely because the Germans had decades of experience and had built it to very high standards.

We also talked about what it would take historically for airships to be part of the steampunk world. Airships are almost ubiquitous in steampunk and yet are very much a part of the later, diesel era. What would it take to push that back? I concluded that it was accelerated development of electricity. It was because of electricity that Charles Hall was able to develop a method for processing aluminum. That process brought the cost of aluminum down from the “worth its weight in gold” prices of the mid century to the “make everything out of aluminum” prices at the turn of the century. From that, von Zeppelin was able to afford the aluminum he needed to make the light and strong superstructures necessary for airships to grow to the massive sizes needed to be useful.

All that from pushing electrical development back. If Henri Giffard had cheap aluminum, he would have had big airships half a century before Zeppelin.

Additionally, we also talked about the con itself. He noticed very little con staff and no security. I also noticed that the people at the registration desk were there almost the entire weekend without being relieved. I will say that during every presentation I did, someone checked in with a clipboard to see what program attendance was like, but the lack of security concerned me. There were times I saw people in the dealers room that I was pretty sure weren’t con-goers. Money is money and dealers don’t care who pays but if something is swiped from the table, not having security limiting access to the dealer room becomes part of the problem.

I was up till 2am again.

Monday

At about 8am I simply couldn’t sleep anymore. Too much light leaking around the curtains, I suppose. That was pretty much the pattern for the weekend, although I was occasionally able to get a short nap in the afternoon.

Bridget found me in the lobby after I had loaded my car and turned in my room keys and bought me and some random con-goer breakfast. Well, not bought but she’s part of a rewards program of some sort and got some free breakfasts.

Tried on a hat during my last pass through the dealers room and I think I look too respectable in a bowler

I had seen Jeni Helum, a few times through the weekend but hadn’t had the chance to talk to her. Got the chance to actually sit down and have a conversation with her on Monday.

I had noticed that she and the IAPS had not been involved with the con as much as I would have expected. She drew back the curtain a bit to let me see that the con had been asking individual members to do programming rather than “contracting” the entire crew. I can see how that might put a damper on participation as it smacks of politics.

Also, one of the board members had been asked to provide receipts for monies spent so that the con could operate in the most transparent way possible (especially with what had happened to the Expo and its inability to manage money). When the board member apparently refused, another board member quit in protest and took a number of staff with them. Jeni was one of those who chose to walk. This also explained the earlier observation that there really didn’t seem to be much staff or security around. This kerfuffle had happened mere weeks before the con.

Personally, I think that if a board member won’t provide receipts then that board member should be ousted. This goes beyond personality conflicts and politics, the sorts of things I have run into before and have resigned from concoms over, but refusal to account for where the money is going is actionable.

The common word is embezzlement.

It’s been announced that Steam Powered Giraffe will be performing at Up in the Aether next year. I hear they cost a sizable chunk of money. I certainly hope the con is not going down the same path that brought down the World Steam Expo.