Something quite a bit different for this episode, to be sure!

I love going to conventions, particularly science-fiction conventions. I’ve gone to Balticon in Baltimore, MD for several years now, in part to attend the convention itself, and in part to hang out with a whole lot of very creative, interesting and fun folks I’ve met and admired over the years in the pod-o-sphere.

I’ve been on panels and moderated a few (this year: Misuse and Abuse of Science), but I haven’t hosted many of my own. I’m never quite sure what they will be, and that’s not a great way to build a panel.

At least.. that’s what I used to think!

I designed two panels to potentially host at Balticon, but they were very late in telling me whether or not they had been approved, so I backed off doing any work for them, on the theory that I didn’t have time to spend a lot of time preparing for something that wasn’t likely to happen. (I’ve been burned on that before, thoroughly preparing a roleplaying game scenario for a convention and then never running it.)

And then, they let me know, about two weeks before the convention, that both of my ideas were accepted, albeit as each half-hour panels back-to-back.

Ahem.

I tried to get some of the work I would need to pull them off ready, but then realized that I had another panel presentation to prepare for — a professional one — for another conference I would be going to the week after the convention. Faced with decreased time, I simply decided to merge the two panel slots into one, and then do the initial panel presentation/discussion I had intended.

So, that’s what this week’s recording is: the panel I led at Balticon, entitled Looking at the World in a WEIRD Way. It’s not entirely coherent, and is more like one of my older solo episodes combined with audience feedback and participation. It’s not exactly what I intended, but once I threw out the rulebook and simply existed in the space, I found it actually went well.

I won’t be presenting this madness again next year; instead, I intend to prepare and propose the other panel, entitled WEIRD or WHAT? I’m hoping I can solicit help from some of my very creative friends to do a panel inspired by a segment called Bluff The Listener from the NPR program Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me.

We shall see..

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