World Horror Day 4: Closing Remarks
Sun 2013-06-16 23:23:12 (in context)
Attendance at a convention's closing ceremony is usually only a fraction of that at the opening ceremony. A lot of people are on the road home already. I'd estimate about 50 people, maybe 75, of the 500 or so convention attendees were in the Hotel Monteleone's Royal Room this afternoon when Lisa Morton began thanking everyone who made the weekend possible.
She did something really classy, I thought. After expressing her thanks to attendees for coming, guests of honor for gracing us with their presence and their time, volunteers for going above-and-beyond, the con's board and the HWA's board and everyone else (I am bad and careless and cannot remember every position filled, let alone every name), she did something I don't remember seeing done at other cons I've attended. Much like when panelists open their panel to audience Q&A in the last 15 minutes of their hour, she threw it open to the audience, asking us to volunteer any feedback we'd like to share. What did we like? What didn't work so well? What would we have liked to see?
The feedback was overwhelmingly positive. Many people commented on how smoothly everything ran; if there were any bumps along the way, they were invisible to the layperson's eye. Quite a few complimented those responsible for the choice of venue. My small contribution was to report that the livestream of the Stoker Awards went off without a hitch (Nicole Cushing and I had opted to watch the stream from the quiet comfort of a hotel room rather than standing awkwardly at the back of the Queen Anne Ballroom); that seemed a useful thing to say. Certainly more useful than my one wistful wish, which would be to take the exact same schedule of events but have an extra day to spread them out over, so as to give attendees a little more time to enjoy New Orleans. Since it's the sort of wish that ends "Also, I would like a pony. With wings," it probably wasn't the sort of actionable feedback that the HWA needed to hear.
No one expected a perfectly spherical value of "con" on a frictionless surface inside a vacuum. I'd hoped for a damn good con, and that's what I got.
The closing ceremonies were allotted an hour, but even with an exuberant crowd volunteering compliments and appreciation, we were done by twenty after. Soon afterwards I was in the car with Mom returning to Metairie for more friends-and-family time, and also for a sack of perfectly boiled crawfish a la Dad. (One of these days I am going to get him to tell me how he does it. Slowly, so I can take notes. There are crawfish to be caught in Colorado. I need to be able to do them justice.)