It is Thursday, the day before Dragon*Con officially begins, and like every year that means registration. Some years it is a tiring journey downtown after work followed by a couple or three hours spent in line and then a trek back home to finish packing and sleep before making the real journey down on Friday for Con.
This year, however, the wife and I decided we’d just extend our hotel stay by one day so that our trip down for registration would end in us hanging around and meeting people and stumbling back to our room when we get tired.
Dragon*Con this year is going to be a little different for me. Normally, I just post daily wrap-ups, but thanks to my purchase of a Palm Pre, I’ll be a little more “on time”. First and foremost, the Pre has that awesome synergy thing you may have heard about, and what that means is that it blends my calendars from several sources into one display without syncing the calendars and duplicating stuff. And with the folks at Dragon*Con providing a Google Calendar of events, it means I won’t really need to carry around the book and schedule, it will all be on my phone. Next, with the use of Twitter and TwitPic, as well as Facebook, I’ll be able to snap photos from my phone and immediately get them out to all the people. So, if you’d like to see them, here is me on Twitter, and here is me on Facebook. I’ll try not to annoy people too much, but I make no promises.
So much to do, so much to see, so exciting… You know, the idea of PAX intrigues me, and I want to go, but I never will. Dragon*Con is just so much… more.
Of course, it helps if you get to registration early. Â They were open until 11, but they cut off the line at 9:30 at about where they estimated it would take two and a half hours to get through… we were beyond that point. Â Registration opens again at 8 in the morning. Â So without our badges we went down to the Marriott bar, Pulse, and hung around chatting and people watching… In New York, they say if you hang out in Times Square, you’ll see a million people walk by. Â At Dragon*Con, the place to stand is in the Marriott.