I should write more...

My tags are lost, but I don't really care. Anyway, on to SMOFcon...

We went in to SMOFcon with minimal responsibilities: Organize the distillery tour for Thursday, turn over excess WFC 2009 supplies still in our hands to SMOFcon.

Both went well. We had 15 tour participants, spent 3 hours at the distillery, and had a great time. Several cases of supplies were turned over to SMOFcon hospitality.

The rest of the weekend?

Thursday night we met up with a bunch of folks in hospitality.

On Friday we hung out with folks in hospitality, mostly. We peeked in at the "Bid Boot Camp" mega-panel. The notes on the board for the portion we missed were interesting, but the discussion going on when we went in was a bit odd. People were arguing that if you didn't sell pre-supports/memberships during your party, you weren't getting anything out of it. Yeah. Not so much. We also went over to Singlebarrel (on the back side of the block) for a cocktail; between 5pm and 6pm you can get a Ramos Gin Fizz there (we did, they were fantastic).

Friday night was the "Open Space Programming Mixer" (though we referred to it as "Open Source Programming Mixer"). The idea was to generate the convention's program during the mixer, but it was logistically challenged. The major pitfalls were:

• One program track should have been scheduled in advance, because all open-source resulted in no prep time and no program to promote the convention on
• Idea forms should have been available all day; the rush to write down forms made my (and others') penmanship worse than usual (online advance submissions would have been cool too)
• The program team should have sorted and grouped similar panel ideas before the "vote" to make it easier on voters and on the team themselves during collation/counting
• Titles, descriptions and participants should have been listed on the "pocket program"
• there should have been a participants roster where people could see if they were scheduled to present and when

In the end, though, the program was pretty good and there were no zero-audience panels. Consuite was a blast after.

Saturday morning I skipped out (more on this elsewhere). Saturday afternoon programming wasn't that interesting to me, so we hung out in hospitality more, and went back to Singlebarrel again for cocktails at 5. Afterward, we went to Maceio Brazilian Steakhouse for meat on swords, and were only an hour late for the Fannish Inquisition. FI is where Worldcons and Worldcon bids present in-person progress reports and answer questions. Some questions were great, some questions were pointless, some were repeats. Consuite was a blast after.

Sunday morning I had a 10am panel with Laurie Mann on using social media in your convention, it was well-attended (and live-tweeted). The 11am "Reno Open Committee Meeting" was less of a committee meeting and more of an extension of the Fannish Inquisition. There was little useful to me there, but since I'm on the committee I went.

We checked out of the hotel and checked luggage, and then did our 3pm party panel with Marah Searle-Kovacevic, Sandra Childress, Gary Blog and Sharon Sbarsky. It started out with more panelists than audience, but quickly collected people. All in all, it went well and we covered a lot of ground.

The post-mortem was at 4pm, we stayed for a bit, got sick of people making the same complaints about open-source programming and went home. We didn't stay for the dead dog party, because in many ways the whole convention was a dead dog party from the moment people walked in the door.

I'm not going to go out of my way to go back to SMOFcon, but if it's close again, I would enjoy attending.

Photoflex HO!

jadecat9 and I went to Watsonville on Saturday morning for the Photoflex factory outlet sale.

This was not without hitches. After she came down to SJ to meet me, we found my car wouldn't start, it had a flat battery, so we were stuck doing the trip in her Mini (pleasant, but cramped once filled with cargo).

Still, we got breakfast and got to Watsonville by 9:15.

After only 15 minutes, the sale was already incredibly picked-over. A bunch of my shopping list was out the window.

Still, there was a 300w-s flash kit for $160, so I grabbed it. It had a small softbox, but it was a flash kit. There were large softboxes that hadn't been scarfed up yet.

Then I decided to go back and look at one of the big cases with only a tag, no flier taped to it. Turns out it was a 650w-s StarFlash kit for $220, and it included a large (7' diameter) "Octodome" softbox. Skipped the smaller kit. ladycelia asked "Where are you going to set up a 7' Octodome?" Doesn't really matter, it's a $450 flash before the lightstand, softbox adapter and Octodome are added in. It's a $800 kit at Adorama.

I also picked up a large (4' x 3') rectangular "Lightdome" softbox and louvers for $25. They also had spare modeling lights for $3.

I should have asked about reflectors; the kit didn't include reflectors for use with umbrellas (which I already have) or just bare. Fortunately, they're pretty cheap, even at retail prices.

Fitting the case (and Jade's case of stuff) in the Mini was a bit tricky, but it did fit.

We also checked out Orion Telescopes next door, but their outlet sale prices weren't as fantastic.

Barring unforeseen craziness next year, I have to get back and pick up some more ultra-cheap light modifiers. Small and medium softboxes. Maybe a compact fluorescent continuous lighting kit for the times I can't use (or am setting up so others who can't use flash can still use the light).