Orycon filking redux

 <LONG MESSAGE WARNING!>

Much excellent discussion over the past week or so regarding the Orycon filking experience this time around.

replyOn having two rooms/circles: this seems to me to have been a major net gain over the "one room, badly oversized bardic circle" problem from last year. As far as I could tell, both rooms were usually decently populated (at least in the earlier parts of the evening, before Natural Condensation Effects took hold), and people were enjoying themselves. Such assorted minor crises as arose seemed to be handled with reasonable efficiency and good humor, with the possible exception of the compatibility-problem between the Camarilla event and the second filk room. And even that was eventually dealt with by the aforementioned Natural Condensation Effect.

Bardic circles: seemed to work reasonably well, with one complication-- occasional shortages of useful talent. Somewhat to my own surprise, I ended up as moderator for the Saturday night bardic for a good chunk of the early part of the evening, because there were a *lot* of new people, and I didn't know anyone else in the room. I did eventually hand the circle off to a very personable gentleman in the back of the room, who caught up with me Sunday and good-naturedly groused "but you never came BACK!" (He had apparently been even more "stuck" with the job than I was.) Don't misunderstand--I enjoyed myself thoroughly, and I trust most others did too, but we'd have benefited from a little replymore leadership talent in that circle, I think. (We also apparently stuck Cecilia as sole guitarist in some of the bardics for longer than we should have, although I have this partly at second hand.)

replyChaos circles: also worked quite well, as far as I could tell. I don't know that I saw a lot of the "beware" phenomenon; what there was of it is likely an artifact of chaos being relatively new in the Northwest, so we simply aren't as used to it. Certainly it didn't seem to get in the way of people offering up material.

replyMini-concerts: best we've had in several years, I think, especially as there was a good balance between people we've heard often before (Roy and Joan, Cecilia) and those who haven't done them here before (Jeff, replyCat/Eglantine). The delay problem was, of course, an artifact of Variety Show overrun; this may be alleviated next year as I understand next Orycon will return to a traditional Masquerade.

Camarilla: <sigh> No help for it, this was purely a compatibility problem; that event and a filk circle didn't work well next door to each other, and it's really neither group's fault. It *is* a space problem, and not easily resolved. No telling what will happen next year; it will likely depend on who is chosen/volunteers to run Gaming (I don't think the Orycon czars are likely to let gaming events get much larger than they are now, and they may try for a modest downsizing in that dept.).

replyConcerts as program slots: it wasn't necessarily apparent from the program information, but there *were* several performance-oriented daytime music events--not concerts, but a "jam session", an unusual-instrument session, and a filk program aimed at kids (though I doubt they'd have tossed adult kids out <g>). Beyond this--yup, available space again.

"Coffeehouse" program: yet again, where do we put it? I *have* seen it done, but you have to have a large enough convention AND a large enough hotel so that there's a bar-space that the hotel is willing to turn over, and it has to be a bar-space with someplace for a "stage" area. (The Quiet Bar in that Red Lion has a singularly un-helpful layout for this purpose, and that's where you'd be trying to wangle space; the "regular" bar gets too much civilian traffic for us to snaffle it away for our own purposes.)

replyFilk con: I think the Northwest is indeed close to critical mass in terms of support for one of these. And I agree that OSFCI is the logical parent to it, although I wonder if performer-geography might not make Seattle a more logical physical venue. (One thought: the irregular August relaxacon known as CON has often had a significant filk-component to its programming. A plausible first step toward a "formal" filk con might be putting together a filk coalition to develop a CON proposal.)

Whoof. Enough pontificating for now.

>> John C. Bunnell ** j.bunnell at genie.com
Received on 11/18/96