Wired has an article covering DragonCon.

This was a great year. I'd venture a guess that 80% of the time I had a smile plastered across my face. Everyone involved with running the convention did an amazing job. Everyone there was having a wonderful time. Everything I can think of to say about how things went this year does not do it justice.

Conventions such as these are uniquely beautiful events. A group of people comes together to share in some esoteric common purpose or goal. Time passes. At its end, the group ceases to exist and becomes a historical curiosity. In the case of a strong group, it develops a sort of ideology that lives on in the absence of the group's cohesion, allowing it to effortlessly rise from the dead in its next phase. It takes on a life of its own. A living thing that breathes art in and culture out.

In general, I highly enjoy people watching. I'm one of those folks that likes to be extremely attune to my surroundings. At a convention like DragonCon, I find this trait to reap great rewards. In every direction, there is some type of madness to take in. People in amazing costumes are everywhere. Cute girls are everywhere. Everyone is friendly. Conversations lite up like gas fires and everyone fire walks. Its impossible to be bored, the only risk is fatigue. There is no way to leave without feeling slightly sad.

Elonka Dunin, a game designer at Simutronics, invited fans to demo the company's latest MMORPG, Hero's Journey, in her hotel room. A monster-fighting quest set in a lush, expansive fantasy world of vulnerable villages and devious conspiracies, the game is perfectly targeted for the DragonCon crowd. "This isn't just hack-and-slash," Dunin said as she set up her avatar to cast a spell. "There are creative ways to deal with combat, and a lot of chances to create stories for your characters."

Elonka is clearly our most famous MemeStreams user. Not only is her page among the most often hit here, but she is always popping up in the news. In addition to getting a demo of Hero's Journey, which I found to be extremely impressive, I attended her Kryptos talk. (again) I found it inspiring. (again) Next time she gives it I'll attend (again), and I'll keep doing it until she breaks the damn 4th part of the code. Hear that Elonka?! Quit playing those video games and hack the CIA's cafeteria courtyard! I'm going to keep "encouraging" you... :)

On other panels, such as "Hacking 101," science fiction was set aside in favor of science fact. Learning Perl author Randal Schwartz talked about being arrested at Intel in the mid-1990s for using the software tool Crack to check the security of his company's password files. "I worry that we're going to see other frivolous convictions like mine in the world of peer-to-peer," he said.

The Hacking 101 talk made Wired's review! Nice. I guess we did something right. I didn't think Hacking 101 went as well as it has in the past, but Hacking 201 went great. And for the first time I've ever been involved with it, Hacking 301 actually had content about hacking. As opposed to several of us sitting on a panel talking about how tired we all are. I was in a really crappy mood at the time, as I had not gotten any sleep that night. I hope no one though I was too much of an asshole.. Randal gets the story's quote, which is fine with me. There is a rumor being pushed around that he has been given an invite to The Conspiracy...

JonnyX's Space and Technology track of programming was amazing this year. DragonCon should give him a bigger room next year.

Somewhere upward of 20,000 fans descend on Atlanta for this event every year, filling three massive hotels to share everything from their comic-book collections and home-brewed Lord of the Rings fan fiction to gigantic Transformer costumes they've spent months creating for the Masquerade Ball contest.
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Elonka Dunin, a game designer at Simutronics, invited fans to demo the company's latest MMORPG, Hero's Journey, in her hotel room. A monster-fighting quest set in a lush, expansive fantasy world of vulnerable villages and devious conspiracies, the game is perfectly targeted for the DragonCon crowd. "This isn't just hack-and-slash," Dunin said as she set up her avatar to cast a spell. "There are creative ways to deal with combat, and a lot of chances to create stories for your characters."

Nice article about the Dragon*Con scene from Annalee Newitz, who along with being a writer and editor for Wired, is also a policy analyst at the EFF.

As for my own Dragon*Con experiences, I had a blast this year. I'm still a bit sleep-deprived, having just gotten back to St. Louis from the 10-hour Atlanta drive, around 1 a.m. last night. I was *really* busy this year, speaking at or participating in about eight different panels, and also giving private demos of my company's upcoming game "Hero's Journey" out of my hotel room. Dragon*Con is *so* huge though -- though I was in one of the convention hotels, it was still a half-mile walk from my hotel to the Electronics track! And I was going back and forth multiple times per day to do all the demos. But in between panels and demos I also found plenty of time to visit various parties, and I met a lot of really fun and interesting people, as well as getting to hang out with friends from previous conventions. I especially enjoyed the Hacking panels this year, hanging out with various representatives of the yak.net and Memestreams communities, getting to talk cryptography into the wee hours of the night, and many other conversations I had with really fascinating people. And of course since I was a speaker, I also got to hang out in the "Green Room" and rub elbows with assorted authors and movie and TV stars, such as several members of the Star Trek cast (I never knew that Max Grodenchik, who plays the Ferengi "Rom" on Deep Space Nine, is a very talented singer!). I also really enjoy the Dragon*Con nightly drum circle, with all the creative percussion instruments that people bring, and all the dancers in the middle, ranging in clothing from T-shirts to belly-dancer outfits, to costumes for which the word "skimpy" wouldn't even come close to describing how little was there!

Great fun!

Update: I heard from a D*Con staffer, that it was the biggest convention ever. Over 26,000 attendees, and the charity drives raised over $100,000 for the Katrina relief effort!

Eventually the road filled with mysterious beings coated in sparkles and green paint, their gossamer wings floating in humid Southern air. They were followed by a troupe of mournful vampires, a couple of Spider-Mans, Aeon Flux, Superman, a fleet of Klingons on motorcycles, a mass of Harry Potters, assorted characters from Babylon 5 and of course an entire phalanx of stormtroopers marching more or less in formation behind a gaggle of Princess Leias.

I really haven't had time to write up my own comments from DragonCon, but it was a really excellent weekend. Its an intersection between people who make things like role playing games and people who make things like space elevators. Its where the dreamers meet, and you can grasp onto outlandish ideas that will one day be considered everyday things.