In Praise of CRSF 2013

One of our keynote speakers for CRSF 2013, Pat Cadigan, took to our facebook page to express her opinions on the conference and because they delighted us so much (and because due to some quirk of facebook, it's actually quite hard to find the comment unless you're a page administrator), I decided to post it up here:

Hi, everybody–

Well, I am officially spoiled rotten. I'm sure this is great news for our friends who have been waiting for us to come home, as I am already insufferable anyway.

Chris and I have had a wonderful couple of days here in Liverpool. We loved listening to the speakers, talking with the attendees, and hanging around listening to new ideas, new perspectives, and every other kind of new and different. What a wonderful collection of lively, varied ideas.

Perhaps it's a measure of just how restricted our movements became while we were caring for my elderly parent that we spent Sunday and Monday jumping up and down (sometimes not just metaphorically) about the papers presented on comics, zombies, disasters, inner space, outer space, and Umwelt(en) (to name only a few). We are going home to London today tired, happy, and encouraged.

We really hope that we can come back again next year just to hang around and enjoy the company of so many highly intelligent, stimulating people. Props to Glyn, Chris, Michelle, Leimar, everyone who gave papers, listened to papers. Respect also to Waterstone's at Liverpool1–anyone who hasn't been to this bookshop should hustle their bad selves over there right now and see what a bookshop is supposed to look like/be like–and to the extraordinary staff at the Hope Street Hotel, who not only go out of their way to be helpful but also know when you need help even if you don't know it yourself.

I have been to bigger conferences that lasted longer in fancier places with budgets equal to the GNP of a medium-sized country. I'm not trying to take anything away from any other conference that has graciously hosted me but CRSF is an example of how to take something from a basic level and turn it into Disneyland-for-your-brain.

The secret is, everyone who works on it slaves like mad, never gets to rest, seldom gets an uninterrupted meal (if they get a meal at all), and they treat all the guests' partners/plus-ones with the same respect and consideration as the guests themselves. (Syntax much? Huh? I'm tired. But happy. I think I mentioned that.)

I'm exhausted, so happy you invited me. Thank you all again.

She continued in a comment:

Also, I would just like you to know that CRSF tired me out so much, I wrote a 4000-word short story yesterday. (For reference: 4000 words is twice as much as I usually squeeze out on my best days, and four times my average.) You guys did me a lot of good.