First time Dragon*Con experience
Dragon*Con: Day 1
My sister and I arrived in Atlanta around 10:00 pm last night, after having gotten on the road at about 9. Despite the length, it was a pretty nice drive. The weather was mostly good (we only hit pockets of rain) and for the most part, traffic was light. I did, however, experience several periods of extreme stir crazy boredom when I wasn't driving. I was at several points tempted to play Tetris or Jewel Quest on my cell phone, but my sister would have probably done something fairly nasty to me, so I resisted. I had forgotten to print out the directions to the hotel, so when we crossed the GA state line, we stopped at the Welcome Center and got out my laptop to check my confirmation e-mail for instructions. We called the hotel and got directions, and compared it against our streetmap of Atlanta. We got off at the right exit, but the streets were very confusing so by the time we found the hotel, and figured out how to get into the parking structure, it was about 10:30. We were exhausted, so we called our Mom to let her know we were safely arrived and then went to bed.
We also hadn't printed out the schedule of events, so we didn't know what time anything was starting today. Also, the free continental breakfast provided by the hotel was over at 9, so we got up at 7. We were still tired and suffering from a lack of caffeine, but we walked over to the Hyatt and registered around 9:30 am. They gave us our programs and badges, and we retreated to a bench to start poring over the schedule. After awhile, I managed to talk my sister into going upstairs to the room where they have free food for the guests. In the very comfy chairs we came up with a tentative schedule. However, we were still tired and nothing was really starting before 1 pm anyway, so we went back to the hotel for a brief rest. We had lunch in the deli attached to the hotel (very good sandwiches), and then headed back to the convention.
Friday is sort of a slow day at the convention because most of the people have not shown up yet, so there wasn't a lot on the 'must see' list. We started by going to Paul Boyer's first panel "So you want to be a video game artist." My sister thought that it would be interesting, and I wanted to go since Paul was the speaker. I also wanted to get a feel for how the panels were going to run. Paul is really good at this sort of thing, so it went really well.
After that, we went and started wandering around the dealer's booths. It is like Nerdvana. There's a booth just for dice (shiny!), there's a booth for swords, funny T-shirts, costumes, jewelry, games, anime, and more. I bought a really expensive "magic" dress. It has two layers, and two buttons, and depending on how you arrange it, you can get the effect of a sari, a toga, a sundress, etc. It was extremely cool, and high quality, so I don't question the worth of the dress. I'm probably going to regret the money spent later, but as I told Kristin later, "Regret is for the car ride home." My sister pulled me away from the dice booth before I could drop large amounts of money on dice that will not get much use seeing as my friends are too busy to run a regular campaign. (sigh). I didn't make any impulse purchases at the Steve Jackson Games booth, but I'm going to have to go back there and check the prices. There's a new variety of Munchkin out, and the Dork Tower board game...
By four pm, I was over-stimulated to the point of feeling dizzy and nauseous. Of course, I was probably also pretty dehydrated. I was also starting to get nervous about being late for my panel. I found a quiet spot to sit near the room where I was going to do my first panel at 5:30 and just chilled for awhile. There were some attendees sitting outside the same room, so we started talking about MMOs and other stuff, so it was really nice. My sister went off to a panel or something in one of the other hotels, so I didn't see her again until after my panel.
My panel with Paul, "Working in the Game Industry" went really well. We ended up having a third member on the panel, another developer who had worked on the cancelled MMO Wish and The Godfather. I was really glad to have him because he has worked at EA, and it made it a lot more balanced to have someone who has worked at a large company. The best part was when someone asked what was a small team and what was a large team. I let Nathan answer the question first, and he said 20 for a small team, 50+ for a big team. I just started laughing, because the GalCiv2 team was much smaller. Judging by what Nathan had to say, I really think that smaller teams are better. The larger teams have a lot more management issues.
After the panel, my sister and I went out to dinner at a Mexican restaurant with Paul and Kristin. It was really good food, and Kristin and Paul are very good company. I think that the best thing about working for Stardock is that I really like my co-workers. One of the questions during our panel was if it was possible to have a social life and work on computer games. We answered yes, but you have to make it a priority, but you also have to like what you do because you are going to be spending a lot of time doing it. We were talking about that question at dinner, and we decided that one of the reasons that we really don't mind the long hours is because work is very social for us. We love what we're doing, and we really like the people we work with.
It was about 8:30 pm when we left the restaurant, and most of the panels were over. There were, however, a lot of parties going on in the 3 hotels. My sister, however, was really tired, and I was pretty tired too, so I agreed to go back to the hotel with her. I was also eager to start writing this! 
Tomorrow, however, we are going to a Firefly party, and I'm really looking forward to that.
So far, I am having a blast. Atlanta is a beautiful city and the people are very friendly. They're also very tolerant of us weirdos walking around in geeky T-shirts (low end of the spectrum) or full blown professional quality costumes (very high end of the spectrum).