PAX report
Aug. 29th, 2006 03:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
amnesiackSo, I'm back from PAX.
As with every year, the essence of PAX defies description. I spend 5 days working like a dog, only to remember it afterwords as spending 5 days hanging out with some of the coolest people ever. If it weren't for the searing pain that still radiates up from my legs and feet, I might already be in complete denial of how hard the event is to pull off.
My job at PAX this year was to be the personal assistant (a PA PA, as they referred to us) to Mike Fehlauer, one half of the two-person business end of Penny Arcade (the other half being Rober Khoo, who has appeared in the strip a handful of times). Mike and I have gotten to be pretty good friends over the last few years from working together on PAX, Child's Play, and other PA-related events. In fact, when I applied for a PA PA position, I specifically requested to work with Mike if it was possible. I later found out that Mike had specifically requested that if I applied for the position, I was to be assigned to him. In essence, the job of a PA PA is to be a second-tier clone of the person you're working with, to make sure they have what they need, filter the requests and radio traffic that come through, take messages and make decisions in their absence, etc. It's a hell of a lot of work.
Thursday was setup day. I arrived at the Meydenbauer Center at 11:00 am, a bit later than originally planned, due to a last-minute vet visit for my two cats. I spent the day in the Exhibition hall and loading dock, helping to move crates and pallets, seeing to the needs of exhibitors, and helping to coordinate the efforts of other Enforcers. Setup in Exhibition is a two-day event unto itself, which is why the Exhibition hall doesn't open until Saturday, even though the Con starts on Friday. I started to write out a list of all our exhibitors just now, but there are too many for this post, and I want to make sure I don't miss anybody, so I'll do it later, when I have my list in front of me. Suffice it to say, they were all awesome. I left the Meydenbauer around 10pm and was able to sleep for about 5 hours that night, which made it the closest thing to a full night of sleep I would have for some time.
Friday saw my true task begin, which consisted of constantly remaining three feet behind Fehlauer while monitoring two different radio channels (or three, during the times when he had to go completely off radio and gave me the building management radio in addition to my two PAX staff radios). Much of the day was spent finishing Exhibition so that everything would be ready on Saturday and making sure our exhibitors were happy and that things were running smoothly around us. One of my personal highlights of the day was the time I spent helping the people from Tablestar Games get their things to the right place and get everything setup. They were really nice and highly complementary about everything we did for them. I left shortly after the doors closed for the night at 2am, at which point I journeyed to the house of a fellow Enforcer (thanks, Chiparoo!) for approximately 2.5 hours of sleep on her couch.
I had intended to do up the whole con report in one post, but doing this much in between things I need to take care of at work has already taken 6 hours, so I think I'll do another post or two to wrap everything up.
As with every year, the essence of PAX defies description. I spend 5 days working like a dog, only to remember it afterwords as spending 5 days hanging out with some of the coolest people ever. If it weren't for the searing pain that still radiates up from my legs and feet, I might already be in complete denial of how hard the event is to pull off.
My job at PAX this year was to be the personal assistant (a PA PA, as they referred to us) to Mike Fehlauer, one half of the two-person business end of Penny Arcade (the other half being Rober Khoo, who has appeared in the strip a handful of times). Mike and I have gotten to be pretty good friends over the last few years from working together on PAX, Child's Play, and other PA-related events. In fact, when I applied for a PA PA position, I specifically requested to work with Mike if it was possible. I later found out that Mike had specifically requested that if I applied for the position, I was to be assigned to him. In essence, the job of a PA PA is to be a second-tier clone of the person you're working with, to make sure they have what they need, filter the requests and radio traffic that come through, take messages and make decisions in their absence, etc. It's a hell of a lot of work.
Thursday was setup day. I arrived at the Meydenbauer Center at 11:00 am, a bit later than originally planned, due to a last-minute vet visit for my two cats. I spent the day in the Exhibition hall and loading dock, helping to move crates and pallets, seeing to the needs of exhibitors, and helping to coordinate the efforts of other Enforcers. Setup in Exhibition is a two-day event unto itself, which is why the Exhibition hall doesn't open until Saturday, even though the Con starts on Friday. I started to write out a list of all our exhibitors just now, but there are too many for this post, and I want to make sure I don't miss anybody, so I'll do it later, when I have my list in front of me. Suffice it to say, they were all awesome. I left the Meydenbauer around 10pm and was able to sleep for about 5 hours that night, which made it the closest thing to a full night of sleep I would have for some time.
Friday saw my true task begin, which consisted of constantly remaining three feet behind Fehlauer while monitoring two different radio channels (or three, during the times when he had to go completely off radio and gave me the building management radio in addition to my two PAX staff radios). Much of the day was spent finishing Exhibition so that everything would be ready on Saturday and making sure our exhibitors were happy and that things were running smoothly around us. One of my personal highlights of the day was the time I spent helping the people from Tablestar Games get their things to the right place and get everything setup. They were really nice and highly complementary about everything we did for them. I left shortly after the doors closed for the night at 2am, at which point I journeyed to the house of a fellow Enforcer (thanks, Chiparoo!) for approximately 2.5 hours of sleep on her couch.
I had intended to do up the whole con report in one post, but doing this much in between things I need to take care of at work has already taken 6 hours, so I think I'll do another post or two to wrap everything up.
