PAX decompress

I don't know if this post is going to be more about PAX, or more about Twitter. Twitter really changed the way the entire weekend worked.

Thursday night about 9:30, I got to the hostel my group was staying at. I met up with the rest of the group and headed to the pre-pax meetup at Shorty's bar. We got there, but didn't immediately see anyone I recognized, so we just got a booth and hung out. At one point I decided to put twitter to the test and posted that I was there and described what I was wearing. It took roughly 5 seconds for @Tajah to find me and tell us where the rest of the PAX people were. Our group was a bit big to intermingle with the other groups that were there, but we found a table that was at least closer to them. A couple people recognized me as the Omeganaut who went to the same shindig last year, and said hi.

Friday morning, our group opted to not stand in the huge line, and went sightseeing around Seattle a bit instead. We checked out Pikes market and walked up to the Sci-Fi museum. Whenever I could find open wifi, I checked up on twitter with my ipod. This let me keep tabs on what was going on with the line at PAX without actually standing in it. We made it over to PAX shortly after the doors opened, and we got right in. (The line is really just for concert wristbands, and for the social aspect of it). Shortly after our group got into the expo hall, we split up and went on our own ways. We used Twitter to keep track of where we all were.

After checking out the expo hall, I went over to a D&D mini 200 pt sealed tournament. I took 3rd place out of 5 people, then rushed back to the main convention hall to meet up with the group for the Dawn of War II panel. After the panel we grabbed dinner across the street, during which twitter let me know about a Cryptic party that I was missing out on. Rather than searching for the party, we went over to the convention center, and stood in the back of the concert where I bounced between twitter and pictochat while the Freeze Pops played. I have now seen that band in concert twice, and I still don't know what other people see in them. Most the people in Pictochat weren't impressed either. I spent a lot less time looking at twitter while Jonathan Coulton was on stage, although it was cool to see updates from Felicia Day and Wil Wheaton from backstage. Felicia Day even posted moments after she got off the stage.

I spent a good portion of Saturday in the Annex hall which did not have wifi, so twitter didn't do much for me that day. I started out the day walking down to the waterfront and relaxing a bit with Joe before heading to the show. Walked the expo hall a bit, and tried out WoW Minis (which is amazing) and ate lunch at one of the malls not too far away. Joe, Jason, and I also did the little games for the X-Blades booth. It was a fun little quest that they sent us out on. Ended the day playing tabletop games in the free-play area.

Sunday morning I headed straight to the convention and pretty much went straight to the Serpent theater to get a seat for Wil Wheaton's panel. Had there been wifi in that section, I would have known about a few other people I knew sitting in there. After Wil's panel, I rushed back to the signing area, and got in line to buy his book. A restroom stop delayed me a bit and I ended up in the back of the line. I met @ay1ene in the line and we pretty much spent the whole hour and a half in line, checking twitter, posting to twitter, and talking about twitter. After I got the book from Wil, I spent a couple hours going through the Expo hall making sure I saw everything that I wanted. Jason and I then went to find a very late lunch before the final round of the Omegathon. The lunch went even later than thought, so I kept tabs on the Omegathon through twitter since there was wifi at the mall. The rest of our group took off at some point during Wil Wheaton's panel and headed home.

After dinner we spent some time back in the hostel relaxing and playing DS games. Through twitter we found out about a PAX Twitter meet up at Bell Town Billiards. Since we had no other plans for the night, we hit that up, and I am very glad we did. Roughly 30 twitterers showed up. It was fun to be able to put faces to some of the accounts that I've been following for a few months now. The place got very loud, so when we were trying to get people to go somewhere else, twitter became the easiest way to tell everyone.

Monday was dedicated to going around and being touristy. We got a late start so we were a bit rushed to get checked out of the hostel. I posted to twitter that we were off. Luckily @j0z1e replied and offered to let us leave our crap in her room while we toured about. We hiked over to her hotel (damn near the opposite end of downtown) and left our stuff there. The three of us walked down to the Greek place where we had lunch on Friday and ate there again. Bumbershoot was going on across the street, and that provided us with interesting people to watch, and some music to listen to. After lunch, we went to the top of the Space Needle where twitter was updated and DS games were played.

After the Space Needle we pretty much just bummed around until it was time to catch the bus for the airport. All in all, it would have been a fun weekend either way, but the ample usage of Twitter really helped to make it an awesome weekend.