Big Dumb Object

I went to the BSFA AGM on Saturday, in London. The AGM was combined with a selection of speakers and a panel.

First up was a rather dry panel about publishing and the internet, including a long discussion on whether academic journals would be killed off by free publishing on the internet. It also strayed into talk about what the BSFA can do and should it publish its journals online. It all seemed a bit crazy to talk about it like there was a choice, in my opinion everything will be published online so learn to deal with it.

Next up was a talk by Juliet E McKenna who talked about how she does a lot of research for her fantasy books, even though generally people think that Fantasy does not need research. She said that if it was realistic it helped the suspension of belief which makes sense. She also talked about her methods of research which basically involved using everything she could get her hands on, books, postcards of faces, neighbours head injuries...just about everything.

After lunch and the AGM itself (which was brief and business-like) was Stephen Baxter (Vice President of the BSFA) who gave a talk about where he grew up and how he thinks it has influenced him. he actually grew up in an interesting place, between Liverpool and Manchester on the first commercial railway line. He's a great speaker and it was really interesting. He mentioned the fact that the canal workers were protesting about the railway because they thought it would ruin their livelihoods, which seems very relevant to today. He also talked about how the suburb he lived in was all new built, that the railway was a singularity about which everything changed, as though a generation ship had crashed and the suburb was built by the survivors, but then his generation were not really impressed.

Finally Bruce Sterling. Wow. he spoke non-stop for about an hour. Notionally it was about alternative economic models that the BSFA could use, triggered by the discussion in the first panel. He said so much stuff, but basically he was just explaining the current state of the internet, something I'm extremely familiar with. He talked about economic models of Google Ads, Schwag, Freemium, monetizing parties..... He talked about how his design students always get information online, Google, Wikipedia, Technorati and so on. I could go on about the content but it wouldn't really do it justice. Bruce Sterling is a great speaker. He's very funny, full of ideas, just really, really brilliant. Worth the trip to London just for that.