But this year I only got into one panel (well, two, but one conflicting with the Ball), and was genuinely concerned of finding myself at loose ends: I don't really have a "posse" any more, and it's too easy to get lost in the crowd. So I decided it was time to jump into volunteering; it was a lot of fun.
I wound up splitting my time. I spent nine hours on-call as deputy Press Liaison -- when press showed up, getting them to go through all the paperwork, answering their questions and sending them on their way, all of which was low-impact fun. But mainly, I spent 16 hours at Arisia Headquarters, basically Volunteer Central. This got described to me as the center of the whirlwind, to which my reaction was, "Hey, I'm a serial autocrat -- I like whirlwind". And it was a blast: lots of activity, helping folks solve problems, with occasional pauses of working through the paperwork.
Of course, I still had to get in some arts-track time. The Renaissance Ball, was, as always, pretty great -- despite getting the sub-optimal slot of 5-6:30pm, we had a solid 50-60 people on the floor the entire time: enough to comfortably fill the place. It's always high-energy, full of new folks learning the dances with the help of a bunch of experienced people. And my one panel -- Feats of Memorization -- went surprisingly well for 10am on Monday. The three of us represented three different traditions: me with Masonic ritual, Grim talking about period poetry and bardic arts, and a fellow focusing on a combination of Talmud and trivia contests.
So between all that, and some good hangout time with