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This was the first con I’d ever been to, and I enjoyed it even more than I’d hoped.  So many people who write so much, so many people who read so much.  So many people who talk so much.  Damn.  Elizabeth Bear can talk me into the ground, and that takes some doing.  My favorite moments:

• Literary beer with Karl Schroeder, a vastly literate and technical autodidact.  In a very brief hour, we discussed ancient philosophy, modern philosophy, color theory, Searle’s Chinese Room, AI, genetic algorithms and evolutionary computing, fantasy writing vs. science fiction writing, L. E. Modesitt, and Charles Stross.  And some other stuff as well, that I’m not sure I remember.  Conversations like that make me eager to read more non-fiction.
• Panel on The Role of the Agent with Michael Kabongo, Eleanor Wood, and Joshua Bilmes.  Great mix of reassurances on the things I’d read in agent blogs online and a few nuggets that I hadn’t already heard.  Not to mention Joshua telling Chris and me the exact first sentence to put into our query letters…
• Realizing that yes, that was Tobias Buckell talking to John Scalzi over there in the lobby.  That person yelling at them from twenty yards away? Elizabeth Bear!
• As Chris sez, Tobias is just the nicest guy. 
• Over literary beer, jointly (as it were) with Elizabeth Bear describing William H. Macy’s nudity in The Cooler as “You can see the package but not the ribbon.”  Elizabeth Bear was the funniest person I met at Boskone. 
• Wen Spencer’s storyboard of one stick figure biting another in the neck. It’s easier than you think, because stick figures are all neck.  
• Realizing how close-knit and friendly the community of fantasy & sf authors is.

By the way, I’m trying to promote the phrase, “I’m biting you in the neck!” as a substitute for the clearly rude “Shut up!”  It’s going to be an uphill battle, but if we all stand together, we can pull it off.