In Which We Recap This Weekend
Friday: Scheduled post needed. Since I knew I would be spending somewhere around 15 hours in the expo hall between open and close, I decided to go investigate some of the other locations of PAX. The tabletop gaming area is what was located on the second and third floors, so I wandered around there a little, had a demo given to me of a game I’d never heard of before, and also found the areas where people can go bang on plastic (and real) instruments in order to pretend that they’re in a (rock) band. I purposefully avoided going into the expo hall until I was on duty (which meant I was sitting for like an hour and a half in the special room set aside for enforcers). Once my shift was done, I actually went back down to the tabletop area with another enforcer and we played a game first with some other attendee and then with a Bioware exhibitor. So, first day, I had already experienced an area of PAX totally new to me.
Friday Lesson: I thought I had comfortable shoes. As it turns out, I don’t have comfortable shoes at all.
Saturday: Scheduled post needed. This was the first day Andrew decided to show up, so I walked around the expo hall with him actually looking at stuff and getting free things handed to us by people in their booths (although whether consciously or not, I ended up with less stuff than last year). I left Andrew to play console games by himself, and I did my enforcing duties quite awesomely if I do say so myself. Ultimately Andrew and I decided to check out the PAX concerts (even without having the special awesome wristbands). Long line standing time required, but ultimately I felt it was worth it. MC Frontalot (interesting choice, but I was willing to go with it), Paul and Storm (great, made even moreso by special guest Wil Wheaton at the end of their set), and Jonathan Coulton (who of course performed “Still Alive”). Day two of PAX, another new experience, and an overall awesome day.
Saturday Lesson: PAX concerts are freaking awesome. Definitely something to explicitly plan for in my schedule next time.
Sunday: Scheduled post not needed, I was actually home by 10! After going to buy some gel inserts for my shoes (because there was no way I could do another 5 hours without something changing, and it couldn’t really get much worse), I finished up my enforcing duties by kicking everyone out of the expo hall once it was all finally over. Almost immediately teardown began, so I helped out with that for another couple of hours in the Sony and Turbine booths before finally calling it a night. There’s also only so much we can help with since we’re not allowed to use tools, so it was a lot of cable gathering, TV packing, and putting other disassembled things into crates.
Sunday Lesson: Three days of enforcing is a lot of work, but also a lot of fun. Overall, I’m quite happy with my decision to do more than just be an attendee this year.
Monday (Today): Deciding to give my feet a rest and take the opportunity to finish unpacking some stuff, I didn’t go help with the rest of teardown today. There was, however, the afterparty tonight at the Hard Rock Café where we had the entire top two floors reserved. Of course Seattle had to have Seattle weather considering the top floor was actually a rooftop desk. At the party we got a zipper pull that was part of an attendee game going on all throughout PAX, a service pin, and lots and lots of free food. One of the traditions is that one of the actual Penny Arcade employees gets up on stage towards the end of the party to thank everyone, answer questions, and tell stories (hence why it’s known as “Story Time with Khoo”).
Weekend Wrapup: Being an enforcer is quite a different experience than just being an attendee. When you consider that we do an estimated $400,000 amount of work over the weekend for close to 70,000 attendees, it’s an impressive feat to pull off, especially at such a high level of success. Going back to an attendee after this would just feel wrong, so I guess I’ll be sticking with the ranks of the enforcers for as long as I’m attending PAX.