Awesome Nerds – Seattle, Washington – [05/14-15/2017]

You know I always thought that I was a weird girl or a strange girl or not even a girl…just because I could play y’know? And now I look around and look at us , there’s a whole lot of us! And I think we’re all alright…

~ A league of their own

I was more than a little nervous about this conference. I feel better admitting that now than I did a few days ago. Whenever I get into a large group of people I’m …almost always the odd one out. I don’t do well with people as a rule. They don’t seem to understand me and I don’t always understand them. That was kind of what I was prepared for. Especially since I’m one of the newest kids on this particular block…

So yeah, there were knots in my tummy when I disembarked the plane in Seattle, and even more so on the ride to the main conference hotel, where I sat in the car with three other workshop teachers and tried not to say much. Those butterflies continued for the first several hours of the afternoon…and then suddenly I realized that they had…flown away…

These people…they get me. We are all speaking the same language. Heck we’re all speaking. At the mixer in the lobby yesterday I was able to reconnect with the fellow who trained me, who gave me a big hug and announced that he was so proud of me, that I was doing so well and that he always knew I would. Which surprised the heck out of me, because honestly I thought that I would mess up, that someone would catch me out and tell me that no, I had to go home. I grinned at him and squared my shoulders and told him something I had just found out the day before yesterday

I…got a 9.14 rating on my last cruise

You…whoa

Yeah…no idea how I did that.

Because you’re good Shaughnessy, you’ve never had anything to worry about. Never.

I think that was when the butterflies flew away.

A few hours after that, I was sitting chatting with the others as if I had always been around them. I was actually around people, and I wasn’t afraid of them. No one was excluding me, no one was patronizing me, for the first time in…I actually don’t know how long, I didn’t feel like the odd one out of the crowd, like I was just there because no one had the heart to tell me I didn’t belong…

These people, they play the same games as me, geek out about the same things as me. I was finally able to tell my random gaming stories to someone who actually knew what I was talking about.

So my boyfriend starting playing Fallout, and I didn’t want to touch it because I don’t really do gore, but it has that really cool story-line so he managed to talk me into it…and the we kind of started..accidentally sort of competing with each other. Then we got the expansion pack, and so there’s me just a level 8 do-gooder wandering through the wasteland and I sort of fall into one of the expansion pack quests

Oh god…those are all..

Yeah…they’re all meant for players who are above level 30, and there I am a level 8. And Amras keeps telling me that I can just change my mind and come back to it later and I’m like…no..I am so doing this. Went into that thing a level 8 came out a level 10, with the *best* gun in the game, and the indestructible  armor *and* I was invisible. And he’s sitting there looking at me going “I’m a level 27 and YOU HAVE A STRONGER CHARACTER THAN ME…how did you do that”

And one of the guys I was talking to leans back in his chair and says

There’s only one answer to that you know…Mad skillz baby, mad skillz

Or just…I’m me…same thing.

And that was just at the mixer. Which, because of a long trip from east to west coast and a lot of load screaming children on said flight, I crawled away from early because if I didn’t’ I was going to fall asleep in my wine glass.

And then this morning we actually walked into the Microsoft building; and I had to do my best not to squeal and also pick my jaw up off the ground at the same time. Even their cafeteria is high-tech! It looks like a massive food court, and you don’t pay for the food with normal money, they give us these pre-loaded meal coupons (they look like mini-debit cards) and they charge the food by weight, you touch the card to the terminal and bang, you’ve paid for it. Most high-tech way I’ve ever paid for a piece of pizza.

Walking into the conference room for the first time I felt like Lt. Eve Dallas walking into the E.D.D department in the In Death series. Minus the super bright colours and the rock music, but the vibe is the same.

And while we’re not getting all new material just yet (mostly just much-needed revisions to pre-existing classes), some of the stuff that they are showing us that’s *coming* has us chomping at the bit. Even though the NDA that’s in all of our contracts for occasions like this will prevent me from talking about the coolest bits of it, I can talk about some of it; I can say this: the future isn’t coming, the future is here and it is so incredibly cool…and…I can’t wait for the chance to teach it.

In fact none of us can, we were all talking over each other trying to weigh in on new features.

And also doing the high-tech version of doodling on each other’s notebooks….

Some things never change

Anyway….

One thing I can talk about – since the promo video for it is already on the public YouTube channel – is the fact that the movie editing program that got pulled this past Christmas is coming back with some seriously awesome force behind it. It won’t be live for a long while yet, but it’s coming, and it’s so going to be worth waiting for. And our students are going to go crazy for it.

Dad says I’m getting spoiled, that no conference he ever went to was ever like this …but I have a feeling that this week is going to be so…so good for me.