Daily Archives: July 12, 2012

An image from this year’s Drinking with Geeks panel, courtesy of Bob Alberti.

Anyone who has been to CONvergence, or even who has read my Twitter feed during CONvergence, knows that a lot of drinking goes on there. There are three floors of parties every night, most of which serve alcohol. There are even multiple panels dedicated to drinking now: the now-infamous Drinking with Geeks (which I’m always on) has been joined with Cocktails with Cthulhu (which I was also on). There’s talk of starting up a third one next year (which I will probably also be on, given my track record).

You may also surmise from this that I’m pretty okay with alcohol. I almost never drink to get drunk or even buzzed, but I absolutely love the vast varieties of beer, wine, and scotch that exist on this planet. Plus, my body’s intolerance for caffeine and for aspartame, and my distaste for sweet drinks, have left me with few beverage choices aside from water and, well, booze.

And I’m fine with CONvergence being fairly boozy. For the most part, the attendees at CONvergence are extraordinarily well-behaved, even when tipsy. In the past, I’ve volunteered for the convention by helping Operations respond to radio calls in the wee hours of the morning, and I’ve seen the sort of emergencies that arise during the drinking times. For an event that puts 5,000-6,000 people in the same place with copious amounts of alcohol, there are astonishingly few problems. Yes, there are problems; that is expected simply because of the sheer volume of people we host. But there are very few problems.

Yet I wonder: how much celebration of the fermented beverage is too much? CONvergence is growing by leaps and bounds every single year. Will there be a point where hosting a Drinking with Geeks panel would be downright irresponsible? I sure hope not, but I do wonder. Continue Reading →