happyAs appears to be the way of such things, there are only two panels on the entire convention program that I wanted to attend, and they were both at the same time. I chose the one on "Do Awards Matter?" and was happy that the panelists called on me when the discussion got into some of the finer points of how the Hugo Award rules work and why there's a 5% cut-off to make the ballot in any category. (It has the practical effect of preventing a "long tail" of nominations leading to an overly-long ballot with, say, a fifteen-way tie for the last place on the ballot.)
Meanwhile, Chris Garcia, who is also at WFC, tracked me down to do an interview with me he'd been meaning to do for a long time. Yes, someone I see every Monday night in the Bay Area (when I'm there, which is less often these days) had to travel to the UK, as did I, to do an interview. Life is funny sometimes.
