One of the things about now being stateside that is a positive is that a lot of the big expo’s or conferences are now more accessible. Before there was the cost plus it was a 11hour flight and then if the thing was only for a few days it’s pretty hard to do that sort of short trip jet lagged out of your mind.
Anyway now it’s a lot more practical to go to some of these things I’ve always fancied attending. As a first go I thought I’d try Penny Arcade Expo or PAX as it is known, it’s in Seattle which is pretty close to me and over a weekend in september which means I only need to take a single day off (and maybe suffer a bit on the monday back :S).
PAX has always intrigued me and quite a few times I speculatively looked at flying out for it from the UK but the cost was prohibitive, that coupled with the huge distance traveled for a few days it never really seemed worth it. I would have needed to factor it into a holiday or other trip and I just never had the time to organise something like that.
Anyway now things are different so I’m booked in for this years PAX, I will likely report back my findings on the event via this channel.
I also really wanted to go see the Amazing Meeting in vegas which is a get together of skeptics and rational thinkers run by the James Randi Educational Foundation. I’ve followed the meeting for a while and it always has fascinating talks by all sorts of great speakers on the subjects of skepticism and rational thinking (or just random cool stuff like Adam Savage talking about his quest to make a perfect replica of the Maltese Falcon prop).
I checked when it was running this year and found it was 8th to the 11th of July doh! Well there’s always next year … or I could book in for the UK version of TAM in London in October …
