Author Delilah S. Dawson (Twitter) has a great blog post in which she offers 30 tips for your next con. It’s a wonderful (and quite useful) list, so I highly recommend applying it next time you’re headed to a con.
Looking back on my experiences at my first con, I can see quite a few places where I succeeded and quite a few places where I probably could have done better, particularly when it comes to attending the “Bar Con” (i.e., heading to the bar after all the panels have wrapped up). After all, while I wasn’t staying at the hotel, I was taking the Metro home, so it’s not like I had to worry about drunk driving. But as I talk about in my post, I think I let my shyness make too many decisions for me. Similarly, I could have done a better job at meeting people and introducing myself. While I did meet a few people at the con, I’m sure I could have met more. Oh well.
At this point, I’m verging into wider life lessons–test your boundaries, be outgoing, push yourself, etc. So that’s probably the signal to wrap this up. But before I do, let me just say that next year’s World Fantasy Convention will be at DC, so start planning now.