The biggest theme for me this year, was not having enough time. We had 900 people show up this year and I felt like I know half of them personally and wanted to spend time with them. As always, the best part of TAM is the time spent with fellow skeptics, the bar and mealtime conversations. We laugh and drink and argue and swap stories and gossip and remember what it's like to spend time with smart, funny, goofy people who see the world in a similar way.I got to meet a bunch of the other writers for Skepchick. So awesome. What an incredible group of people. Carrie, Sam, Stacey, Teek, A and of course Rebecca, were all there. Much wine and food was consumed in the name of skepticism and chick power. :)
During TAM itself, the big highlight for me was Neil Degrasse Tyson who gave the most animated and enjoyable keynote speech that I have ever heard. I also got to accost him, along with my fellow skepchick Carrie, and chat with him for a few minutes the night prior. He was funny and friendly and extraordinarily smart. Wow. What a spokesperson for skepticism and science.There were other fantastic speakers - Ben Goldacre, who I hadn't seen before - was funny and British and also let us drink with him over the course of the weekend. What a fun person to hang out with.
Phil Plait was magnificent as always, although I was bummed that I hardly had time to even say hi to him all weekend. PZ Meyers was another new addition to TAM this year. I hadn't seen him before and he was fascinating.
Adam Savage talked about his personal obsessions and how he uses science to fulfil them. Richard Wiseman got 800 people to bend spoons with him. (It's not up on UTube yet but in the meantime, check out his color changing trick). Fantastic. And, of course, James Randi himself was kind and wise and funny, watching it all. And the Sunday paper presentations, which are given by 'regular' skeptics from the community, were more fantastic than usual this year, with Skepchick's own Tracy King and my good friend Tim Farley both presenting excellent papers.
I had only one major complaint with the program this year. There was a serious lack of female speakers. That is, there was one female speaker. Sharon Begley, the science writer for Newsweek, was a really interesting speaker and gave a great perspective on skepticism in the media (short answer: there isn't much). They did ask Margaret Downey of the Atheist Alliance to participate in one of the panels and Swoopy and Derek from Skepticality spoke for a few minutes about the upcoming events at Dragon*Con but other than that, it was sausage-ville.
I was a bit up on my soap box about it during TAM, but it's not a problem unless it's a trend. Past TAMs have included fantastic female speakers, like Carolyn Porco and Eugenie Scott, and the JREF is planning on working with Skepchick next year to help even out the gender gap so I'm hoping that this is just an anomaly.
Other major highlights - the evening we spent at Quark's bar - the restaurant at the Star Trek experience. We ended up with about 75 people and a tab of over $2000. For some reason, Quark's refused to split up the check, which meant I spent a good 30 minutes with a couple of other people, collecting cash into piles. We ended up with extra cash, which we ended up donating to the JREF. Skeptics can do math and are honest :)
We also tried to throw a JREF forum party, as usual. Alas, we had too many people for the (very large) suite that we'd booked and it was unbearably hot in there. Because that meant a lot of people escaped to the hallway for relief, it meant the noise complaints came in earlier and the party was shut down extremely early this year. The nice part was that after it was all over, a handful of us went back upstairs and spent a quiet evening in the suite, chatting and laughing and catching up. That's probably my favorite TAM memory.
So, all in all, a wonderful time. Phil Plait always says that TAM renews him to go back into the daily battle and it's very true. I have a new project that I've been working on since before TAM and spending time with these great people, bouncing ideas off them and getting their input really helped. I'll be updating you all soon, promise.
