Well, the first day of Polaris has pretty much wrapped up. The only thing left happening is the Klingon Karaoke (and yes there are some Klingons there). 
It was pretty good for my first day at a con ever. I went to the opening ceremonies and the host was pretty funny, there wasn’t much content basically just going over the events of the weekend. It was a nice primer for what to expect.
The first session that I went to was Emergent Internet A.I. The main panellist for the session was Robert J. Sawyer the writer of "Flash Forward” the talk was excellent as the topics that were covered was the total amount of storage needed to have an artificial intelligence develop on the internet, how would it manifest itself, what would the reception be, and then there were some questions about how it would be used and if it would be given free reign over its own existence.
The second session that I went to was Kirktinuity and that was discussing the nature of Star Trek cannon in regards to the new movie vs. The Original Series. It started off not too bad but it was starting to get to be to much of a geek fest and I decided to leave early and go to the Blastoff party.
I paid extra to attend the Blastoff party. All of the multi-day guests are contracted to be there. I was able to speak with Robert J. Sawyer, Ethan Phillips, Mark Sheppard, and Kai Owens. To be honest I haven’t had a chance to see torchwood, but the conversation between Kai Owens and Mark Sheppard was excellent, they were discussing the season format between North America and England. The comparison of the 6-12 episode seasons of England vs the 22-24 episode seasons that we are used to here in North America. I never really understood the difference until I was able to hear this discussion. It makes complete sense to me now where they only have one story arc for the season.
I was able to discuss Smartphone technology with Robert J. Sawyer and Ethan Phillips, we were discussing the iPhone and the droid and some of the different features. We discussed how Research In Motion is a Canadian company and try as I might I was not able to get a plug in for the BlackBerry.
I need to look at the schedule for tomorrow and finish selecting the panels that I want to go to. Just trying to make my life easier.
