MASTER POST FOR REVIEWS AND FEEDBACK

[alladinsane.livejournal.com]

Post Reviews and or Feedback on D*C here.

Comments

[sonata-ix.livejournal.com]

Everything felt more crowded to me this year, but somehow more organized as well. The little ropes in front of escalators sure helped keep people from blocking those. The extra badge checks slowed down entrance to the hotels, but the staff doing them were generally very polite and cheerful.

DCTV was weird this year, the bumpers and pre-recorded things were LOUD but the panels and other shows were very quiet. The volume on our tv in the Marriott was capped at a certain level, so we had to sit very close and quiet to hear, then cringe away and scramble to adjust in between panels.

Badge pickup was awesome except do we really need all those ropes now? And that huge room? Good problems to have compared to the past!

Something I'd never much thought of, Dealers Room and Exhibit Halls and Artist Alley all have the same things. True, Alley has more art, but you see artists set up in any of those locations. You have to browse all four places if you're looking for something specific, because who knows where it will be. If there are no rules on what goes where, why call them all separate things? Minor gripe, more idle musing than complaint. The variety of stuff overall was great.

More line guidance would be nice. Like, signs. I missed a panel because I naively didn't see a line anywhere near the panel room when I checked half an hour before, only to find out later the line was outside somewhere. I knew the lines went outside, I just didn't know they STARTED outside sometimes.

Loved the app but wow I couldn't get Internet/data to work on my phone most of the weekend, even outside. Did we overload something? Most of the time I had text messaging only!

[lhogyn.livejournal.com]

yeah, even at full bars and 3g, i was moving slower than a turtle on a dial-up 386 computer. I'm guessing we just took up all the cell tower bandwidth since i was actually able to get on at a "some what normal speed" around 3-4am when everyone had passed out for the night. My friend, however, had no problem on his LTE enabled Android. I guess that's the price we pay for all using a common data network =/

[andrew norton (from livejournal.com)]

yes, things were VERY overloaded.
On friday, the connection we (EFF track) run for the space track so they can do their live astronomy would not hold a connection for more than a minute. It was more usable on other days though.
When I brought up the cell congestion on a panel I was hosting yesterday (we were supposed to have a video link to a participant in california, but that had to be cancelled) someone noted that Verizon had brought in 7 mobile tower trucks, to help take the load. I didn't see any myself, but they could have been outside the con area, takng the non-con traffic from the regular towers. *shrug*

[svarney99.livejournal.com]

I was using Verizon. Thursday was very good reception with data. That was last time all weekend. Part of that may be due to me staying at the Westin, which I hear has window coatings that partially block cell reception.

[andrew norton (from livejournal.com)]

Ah, yes, the coating. I'm not sure it actually interferes that much , but I'll ask a friend (he developed it)

I had weird data issues, but I was only sending sms and mms to twitter (for my liveblog) I had great connection from, say, Conops, in the bowels of the hyatt, but standing on the street between the marriott and hyatt was a no-go. And Usually the Hilton was ok.

my wife has a smartphone, we had good data speeds up in the 24th floor of the marriott (which is the lowest we've ever been, and we want to be back in at least the 30s in future) all weekend, but we were also on the north side of the hotel, Who knows though, it's been 12+ years since my last class on cellular signals

[greycoupon.livejournal.com]

That's interesting! I had never heard that window coating could interfere with cell reception. I didn't stay but a friend at the Westin couldn't ever get any reception in her room.

[silvers-shadows.livejournal.com]

I was piggybacking on AT&T (my iPhone is British) and would go from full to zero without moving, it was madness.

[cetkat.livejournal.com]

I use T-Mobile and that was pretty stable. It did mysteriously drop out on the dealer room level of the Marriott though. The atrium and lobby floors were fine, but once down the escalator, there was no signal whatsoever. That seems kind of strange to me.

[castalianspring.livejournal.com]

I'm with T-mobile as well and I never get reception in the dealer rooms. They're just too far underground.

[missingvolume.livejournal.com]

Next year the vendors are moving to the Americasmart. Dealer tables on one side and booths on the other. There will be just booths on the first floor and and the rest on the second floor.