There is a loose knit community of creative people on Twitter that we refer to as “The Tribe”. Others have written some pretty complete observations on this phenomenon which I’ll try to point to, and I’m sure I’ll set down my feelings on it some time in the near future.
The Tribe is made up of writers, musicians, painters, photographers, hackers, and many other disciplines. For most of us, our creative side is not applied as part of our “day jobs”. And perhaps we’ve lapsed in our art, have never created something tangible, or don’t consider ourselves “artists” however we all have a creative spirit, similar sensibilities, and similar tastes.
Whenever possible portions of the Tribe try to come together in meat-space, which usually occurs at sci-fi/fantasy/literary/media/tech conventions. I’ve never been able to attend such a gathering, but I have met a few members of the Tribe over the past 9 months.
This last weekend Mur Lafferty, her husband Jim Van Verth, and their daughter The Pink Tornado were coming to the DC area and I was able to attend a gathering at the Dogfish Head brewery and restaurant. I’ll have a complete listing of those in attendance with links and some pictures below.
This was my first time to a DFH, though I’ve enjoyed some of their beers purchased at a Total Wine near our home. As expected, the beers were excellent drawn from a keg. The food was quite good as well, however it was rather expensive. My burger, fries, and two beers came to almost $40 after tax and tip.
Don’t get me wrong – the food and drink were well worth the quality – however what made the afternoon was the company! I started the festivities off when Scott and Mae Breakall came to my house to carpool to the restaurant. As I mentioned in a previous blog post, Viv couldn’t accompany us 🙁 We headed up to the restaurant and met everybody else, having laid claim to an entire section of the second floor.
Meeting these people that I’ve spent so much time corresponding with through Twitter, chatting, voicemail, and recordings was such a treat! Everybody welcomed me with open arms and a huge smile. I felt immediately at home, and fell easily into conversation. My only regret is that I ended up spending most of the time at one table and didn’t get to spend as much time with many at the other table. This isn’t so bad because the people that I ate and laughed with were such a pleasure to be with and I know that I’ll have more time with everybody as con season progresses and we have more meet-ups.
Attendees included:
- Marc Bailey; host of Grailwolf’s Geek Life
- Heather Welliver; Marc’s wife and an amazing singer
- Scott Breakall, hacker and musician
- Mae Breakall, Scott’s wife; singer; and Executive Personal Assistant to Scott Sigler (go buy Infected – on shelves at your favorite bookstore)
- Dr. John Cmar, infectious disease Director person
- “Sci-Fi” Laura Burns, a bona-fide rocket scientist who works for NASA.
- Paul Fischer; host of the ADDCast and the Balticon Podcast
- Martha Holloway, Paul’s wife and producer for Dancing Cat Studios
- Brand Gamblin, host of the Calls For Cthulu Vidcast
- Allison (unfortunately we didn’t have a chance to get acquainted and I’m not sure what projects she’s associated with)
- Paulette Jaxton, writer; and fellow Tribal Fit Club member
- Mur Lafferty, author of Playing for Keeps, the Heaven series; Secrets of the Podcast Masters; as well as many published short stories and RPGs; host of many podcasts including Geek Fu and I Should Be Writing
- Jim Van Verth, Mur’s husband and host of The Vintage Gamer podcast
- The Pink Tornado, their daughter.
- Tee Morris, author of Podcasting for Dummies; Expert Podcasting Practices for Dummies; Morevi; and the Billibub Baddings series (among other podcasts).
- Nat, Tee’s wife (unfortunately we didn’t have a chance to get acquainted and I’m not sure what projects she’s associated with)
- Sonic Boom, their daughter.
You can find some more pictures on my Flickr feed.
After lunch many of us headed to Paul and Martha’s to visit some more and do some ADDCast recordings, which will be detailed in another post.
Such a wonderful afternoon and a wonderful group of people. I can’t wait for RavenCon !!
