Balticon is not a huge con, but they do run several programming tracks at once. There's an active gaming contingent, and this year hall costumes were very popular. I didn't get that many pictures but I loved this little bitty pirate (right). There were a numbers of kids running around in costume. Grownups, too. One time I stepped on the elevator only to be confronted by an alien! He seemed quite peaceable, even though he's gesturing wildly in this photo (below). 
Readings are run in triplicate, three authors in one 50-minute time slot, which improves an authors chances of having listeners. I went to one triple reading (which included most of a story by
scottedelman), and some interesting panels: e-publishing, self-publishing (they overlapped a lot but not completely), book covers, and The Walking Dead (mostly the TV show but a little bit about the comics). The room was cold enough to have kept zombies, but fortunately, I had a sweater. I'm not really into zombies but a friend was on the panel, so I went. The panel was almost all male but ranged in age from teenagers to gray-hairs, The knowledge of the show demonstrated by both the panel members and the audience was an testament to its appeal. I snapped one last photo of the panel to show I had not merely wandered the halls of Balticon. And of course, we hit the Wegman's on the way out of town!
