By
Chris Klug, Creative Director, Stargate Worlds

Sorry, I didn't blog yesterday, but when I tell you the story,
you'll understand why.

My job at the convention is in the main to communicate to
people what
the game is about.  Why they should give it a try. 
Why they should be excited about it.

This job takes many forms.  Talking to people in the
booth.  Giving 'guided tour interviews' where press comes into
a room in a hotel, we sit them down, show them the game, let them play
it a bit, and tell them all about it.

It also involves giving brief demos at our booth, where people
stand
around and watch as a couple of our QA department play the game on
large screens while I run around giving away t-shirts.

It's all kinda fun.

Friday, however, myself, Art Director Howard Lyon, Technical
Director
Demetrius Comes and Studio Head Dan Elggren were scheduled to give a
panel
for 5,000 Stargate fans.  Our panel centered on a discussion
about the
game,
and was sandwiched between a panel with Brad Wright and the cast of
SG-1
(you know, boring people like Amanda Tapping and Richard Dean Anderson)
and
a panel with the cast of Stargate Atlantis (Jewel Staite, Robert
Picardo,
etc.)  So we were pretty nervous.  I was VERY
nervous, because I was
MODERATING the panel, which meant that I was the host, as it were.

That's a pretty big audience to screw up in front of, if you
know what I
mean.

So, yesterday morning, just being honest, I had other things
on my mind
besides sitting down and crafting a neat little blog.  Things
like "how
do
we not come off like a pile of damp laundry after the audience has been
entertained by Brad, Richard, Michael, Amanda, etc?"

We get into the hall, the cast is brought out for the first
panel, and
they
are ON FIRE.  Joke after joke, all ad-libbed, the crowd is
loving it.

I'm sinking lower in my seat, debating whether I should run to
the
bathroom
now or wait until after, debating whether I could dig a hole in the
floor
and hide.

That panel ends, and we're on stage.

I'm introduced by Brad Wright, and I walk out in front of
5,000.  I
notice
to my left that Brad, who I thought was going to leave the stage, is
staying
to sit with us.  This relaxes me a little.  I
introduce my colleagues,
and
we're off.

By five minutes into the panel, I relax and drop into my 'just
entertain
them' mode, the crowd seems into it, we're all doing well, and Brad is
sitting up there with us telling the assembled Stargate community how
much
he likes us, likes our work, and is going to incorporate our work into
his
own work going forward.

This is all wonderful.

We're done in a half-hour, we're off-stage, and it worked,
thank
goodness.

So hopefully, this blog sorta explains why I was off-line
yesterday.

Please
accept my apologies.
On a sad note, yesterday a friend of mine passed away.  Some
of you may
have
heard of a Carnegie Mellon professor, Randy Pausch, who gained a little
fame
for giving a 'last lecture' after he had been diagnosed with
cancer.  He
was
my boss when I worked at Carnegie Mellon, teaching in their
Entertainment
Technology center for a couple years.

His obituary is href="http://www.cmu.edu/homepage/beyond/2008/summer/an-enduring-legacy.shtml"
target="_blank">here.

Do yourself a favor and click on the link at the bottom of
that page
and listen to the video of his 'last lecture.'  It's pretty
wonderful.

(Editor's
Note: You can read all of Chris' Comic Con blogs by href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/events/comic-con08/klug">clicking
here!)