I’m home! I had an incredible time in San Francisco; probably the best time I’ve had at any event to date. I met some very cool people, made some eloquent and passionate pleas for the future of professional gaming and video games as a spectator sport, and absolutely did not get any kind of heat stroke at all.

When I landed on Friday evening, I took the BART downtown and made my way to the dinner VIA held for the conference speakers. Here I met the rest of the g0d girlz that I hadn’t met before, as well as other people in the industry. After a tasty dinner and good talkings, we headed back to the scary hotel for sleep and bed bugs before the event on Saturday.

The turnout wasn’t what the organizers hoped, but there were quite a few members of the press and even some drop-ins who had found out about the event that morning. The speakers were varied and (mostly) had really interesting things to say. I took the stage around noon for a brief introduction to video game commentary before we broke for lunch, when we set up the PCs for a demo between Livia and Therese of g0d.

The discussion topic for my panel was the Future of e-Sports. We had Rafik Bryant, a professional Q4 player; Jamie aka Missy from g0d, myself, and our sexy moderator Bjorn from VIA. I was last to speak, and I think I did pretty good – my nerves had worn off by that point, and I surprised myself with my throbbing passion for competitive gaming and the coverage Inside the Game does. I also told the story of how Ed and I met and got engaged, and his proposal to me and our QuakeCake received laughs and applause, which I lapped up like a kitten.

After our panel I did a snafu-filled casting demo (we couldn’t get the spectator mode to load on the laptop/LCD screen, so I casted off Therese’s monitor with no visuals and no sound) that seemed to impress people. I also did a couple of audience shootout casts at the end of the event, and those were a blast because it’s fun to watch people get annihilated by girls. I’m pretty sure I did iTG proud, and I had a lot of fun at the conference both participating and hearing (most of) the other people speak.

After the event we headed back to the hotel for dropping off and changing, then it was off to the waterfront for fun. Bjorn and his brother Carl (Karl?) are evil and wouldn’t let us catch a trolley, so we walked from Pier 1 to Pier 39 in search of food. Just went we had given up all hope, we fell into a Hard Rock Café and ate until we ran out of money. We were too late to the Pier to visit the many shops, but we did go on the Magic Carpet Ride which was both disturbing and a great deal of fun – video to be released soon, much to the dismay of some. Hee!

Sunday was a completely free day for us, so Livia, Therese, Sara and I got up relatively early and hit the town for shopping and sight seeing. All of us had been to SF before, but I was the only one who had never been around the town (apparently, there’s more to SF than the Ramada Inn and the convention hall where WCG2K4 was held). With that in mind, Sara came up with an itinerary that allowed us heaps of fun. After some morning shopping, we made our way back to the Piers (by trolley this time – :P Bjorn) to go out on a BOAT CRUISE !!

I adore water. The cruise we took was about an hour long, and took us from Pier 43.5 to the Golden Gate Bridge (which I SAW with my OWN EYES) then back by Angel Island and Alcatraz before docking again. There was an audio guide to go along with the tour that was really interesting. The whole thing was absolutely incredible and I would recommend it to anyone visiting San Francisco! Too much fun, and I took a zillion pictures. After the tour we wobbled back to Pier 39 for lunch and a bit of shopping before we had to go back to the hotel – Sara left on Sunday afternoon, and she had to finish packing and airporting. Our hasty goodbyes said, Livia Therese and I went back downtown – we still had money left, and I’d never really had time to do any shopping in SF before unless you count the Radio Shack which I definitely do not.

Thoroughly shopped out (we closed down the mall) and our good deed of the weekend done (we held a stakeout to find the owner of a credit card left behind in the ATM), we went back to the hotel room to get ready for our early morning departure and coo at the fruits of our shopping labours. I very rarely get to go girlie shopping with actual girls, so I had a lot of fun doing that. Bjorn and his brother showed up and we watched cartoons (I heart Adult Swim) until we had to sleep in preparation of our very early Monday mornings.

The airport was an adventure in ass marbles, because the airline sent me from International to Domestic to the OTHER International before an airline would admit to having me on their plane roster. I slept on the flight, landed safely and made it through customs with very little anal probing, and came home to cats and bacon – all in all, a very awesome trip that I would repeat in a heartbeat.

I’ll upload some pictures tomorrow, but I could really use a shower right now and maybe also some Diet Coke.