JoCo Cruise 2021 Virtual Panel: “Quarantine Creativity: How We Got Through 2020 & What We Learned From It”
Posted on April 14, 2021 Posted by John Scalzi 6 Comments
As part of the virtual JoCo Cruise this year, I, Mary Robinette Kowal, Rebecca Roanhorse and Charlie Jane Anders talked about being creative in 2020 — or not! — and what we learned from the year that was. Here it is in all of its YouTubeable glory. It’s in fact very interesting, which is down to the other three participants, I think. Enjoy!
That was delightful! I eventually got mildly seasick and thus stopped looking at the actual video, because apparently I think I am on the cruise if a camera wanders around.
I’m glad that for some things there was a diversity of experience on the panel! (also glad, though, that everyone has Something They Can’t Talk About Yet!) I’ve been intrigued with the split between my introverted friends who love Zoom and my introverted friends who loathe and are insta-drained by Zoom – they are equivalently introverted in person as far as one can tell, but some just continually lose HP from being sort of blindfolded from reading the room and not being able to internally wrangle that, I think? And others are chill with the lack of feedback. And I do not know why. But it’s been really great to have it be split such that no one feels like The Only One Like [however] and to remind me that while this year has been hard for just about everyone, different people have loved some of the things about it that other people absolutely hated, which has been useful as a reminder to me to reduce stated assumptions that are awkward to disagree with and which make people feel “outside” – everything from “of course” missing in-person contact with co-workers to “of course” loving the discovery of grocery delivery to “of course” at-home-all-the-time family driving us nuts. Surprisingly little is “of course” and surprisingly little is unmixed! (except, I mean, things like my social circle having Opinions about the presidential trade-in value; they’re fairly unanimous about that, and a couple of other things, but otherwise: 2020 was hard for everyone, but it’s impressive to me how many particulars of shared experiences in 2020 – grocery delivery! Zoom! reduced outside-the-house people contact! increased inside-the-house people contact! were very positive for some and very negative for others.)
I enjoyed this very much, but especially Charlie Jane’s expressions and delight over anyone’s good news.
That’s quite a discussion, thanks. Nice ending.
For some reason around 4:30 with “All things considered I am doing really really well.” I started to get teary. I would say much the same myself, as it happens.
Afterwards I went back to
https://youtu.be/2kQxVwYwrME
(“Kate, are you okay?”)
Four people whose writing I really enjoy talking together — some sort of super candy bar formula, I imagine. Incentive to gird my loins and eventually go on the JoCo cruise.
Interesting stuff. I’m about 1/3 of the way through and MRK has just mentioned ‘framing’.
All 4 of you are in (I believe) 16-9 ratio windows, and I’m thinking that maybe that isn’t the best possible aspect for this sort of presentation.
(Although it works well for MRK, because she’s using it as she does in her puppetry. )
So just for yucks I grabbed a quick screenshot, and cropped it some, and it just seemed a bit more ‘comfortable’.
Now I’m wondering, is it possible to hold this sort of virtual conference using other aspect ratios?
Thanks for this! Enjoyed it very much!