So what'd you do?
Yeah sci-fi convention, I saw & even added it to my calendar some months back cause it looked cool, I can't afford to go but it looked like a fun excuse to travel. Maybe someday.
Put it this way: When I used to go to SF conventions in the '80s and '90s, the Guest of Honor was almost always an author, sometimes two authors. There might be other guests, depending on the tracks of programming (one year they scored Dr. Phil Currie, who ran the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology in Drumheller, Alberta; he did an entire weekend of panels on dinosaurs, fossils, and other paleontology-related topics). The only year when the main GoH wasn't a book author was when JMS (the guy who created Babylon 5; don't ask me to spell his last name because I absolutely don't remember how) was the guest. I wasn't into B5 back then, but decided to try it after attending a panel where he showed the blooper reel.
So over the years I got to meet some rather famous people from early to mid-late 20th century SF authors, some of them twice (C.J. Cherryh, L. Sprague deCamp and his wife, Catherine - who also wrote SF at a time when most women didn't, or at least not under their own names, Crawford Killian,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Silverberg...).
Robert Silverberg is at Worldcon this weekend, and was more than a little miffed that initially he hadn't been booked for any panels. Apparently the people running this have forgotten that some of the authors from a half-century ago are still alive, some are still writing/editing, and still perfectly capable of attending conventions, participating in panel discussions, meeting the fans...
So the most the organizers were willing to do for him is an autograph signing session. Otherwise he's here and there, in the dealers' room and other places. One person in his email group said they'd managed to speak to him, and that he's using a scooter now (understandable, as he's 89).
I don't know how many other authors are there who I've met over the years. Some have died. But honestly, for me science fiction conventions have been about meeting the authors. Actors ... depending on who they are, they might be interesting to talk to, but I've heard some horror stories about how rude some of them can be. That said, someone in the Classic Doctor Who group I'm part of on FB was proclaiming that they didn't like Sylvester McCoy... well, that's their right to like/dislike whomever, but when I met him in 1987 he was gracious and didn't mind signing two photos - one for me and one for a friend who couldn't go to the fan event.
So yeah, I'm jealous of the guys in the email group who get to be there. I'm sure there will be some stories next week when they come back. Silverberg still joins in conversations there, as he doesn't do social media. The last time he was at a convention I was able to go to was in the '80s. I still have most of the costume I wore that year - my interpretation of Majipoori court garb, based on his novel
Lord Valentine's Castle.