I went. It was awesome. As always, had my perspective flipped on a lot of aspects and theories on my own magic.
Some highlights for me were, the Dani Daortiz performance. He did three 30 minute shows, back to back, and each time fooled every magician in the convention. It was so good, I didn't even want to watch the lecture on how his material was done because I loved that sense of astonishment I was in.
Wayne Houchin did very well routined & polished performance and lecture. Really in depth, honest and open lecture and it was really nice to see that it wasn't a big sales pitch for his products.
The finale of the convention was a Chris Kenner talk. Wow. How funny is Kenner?! I never knew how good he actually was 'till this. He did 2 comedy magic effects, really fun, played very very well. He talked about shooting videos and making them look good and spoke about how not to "shoot" yourself. He talked about Torn Asunder and showed the very first video performance video of it that he'd shot, only 3 - 4 people had ever seen it before he showed it this weekend, incredible!! Kenner gave a very opinionated speech at the end, talking about how much of a bad rep the older generation gives the younger generation, too long to explain in full but basically put he put a lot of people in their places and knocked them down the peg or two. It was something that's needed to be said for a long time and it was brilliant of Kenner to stand up in front of all them magicians in that room and say it. He went on to be interviewed for a while and did a Q&A session with the crowd. Then Chris was awarded the Lifetime Achievement award and then Homer Liwag played a special dedication video to Kenner, featuring the likes of Michael Webber, David Copperfield, Mac King, Dan White and a load of others. It was really heartfelt and super super funny, such a cracking end to a brilliant talk. To top it off, everyone got a specially designed (by Homer Liwag) poster of Chris Kenner, which he signed for everyone at the end.
But overall, The Sessions Convention is all about sessioning with everyone, at the bar, having fun, catching up with old friends and making a load of new ones. This year, topped the rest and I had some truly priceless moments this weekend.
This is a quick wrap up, I'll probably write up some more later.
Lloyd
P.s. Going nightclubbing with Eric Jones and some others 'till 5 in the morning is a baaaad idea.