I’m not an Atlanta native, and I spent a lot of my young adulthood aspiring to reach starving writer status. So, I never experienced Dragon*Con’s days as a small convention. Dragon*Con launched in 1987 with around 1,400 attendees, and by 2003, the first year I went, attendance was inching past 20,000 people. That may seem small compared to San Diego Comic-Con’s 140,000, but Dragon*Con is the biggest convention of its type in the Southeast.

Even with 20,000 people, Dragon*Con ’03 was relatively easy to get around. I had a guide who was a longtime Dragon*Con veteran, and my to-do list was pretty focused. If I wasn’t sitting in a Tolkien panel, I was probably on my way to or from one, unless I was taking care of basic needs like eating and showering. And everything was divided up between two neighboring hotels.

Now, the con is half-again as big in terms of attendance and spread out among twice as many hotels. And there’s a lot more stuff I want to see. Since I’ll be covering the con for HowStuffWorks.com, I spent some quality time over the weekend looking through the pocket program to get my bearings ahead of time. I’m glad I did — two of this year’s changes would have thrown me for a loop otherwise.

First, the Sheraton Atlanta is one of this year’s official hotels, which you probably know if you’ve looked at the Dragon*Con Web site in the last few months. Registration will be in the Sheraton. And so will (this is the part that surprised me) the Brit, MMORPG and Trek tracks’ rooms, along with some main programming. The other tracks are split up among the Hyatt, the Marriott and the Hilton.

Second, stuff is getting started earlier. I’d gotten used to unofficial meet-ups on Thursday night, with the Con itself kicking off on Friday afternoon. But this year, there are some big-name panels scheduled for Friday at 10 a.m. For example, if you’re a fan of “Star Trek: TOS,” “Babylon 5,” or “Battlestar Galactica,” you’ll want to be in a ballroom, not in the registration line, come Friday morning. This means I will be cloning myself so I can be three places at once.

While I’m at Dragon*Con, I want to make sure I cover things that people are interested in reading about — any requests?

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