I'm Chairing an Online Discussion and You're Invited

August 12th, 9:30 AM to 10:00 AM (EST)

As many of you know, I’m the editor of Fanfare, the premier pop culture publication hosted on Medium.¹ The CEO is even a fan, which honestly feels a bit ridiculous since I originally created Fanfare to have a place to talk about Star Wars. If that's not an example of fake it till you make it, I don't know what is.

In recognition of its 11th anniversary, Medium is hosting a day-long online conference on August 12. As part of the festivities, Fanfare is hosting a 30-minute session in the morning. And you're invited! And it's free!

The topic I've suggested—a bit cheekily—is Writing About Movies For Fun & Profit. The format is roughly 50/50 panel discussion and Q&A. So please come ask questions! Otherwise I might be forced to bore the other panelists with my theories about why Predator is really a love story.²

Speaking of other panelists, I tricked coerced blackmailed politely asked three ringers and was pleasantly surprised to go 3 for 3 on my first round draft picks.

Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, and Magic Johnson to my David Stern

Joining me on the panel (and a brief bio in their own words):

Simon Dillon: Novelist and Short Story-ist. Film and Book Lover. If you cut me, I bleed celluloid and paper pulp.

Sheila Moeschen

: Humor Writer, Photographer, Salty New Englander

Sarah Paris: Author. Contributing Movie and TV feature writer at Looper.com. Screenplay writer. Fiction writer.

What none of them elected to say for some reason is that they are amazing writers. Like Miramar levels awesome.³ Best of the best.

Don’t believe me? As the saying goes, reading is believing.⁴ So here’s a free sample:

• Why I Love Barbenheimer by Simon

• The Revolution Will Be Unusual: Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” by Sheila

• The Twitter Uproar Against Chris Pratt is Ridiculous by Sarah

I imagine you are probably besides yourself right now, sorta like

The entire online conference is hosted on a platform named hopin.com. You can register at http://mediumday.com. Here’s a guided tour for my mom and anyone else that might need help.⁵ (I apologize for the portrait pics—I took screenshots using my phone because we were away from home and I stupidly decided not to bring my laptop. If you are on a computer, the screens will look different but the process should be the same.)

1. Register for Medium day at http://mediumday.com. That grants you a free ticket to the day’s events.

2. Once you register, head to the schedule

3. You can scroll through the entire schedule, or just search for Fanfare, like so. Clicking the bookmark icon saves the session to your agenda.

4. Like so!

5. Back on the event page, clicking the up arrow will bring you to your agenda, so you can confirm the session was saved, if you are the paranoid sort.

6. Like so.

There are something like 200 sessions all throughout the day, so feel free to scroll through to see what else catches your eye! Also let me know if you have any problems registering. I can’t promise I can fix anything, but I can briefly commiserate with you.

The day of the conference, head back to https://hopin.com/events/medium-day-2023! Hope to see you there!

1. There’s no way to say something like that without feeling like a pretentious douche, but it’s actually true. I take zero credit, by the way, other than that I’ve managed to lure a ton of great writers to Fanfare.

2. I actually believe this. I have the beginnings of a draft article started. Coming soonish to All the Fanfare!

3. I hope I don’t need to explain this Top Gun reference.

4. Yes, I know that’s not the saying. But it should be.

5. This isn’t really a slight. I work in IT and am super computer fluent and even I found hopin confusing to navigate.