When the phone rings, do you wonder who it might be. (And do you wonder what people did before caller ID?) Do you go to a movie without some idea of what you're going to be seeing? Do you like to read the reviews first? Same goes for books. Or restaurants.
How many times have you actually done something totally cold?
Now, if something doesn't match one's expectations, does that make it bad? No, of course not.
So, when I went to my first Left Coast Crime conference, I automatically expected it to be very much like SleuthFest, the only other mystery conference I'd attended. It wasn't. While there were many areas where they were different, I'll pick out only one here--the overall format, which was similar in both.
