Since the rant & rave session was going so slowly, I decided to post this here instead...
I ran a panel, and the short version of the quest for my badge is: I went to location A, where someone sent me to location B, where someone else sent me to location C, where I did meet up with the stack of panelist badges, but there wasn't one for me. The treasurer happened to walk in while I was talking to the staff member who had the badges, asked about what had happened, then disappeared somewhere and came back with a badge reading "Panelist" for me.
I'm pretty sure that wrangling badges is not part of the treasurer's job description, so a big thank-you to her for helping to sort that out.
Other than that, my experience as a panelist went very well. Thanks for having me!
