C.I.T.O.K.A.T.E.

Penguicon Report

5/6/09 02:14 pm - Penguicon Report

Penguicon was a spectacular success, with a few notable exceptions. Most of my recreation on the weekend had to do with seeing people who I normally only interact with online. All of them were tremendously impressed with the convention and had a blast.

Eliezer Yudkowsky took me to dinner and we talked about how to make the Singularity Summit less expensive.

I demoed "Open Source, The Board Game" for Joe Jackson of the Network for Open Scientific Innovation. He would like me to do the graphic design for the Journal of Post-Scarcity Studies.

I hosted this year's Lojban Festival with several of the most active members of the Logical Language Group, of which I am President of the Board.

I hung out with fiction podcasters Steve Eley and Rick Stringer. Steve, who is my boss at Escape Pod, is interested in putting together the podcasting track next year. Rick is a graphic designer in his day job, for a company that does infographics systems rather than marketing. So of course I was interested in that.

I saw the "Red Pill: the Truth about Self-Unemployment" talk by David Bloom. "A deep-dive session for folks battling paycheck-addiction. David Bloom, a coach for www.gleq.org, debunks common W-2 myths, and spells out the economics of employment, contracting, and sole-proprietorship. Red Pill applies to anyone entering the 21st-Century workforce of 'free lances' (mercenaries), 'Bobs' (Office Space consultants) and 'furita' slackers."

I now see that each one of these areas had to do with something else to do with my life now that I'm done chairing Penguicon.

I would have been less stressed if I had just designed the program book myself. At least I did the pocket program.

Friday I set up a lot of the physical inventory, checked out that things were going well, and rounded up the participants of Opening Ceremonies to do as much clarification as possible on the plans we had made beforehand. I gave a printed cue sheet to all of them. I planned out Opening Ceremonies for months. I was disappointed to discover from the Guests of Honor that the liaisons had not passed on my detailed Opening Ceremonies instruction email (that is, at least if the GoHs are to be believed, which in the case of some of them is dubious).

That was another symptom of the neglect in the Guest of Honor department generally. I should hasten to add that there were some shining examples of awesomeness in that department who were exceptions. And I guess that's all I should say about that.

Saturday afternoon of the convention, I was very relaxed, as most things unfolding within our control had gone pretty much perfectly that I knew of up to that point. Then the notorious cookout happened. I got enough sleep each night. Sunday turned out to be the day that needed the most work from me, as a lot of complaints finally got around to surfacing and wanted resolution.

Overall, I:

took on a lot of responsibilities that I don't enjoy.

failed, even at the highest level of Conchair, to create a program book with simultaneous correct content and legible presentation.

allowed some old Penguicon events to repeat longer than they should have.

kept on a few useless workers who proved themselves abject failures long ago but were difficult to replace.

created some brave new experimental innovations of which I am very proud.

probably generated a boatload of money, word-of-mouth, and volunteerism for the convention.

Something has gone wrong in the circle of life. I normally feel at my most energetic this time of year, and instead I feel a little bit indifferent. I was too focused on responsibility to feel as happy during the weekend as I did the other six years.

I think this is good timing. We have a lot of commitment right now. In community-building, it is tricky to build other people's level of commitment. It's a balancing act that is due for a slight course-correction.

You have to look with an eye to what you want the organization to look like in the future. You've got to apprentice and train new people. Recycling past workers just creates a cycle in which they take turns being each other's assistants forever.

On the other hand, unproven people fail, and you can't let the wrong areas fail too much or it's demoralizing. In volunteer organizations, when someone was allowed to fail to teach them a lesson about their responsibilities, I do not ever remember them learning that lesson. Rather, what results is that other people don't see something worth their effort to sustain. More often, the dedication I've seen has been the result of person A witnessing the spectacular success of person B. They do it because they loved it when someone else did it. So I had to step in and rescue some things to keep them worth loving enough to sustain a key area. It's a balancing act, to prevent demoralization but stop short of creating dependency.

My goal has always been to build Penguicon into a position where I can just be a program participant during the weekend, which is what I enjoy the most. I'm not going anywhere, and Randy seems eager for me to still be available, particularly to help him set a list of milestones. The precise scope of my responsibility and authority for Penguicon 2010 has not been defined, but I will make sure it is soon.

5/7/09 02:46 am (UTC) - netmouse

Yeah, in the GoH neglect list, I think you saw a communication/involvement failure when you called out the names of the Nifties at opening ceremonies and so few were present - I had actually asked John earlier if he was going to opening ceremonies, and his response was that he hadn't been told he was supposed to be there, in kind of a not-quite-bitter "they didn't invite me" tone. I might have been misreading that, it might have been a "don't try to make me feel guilty about staying in the bar" tone, I don't know. Anyway, if you want to have Nifties feel/act included, having Programming put opening ceremonies on their schedule would be one way.

On Saturday I also heard Cherie Priest say that when she'd written to programming to offer to be a panelist, the initial response had been "We're sorry but we don't know who you are." Besides the fact that her bibliography is both significant and easy-to find, she was on the program last year, I believe, so that displays some knowledge transfer/checking issues.

5/7/09 02:48 am (UTC) - netmouse

PS I also heard a number of regretful comments about the whole "no green room" thing. The penguicon green room had a reputation for awesome (massage! dude!), and was much missed, especially when the consuite ran out of food.

5/7/09 03:15 am (UTC) - matt_arnold

Most of our concom is not going to know who most of the celebrities are, given the breadth of our range of topics. I would like to hear a solution to that, but after this long I consider the problem chronic. What matters more to me is getting someone to run the Guest of Honor department who will help the Concom rather than stonewall them on behalf of her more-important-than-thou friends.

The Nifties were not expected to be at Opening Ceremonies. I just wanted to recognize those who might be there. Had I to do it over again, I would do it the same. It wasn't a problem the other six times, except those times no one was holding a program book up there looking through the Nifty list, so we missed calling out most of them even when they were there. It's kind of awesome to have this problem, where for the first time there was an actual plan more than ten minutes before Opening Ceremonies, so that I can tell you what wasn't in it.

It is difficult to estimate my volcanic rage toward a lot of celebrities these days. I've kept it entirely bottled up, both publicly and privately, until just this moment, because it was my job to be classy when confronted with invoicing for things we never ordered, not following through on agreements, telling us in outraged tones how big and famous they are (hint: if you have to explain this, it's a lost cause), and their feeling insulted that people outside their fan base do not know who they are yet.

I'm grateful to the authors we had this year for their graciousness and class in dealing with problems-- the authors were by-and-large an exception.

But generally, I no longer feel good about honoring most of the people the attendees are there to see. In fact I feel bad about honoring many of the people the attendees are there to see, right down to my gut, like the feeling you get when they ask you where on the doll the stranger touched you. That makes it an appropriate time for me to scale back my involvement.

Anyway, for the first time in years, my interest in talking about this is middling-to-low. Not my problem any more. I'm looking forward to the new relaxicon.

5/7/09 03:34 am (UTC) - netmouse

yeah, my concern on the not-knowing-who-someone-is realm was not so much in the "honoring them" bent but in the "taking advantage of people who have been on the program before, and knowing what to do with them" note.

but as you say, not your problem anymore. :)

I'm going to Midwestcon in June down here in cinci - also a relaxicon. I suspect a number of us have been pushing too hard too long to engage much with this stuff anymore, and a break is a Good Plan (tm).

5/7/09 04:53 am (UTC) - astaria66 - Prattling on....

We have staff, board members and attendees who don't know who some of our GOHs are before they come and we don't have nearly the range of places for them to come from. We have different paths and traditions, and they are all still under the umbrella of being an authority, author, speaker, founder, etc of a mystical or esoteric belief system.

I have found that it is not about treating them as important because you recognize them but in treating them as people because they are. And maybe we have just been that lucky, we don't get people who seem to think they should be fawned over or put on a pedestal, especially not by the staff/concom/conchair. They all have been exceedingly complimentary and understanding of how hard we work and are happy to be a part of what we offer and to have a chance to contribute.

I think a large part of it though starts from the end of the ConCom person dealing with them not as a fan or groupie and instead as an equal. When you start with the principal that they are lucky to be invited to speak at your event and your event is lucky to have them you are on equal footing and from then on out the "diva" attitude has less power.

From my personal experience with some of the GOHs I randomly ran into last weekend, I had no idea who they were until I might randomly look at a badge and recognize the name, in some circumstances this was the 2nd or 3rd time I had interacted with them and they were all exceedingly nice and down to earth and normal.

5/8/09 03:39 am (UTC) - gothicsquish

I had a wonderful time! Although, running the list meant not really getting to see to much of the rest of the con. (although i peaked my head in the boardgame rooms and they looked packed)