[Penguicon-Concom] Program book comments.

[john guest]

Yup.  Should be getting the printers layout in about 45 minutes, and
it goes to the printers warts and all.

Just like with any form of design work, at some point in the process
you have to shoot the engineer and go into production.  This evening,
it gets sent to the printer, and Friday morning we will have program
books.

So here's a (social) engineering problem for folks to work on:  Matt's
primary goal this year was to get all the programming nailed down by
February, and he really did his damnedest to accomplish this.  What he
discovered is that most participants aren't interested in talking
about programming at Penguicon *until* February.  And then it's a
chaotic mess until we look down the schedule, making changes until the
last moment.

So, does anyone have ideas on how to create sufficient critical mass
to get people fired up about doing panels at Penguicon in, say,
January?   Then we would have weeks, lo unto months to do the fine
tune on the program book.

And hey, we could always use more help in putting this beast together.
 The previous few years we've relied on Matt's talents to put the book
together, and create the style, etc.  This year, with Matt over
Programming, the programming, editorial and design portions became
split, complicated by the designer being about 750 miles away.

But regardless of typos and anachronisms, it looks good, and the team
did a helluva job.  Many Kudos to Dan DeSloover and Markell Lynch for
their hard work and the hours they both put in.  And kudos to Matt
Arnold for creating the program content (and being able to let go of
his baby -- the Program Book).  Apart from not being glossy, this
looks as good as the program books for tech conferences I've paid big
bucks to go to.

Best Regards,

John Guest
Conchair
Penguicon 5.0

First Law of Computer Entymology -- there is always another bug.





On 4/15/07, Matt Arnold <matt.mattarn at gmail.com> wrote:
> Due to the physical realities of the time it takes to do page layout,
> to say nothing of offset lithography printing presses, collaters,
> trimmers, and saddle-stitch binderies, it's now too late for the
> Program Book. Beyond this point we are now dealing entirely with the
> Errata sheet.
>
> > No Nifty entry for Howard Tayler?
> >
> > Howard Tayler is a professional cartoonist, the creator of
> > www.schlockmercenary.com.  In a previous life he headed up of Novell's
> > GroupWise for Linux.  He also invented the Chupaqueso, is an expert on the
> > Chaos Machine, and filmed the liquid nitrogen going into the swimming pool at
> > last year's Penguicon.
>
> Howard Tayler is not a Nifty Guest this year for the same reason Frank
> Hayes isn't. When we publicize someone's presence, the attendees have
> the right to expect to actually see them on programming. Both of them
> changed their plans late, and decided to come to Penguicon after all,
> but there wasn't time to put them on a signifigant amount of
> programming worthy of Niftification. It is now a week before the
> convention and I will not add to their schedules at this time. Sorry.
>
> > Why is Sal of Aegis not a nifty?
>
> Because that's a status for celebrities. No one has ever even
> mentioned the idea. When the program book is being handed off to the
> printing presses, is not the time to start having new ideas. Look into
> it for next year.
>
> > Page 4: after "Anime, cheese tastings, port tastings" possibly you should
> > add ", Random Capitalization", because there is.  (If you've got it, flaunt
> > it.)
>
> How is this a mission critical change? Don't stop the presses.
>
> > Page 28: Please change "this topic intentionally left blank" to "The Economics
> > of Open Source", panelist Eric Raymond, blurb "The author of The Cathedral
> > and the Bazaar is writing a new paper on why commoditization is an imperfect
> > metaphor for the impact of open source on the software industry, and instead
> > we should talk about the benefits of modularization."
>
> No, it is staying the same, Howard Tayler and Eric Raymond doing "This
> Topic Intentionally Left Blank."
>
> -Matt
> _______________________________________________
> concom mailing list
> concom at penguicon.org
> http://penguicon.org/mailman/listinfo/concom
>