[penguicon-general] Random Panel suggestion.

[john guest]

And gee, when I saw the numbers increasing on this topic I thought,
"Gee!  people are submitting panel ideas to Matt.  How cool!"  Glad I
finally decided to read it.

To address a couple things, as your conchair for this year:

Lock bumping -- way cool.  It's another form of hacking, and anyone
who's ever locked himself out of his house/car/etc. will appreciate
this panel.  It beats having to remove panes of glass like I was
forced to do once.  Being able to Jimmy any system to do what *you*
want fits well into the geek creedo.  BTW, all the locks in the hotel
are electronic.  No big deal.  And if someone sue the con over this,
let them.  You can't get blood out of a stone...

Booze and guns -- As the person who has run the scotch tastings at
Penguicon, I will admit that they are not for everyone.  Scotch is an
acquired taste.  Scotch making is also a tradition that goes back
hundreds of years, and you can get very geeky about it.  Why do I do
scotch tastings?  Because I can.  When I went to my first tasting
(hosted by Jack Bell at Conclave), I had three bottles of scotch.  I
now own 20.  I have become a scotch geek, and I'm proud of it.  If I
find that I have time to do *one* panel this year, it will be a scotch
tasting.  End of story.

As for guns, well at some point, defending your rights to run the OS
of your choice may need to expand beyond the courts (though I hope
not).  The United States is (to my knowledge) the only country that
actually prescribes revolution as a remedy to change the government to
the peoples liking.  See two paragraphs above about hacking a system
to your liking...  You may not like guns, but then again, no one is
going to drag you off to a shooting range against your will, either.

So yeah.  Penguicon is all about getting in touch with and sharing the
things you geek about.  And yeah, we have science fiction and FOSS,
too.  :-)

--John Guest
Conchair, Penguicon 5.0

On 8/31/06, Tracy Worcester <tracy.worcester at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 8/31/06, Greg <greg_b at rocketmail.com> wrote:
> > --- Dan DeSloover <zifferent at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > > ARRRRGG! Yes, he likes guns. That is, in addition to being an open
> > > source activist/programer, he takes his 2nd amendment rights
> > > seriously.
> >
> > I see.  So let's say, for example, that Linus is an avid needlepointer,
> > does that mean we should have a needlepoint panel/track?  Sounds
> > rediculous, doesn't it?
>
>
>
> Maybe.  Maybe not.  The questions I would ask myself, in that situation,
> are:
>
> 1.  Does Linus show up regularly and/or every year?
> 2.  Is he so geeked about the topic that he has successfully converted at
> least a dozen convention attendees into enjoying the activity?
> 3.  Is Linus willing to be responsible for running the panel?
> 4.  Is there some reason to believe that there might be an untapped well of
> fellow needlepointers in either the open source or SF community who would
> also enjoy the panel?
>
> If the answers are yes to 1-3, I'm usually perfectly willing to take a
> gamble on #4.
>
> That's how I think about it, anyway.  (:
>
> ...Tracy
>
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