[penguicon-general] program book proof draft

[Rob Landley]

On Tuesday 17 April 2007 3:36 pm, Matt Arnold wrote:
> On 4/17/07, Rob Landley <rob at landley.net> wrote:
> > On Sunday 15 April 2007 5:28 pm, Greg wrote:
> > > --- Rob Landley <rob at landley.net> wrote:
> > > > Best penguicon _yet_.  We intend to have more in future years. :)
> > >
> > > If Eog is able to snag any of the GOH's he's shooting for, It'll be
> > > danmed hard to beat.  But then, that's half the fun.
> >
> > *shrug*  I haven't heard a thing about this since I got dropped from the 
board
> > mailing list.  (Apparently no longer being part of the legal entity behind
> > Penguicon means I'm not involved in GoH recruiting this year...)
> >
> > Rob
> 
> Rob,
> 
> Methods of becoming involved include:
> 
> A: Wait for a gold-plated invitation plaque and suffer memory loss of
> all the times we ask you for help.

I was asked to invite people I had no previous interaction with and hadn't 
studied.  (I did this thing, and didn't hear back from them.)

> B: Invite GoHs "commando-style" on your own initiative, without
> consulting those who will have to put on the actual convention that
> honors those GoHs.

Part of my past success of inviting GoHs was rifling through a largeish list 
of people and A) inviting multiple people I only have a 50% chance each of 
getting, B) finding people who I know enjoy hanging out with specific OTHER 
people and inviting them in batches, C) going with a gut feel about who I 
think I could get at any given time, or who I have some kind of current hook 
for and a good feeling about.

For example, last year Tamora Pierce turned us down due to scheduling 
constraints but suggested we invite her again next year.  (Ooh!  This is like 
getting a personal rejection letter from an editor, it's ENCOURAGEMENT.)  
Naiomi Novik (author of the Temeraire books) is a hot author right now and 
writing two more books (but they haven't been published yet so she's not yet 
swamped), lives in new york (reasonably close), used to work on Neverwinter 
Nights (tech angle), but isn't overwhelmed with popularity yet and still 
accessable through her livejournal.  And I've been meaning to invite Tove 
Torvalds (Linus's wife, finnish national karate champion back around when 
they married) for years now (hey, we have a martial arts track), and tell her 
to bring the kids (chaos machine!  LN2 ice cream!  Masuerade!  We could even 
institute a kid's programming track.), and Linus can stay home and get some 
work done undistracted.  Hey, it's worth a shot, and she can always ask 
Maddog how much fun it was... :)  If I knew the con had the budget to fly 
somebody in from England I'd have suggested we try to pair Diane Duane with 
Ted Tso due to http://tytso.livejournal.com/27498.html suggesting an obvious 
panel (although this year would have been the best year to do that, and next 
year's still ok, but by 2009 the connection would be a bit stale)...

I'm unaware of any of them being under consideration for next year.  I 
honestly don't know who else is being invited this year, so trying to set up 
groups like the steve/kovalic/milholland grouping this year just wasn't an 
option.  For all I know, we could be inviting guests who actively dislike 
each other.  (Unlikely, but I had to defuse a situation like that once.  
SOMEBODY has to know all the details and how guests are likely to interact to 
get a good coherent group.)

How do you get anybody?  Study the person a lot, fill the event with content 
they'd like to do/see, invite their friends (and put in stuff their friends 
like too, although this can be the same stuff if you work it out right), 
schedule it for when they have time and energy to come, invite them when 
they're willing to accept new committments, avoid anything they don't like, 
give them reason to believe you're for real and that you have some idea what 
they might enjoy (but not in a creepy stalker way)...  Doing it right 
involves a certain amount of authority to speak for the con.

Instead I was told to invite someone my info is 2 years old about, because two 
years ago I suggested we could probably get him.  (And two years ago I 
thought the chances were good.)  I had no idea what he's doing now, if he's 
tired, or has a gap in his schedule, what other events he's attended or 
committed to attend, what his current big project is...  So I checked and 
found out now's a horrible time to ask (he's on a book tour, which will 
probably be over by next year so we can't even hook into it) and his 
website's question line is disabled until he can answer the backlog of 
questions.  (I can and did get around that but it's not a good sign in terms 
of whether he's interested in picking up new schedule committments just now.)

But mostly I stopped worrying about it when my messages to the board list 
(which this had previously been coordinated through) started bouncing, and my 
emails about it went unanswered.  *shrug*  It's apparently not my problem 
anymore.

(I feel a bit like Roger Rabbit, "You mean you could have taken your hand out 
of that cuff at any time?"  "No, only when it was funny!"  I'm trying to 
figure out how to get people I only vaguely know excited, figure out how 
they'll have fun, who they'll be confortable hanging out with...  It really 
doesn't work going through an approvals process with multiple brainstoring 
sessions and a month-long delay before a decision.)

> C: Talk to the upcoming Conchair and keep him in the loop.

I was delegated a single limited task, which I performed with no noticeable 
result.  Hopefully he's having better luck elsewhere.

> A and B are innovative styles, but I have met much success with Option C.

And D) "start your own event and invite who you want" is a temporary 
solution. :)

*shrug*  I work best in a fast and loose lone wolf style, and the con's gotten 
a bit big for that.  I don't intend to undermine the new chair's authority. I 
realize the way I work annoys you, and you're trying to keep me in my place 
and make me go through channels and respect lines of authority and follow 
proper procedure and all that.  I recognize the same problem, just from the 
other side: the con is too big to delegate me the authority to effectively 
recruit GoHs the way I work best, so I've backed off.  I was a bit annoyed 
about being cut out of the loop entirely, without warning, but it's not my 
call.  (I still find it somewhat sad that there _is_ a non-public loop to be 
cut out of, but oh well.)

At this point, I'm trying to add one new thing each year (this year panel 
recording, last year LN2 ice cream), and otherwise mostly leave it to people 
who live in Michigan.  (This year I took on a little more responsibility than 
that because I was living closer, but it turns out a five hour drive away is 
still significant, and I really don't like Pittsburgh so I'm moving back to 
Austin this summer anyway.)

> -Matt

Rob
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