[penguicon-general] A couple of thoughts about programming

[Rob Landley]

On Wednesday 25 April 2007 10:19 pm, Catherine Olanich Raymond wrote:
> On Tuesday 24 April 2007 11:57 pm, Matt Arnold wrote:
> > Cathy,
> >
> > This is a good place to discuss it. The only way for Penguicon to get
> > the kind of programming one wants to see, is to ask the general
> > population of attendees to provide it. The schedule is largely
> > crowdsourced-- in other words, it consists of whatever volunteers step
> > forward to do. That grassroots method is why we had a hundred program
> > participants this year.
> 
> Agreed.  I'm not particularly good at thinking up program items, though, 
which 
> is why I chose to make a conceptual statement and see what kind of responses 
> resulted.  

Eh, it's easy.  Off the top of my head, things we didn't have this year (and 
NOT mentioning computer stuff, which would be cheating for me):

Sword and Sorcery in the modern world (Tron, The Matrix, Kill Bill, 
Bulletproof Monk, Underworld, etc...  And yes Tron's a sword and sorcery 
epic: http://landley.livejournal.com/6926.html )
Fun with Whipped Cream.
Intellectual Property Law for Creative People.
Science Fact in Fiction.
Historical Costuming.
But wait, there's more: managing expectations in XXX.
Obscure Geekdoms.  (Road geeks http://www.ray-field.com/roadgeek.htm , 
Mycology http://www.fungi4schools.org/Beginners_page.htm, Phone Phreaks, gun 
geeks, civil war reenactors...  Who can we get to tell us about something 
they're excited about?  Heck, get Tracy to talk about her nursing degree...)
The Ribbon Panel.
Munchkin: The Larp.
Body Painting.
Massage for medical students.
Punch and Pi.
Serial storytelling.
"Just what the doctor ordered": Find an actual ER doctor, give them beer, and 
have them tell us the strangest things they've seen.
Specifically, she blinded me with physics.

Ok, that's 5 minutes.

> I'm perfectly willing to be recruited for program items.  I'd be happy to do 
> the Dark Chocolate Tasting again next year.  (Or let Tammy Coxen do it, and 
> run something different.  Maybe cheese?)

Cheese!  That's it!  We'll go somewhere that there's cheese!

Anybody suggested inviting Aardman yet?

> It's also possible to have one person speak on a subject.  If the person is 
> knowledgeable enough, and knows how to work with an audience, that can be a 
> great programming item (Eric and Rob Landley, among others, have done good 
> ones).  But it isn't a panel.  :-)

I don't distinguish much between panels and presentations.  And if you have 
zero presenters but lots of interest, it's a BOF.

We need an online BOF signup, ahead of time, on the web.  And to do that, we 
need a signup thing that can confirm somebody's registered for the con, so we 
need an interface to the prereg system...

Rob