[penguicon-general] A few thoughts

[Matt Arnold]

I am BCC'ing Gerald Gentry, Dan DeSloover, Tim Schmidt, Scott Kennedy,
and Marshal Newrock.

Charles,

Meet Gerald Gentry, the conchair. I hope you can come to the
wrap/kickoff meeting and we'll get this squared away officially.
You've always been a great concom member.

I really want Dan DeSloover (who is "zifferent") to be on my graphics
marketing team this year, but I think LUG Wrangling can operate on a
team basis and that he will have time for it. You or he do not have to
go alone to represent Penguicon at the LUG meetings. I'm CC'ing Tim
Schmidt on this as well who has volunteered to coordinate and plan the
Tech track. With Dan in Monroe, Tim in Grand Rapids and you in
Lansing, there can be a team who can coordinate among themselves to
hit all the LUG meetings this year.

Dan has reported that a lot of the LUGs reacted with indifference; but
that is what a photographic slideshow and videos would fix. Scott
Kennedy is great with multimedia and can prepare a glittering
presentation and email it to you in the coming months. Be sure to tell
the LUGs about our upcoming podcast of Penguicon 5 audio recordings.

What we'll want from the LUG Wrangler position this year is not just
telling the LUGs about the convention, but helping the head of the
Tech track recruit presenters. I suggest that the Tech Programming/LUG
Wrangler teams be the same thing and have the same members; they need
to be aware of who has been recruited, what they are already
presenting on, and what types of presentations would be most
attractive to recruit to balance the track between the theoretical and
the tutorial.

Finally, LUG Wrangling should also focus on helping the concom recruit
more staffers from the tech side. We are forming a new On Call On
Location tech support team, headed by Marshal Newrock as part of Ops.
Never again will Penguicon have to borrow someone else's computer as a
makeshift solution, or bring my Windows box from home, or beg the
hotel to let us use theirs. The Communications and Program-Ops
departments will be more equipped to handle late breaking changes
using one workstation in the Ops room, separate from computer lounge.
It will have a reliable internet access solution -- sufficient memory
to run Google Documents/Spreadsheets in Firefox -- USB flash stick and
CD burning -- two black and white laser printers that are identical so
they can be hot-swappable when one breaks. These On Call techs would
familiarize themselves with this workstation's specs and its
peripherals and get together to test the setup before the convention.
Then they can go enjoy the convention, but if it is their shift they
may receive a phone call if the technology breaks which the convention
is running on.

This might be an unworkable idea, but I am listening to the recordings
for the podcast with the growing realization that it would be great
for the On Call tech team to coordinate with all tech presenters in
advance of the convention, to ask them the specs of the system they
will connect to the AV projectors. It's probably not realistic for
them to fix every presenter's laptop, but perhaps they could convert
everyone's presentation to a format that would run on one spare
replacement laptop which would be ready just in case.

-Matt


On 5/1/07, Charles Ulrich <charles at bityard.net> wrote:
> Well, I just got back from my trip and if the oodles positive reviews
> and an extremely active inbox are any indication, I'd have to guess
> that Penguicon 5.0 was probably the best one yet. Sad that I had to
> miss 2/3 of it. Congrats to all involved. I have a few hundred more
> penguicon-general messages to wade through yet, but here are a few
> random points I'd like to mention before I collapse into sleep mode
> tonight.
>
> Several people were disappointed with the printing situation in the
> computer lounge. I'll take the fall for that. I had a couple of offers
> from people to let us borrow their printers but I declined, because
> Aaron was kind enough to let us borrow his. I forgot, however, that it
> was a wee bit finicky on the configuration and speed side and that
> tripped us up again this year. We'll have more or better printing
> options in the lounge next year.
>
> With the conchair's permission, GLLUG would like to do the computer
> lounge again for Penguicon 6.0.
>
> I am interested in taking on the role of LUG Wrangler for 6.0 if it's
> not filled and if I can get someone else in GLLUG to take over
> leadership of the computer lounge next year. Somebody named
> "zifferent" on LiveJournal already offered to fill the LUG Wrangler
> role, so he/she may have beat me to it.
>
> My wife has offered to prepare some food for the consuites, though
> I'll have to check with her for specifics. Emphasis would be on
> quality rather than quantity since we have neither the budget nor
> space to go all-out on feeding nearly a thousand geeks for three days.
>
> Said wife (Kim is her name, by the way) also wants to make a
> Penguicon-themed quilt for the charity auction, if there will be one
> for 6.0. To do this, she would need a donation of one or two dozen
> T-Shirts from Penguicons 1.0 through 5.0. She'll provide all of the
> additional material, batting, and thread. I mentioned this a few
> months ago, but there wasn't much of a response so I thought I'd try
> again while the mailing list traffic was still high.
>
> Finally, I didn't see the official Penguicon 5.0 T-Shirts in the
> vendor's room on Friday afternoon. Did they make an appearance later
> or was I just not paying attention? Is it too late to order one?
>
> Thanks!
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