[penguicon-general] Creative Commons Discount for Program Participants

[Catherine Olanich Raymond]

On Friday 05 September 2008 6:59:28 am Roxanne King wrote:
> chuck child wrote:
> >  From my current understanding, the problem we are trying to solve is
> > this:   We get a goodly number of people who sign up for four panels,
> > prepare not a whit, and don't really have any enthusiasm about the
> > panels they are on, simply to get the discount.    Some of those don't
> > even bother to show up to the panels they are supposed to present.
>
> If that's what we're trying to solve, the preliminary solution is to
> identify those individuals and not have them be on panels anymore. "You
> didn't show up for half your panels, and you sucked on the panels you
> were on," is a fine reason for essentially firing them.

That's one approach.  It has the merit of getting rid of specific persons who 
have done this sort of thing to the con before (particularly if they did it 
more than once).  It would not necessarily prevent newcomers from doing the 
same thing.

>
> To be proactive against new recruits behaving like this, I would say
> that the Programming Coordinator inform the new recruit that this sort
> of behavior - not showing up, not being prepared - will cause an unhappy
> situation, and it's best to be avoided.

I doubt the kind of person likely to abuse the system in this manner will be 
deterred by a lecture--particularly if their objective was to help finance a 
single trip to Penguicon, without any concern to come back year after year.


>
> A long-time policy in fandom in general was to require non-guest
> panelists to pay for their membership up front, and then receive a
> refund if their performance met the necessary criteria, much like a
> gopher refund. You might want to investigate that option for new program
> participants that you don't know very well. The current situation where
> the program participants are all comp'ed ahead of time is relatively new.

This is an idea worth considering; it has the merit of deterring both 
recidivists and new offenders.

>
> Then Penguicon should also make a commitment to issuing refund checks on
> Sunday afternoon. 


Agreed, or people would be offended enough to avoid the con in future.

> Many gophers and program participants can't really 
> afford the con any other way.

Which is one reason I think discounts for panelists (as opposed to Nifties and 
GOHs) remain important.

-- 
Cathy Raymond <cathy at thyrsus.com>

"We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand."
--Randy Pausch