To those of you familiar with the Linux and Free/Open Source community Think of a weekend long Linux Users Group meeting with hundreds of other geeks, which also just happens to have nationally acclaimed guests, a LAN party, its own wireless network, hotel room parties, lots of folks talking about Science Fiction and Fantasy, a place to buy cool t-shirts and buttons and such, amateur singing, anime, a costume contest, and free caffeine and snacks always available.
To those of you familiar with Science Fiction conventions Imagine all the convention features you know and love, with the
addition of wireless internet access, computer game tournaments, people who know
about online publishing / books on demand / digital art, a programming
track involving computing topics and another one focusing
on the crossover between Science Fiction and computing. Imagine seeing your favorite creative visionaries meet the innovators who are creating the future you read about in SF.
Tech Guest of Honor: Jono Bacon, Ubuntu Community Manager for Canonical
Tech Guest of Honor: Benjamin Mako Hill - Debian/GNU, MIT Media Lab, Free Software Foundation, Ubuntu, Wikimedia
Author Guest of Honor: Vernor Vinge, Multiple Hugo winning science fiction author, computing visionary
Author Guest of Honor: Tamora Pierce, fantasy author, co-founder of Sheroes Central
Webcomics Guest of Honor: Randall Munroe of xkcd Gaming Guest of Honor: Keith Baker, creator of Ebberon world for Dungeons and Dragons
Hack of Honor: The Giant Singing Tesla Coils
I've been putting off assembling an image gallery of Penguicon deliveries for this past con until i have some images of the Opening Ceremonies delivery. I have been told a time or two that these exist and I would get copies, but I have yet to see any.
Do these even exist? They can be of Orvan, of the tigress, of Matt signing or with the parcel, or any combination thereof. I would just like to have something rather than skip over something a good many people saw.
Do you care about the future of fandom in southeast Michigan? Then you should attend SMOFcamp in Ann Arbor on Saturday, August 22. SMOF stands for "Secret Masters of Fandom". Held in a space provided by the new relaxacon ConStruct, with a grant from the Penguicon board of directors, SMOFcamp is a fandom leadership and recruitment summit. ConFusion, ConClave, U*Con, and all other regional geek-related events are invited to participate.
It is an Open-Spaces meeting: a schedule of breakout sessions which is designed by the attendees when they show up, by affixing large post-its to a bare wall. Anyone may post a topic to the wall, choosing a row and column to indicate place and time. Unlike a business meeting, you don't have to wait while someone has the floor. If you aren't learning or contributing, you are expected to go to a different session.
Just a few suggested sessions: "Feasibility studies on [fill in your proposal for an AASFA cool stuff grant or Penguicon board grant]" "How to incorporate" "How to become a 501c3 charity: Is it worth the paperwork?" "New tech tutorial days to precede Penguicon" "Web applications for convention scheduling" "Starting a group to do consistent marketing for multiple conventions" "Enforcing convention etiquette culture: How to tell someone they are misbehaving at a convention, without making an ugly scene which is worse than the problem" "How to negotiate with hotels" "Race at conventions: What is the situation really? What causes that? Is there anything we can do? Should we?"
YOU bring the topics and projects.
Food is provided by ConStruct. Admission cost for ConStruct is $30, with hotel rooms $70 after tax. Limited financial assistance available to promising participants, with shown cause of need. Please RSVP to matt.mattarn@gmail.com.
The University of Iowa has started a "Fan Culture Preservation Project", collecting things like con program books and flyers and putting them in a library:
Our next meeting is on June 14th, 1pm at the Troy Marriott. 1pm for the individual conversations that make-up our pre-meeting, 2pm for the all-hands meeting. Walk through to follow, but that will be limited in number.
If you are ConCom you need to be there.
If you are Staff, you should be there.
If you, for whatever reason, you don't believe you need to be there, please check with your department head and make sure.
If you want to be part of Penguicon and would like to get involved, please feel free to email me or come to the meeting and find out how you can help make Penguicon ever more awesome.
This year at Penguicon we have a DIY track! Track heads are yours truly and earthenwood, but we're working closely with the other heads to (we hope) present some awesome collaborations.
What ideas do you have for things we could do in a DIY track? And would you (or someone you know) be interested in being on the panel or class?
So, as myny of you know, Brazilian Beef appears to have run it's course at Penguicon, which in my mind is a good thing. We regularly turnover new ideas, and try new things. . .And while we are handling one food project as large as B. B, we don't have any room to expand or change. Im sure our next item will be epic as well. . .Even if I have no idea what it will be.
Nevertheless, many people love this food item. . And for those of you, I present a how-to guide for Brazilian Beef.
The original video used a fragment of a well-known cantata, with credit given to the composer, performers, et cetera. Apparently, I understand "fair use" differently than they do, and the video was pulled from Youtube. I've reposted, with no change to the image sequence. The new music comes from the fragment selections licensed for use with Premiere.
The Penguicon Handoff Meeting, dinner, and party will take place Saturday May 16 at Castle Bradaki in Livonia. Please feel free to send me an email to get directions if you need.
We will arrive at noon, as we tend to talk amongst ourselves before the meeting. At one pm we'll conclude business for Penguicon 2009. I will sign and hand over the Penguicon Conchair Pillow to our host Randy Bradakis, kicking off his meeting to focus our attention on the ongoing business of Penguicon 2010. That will probably take until five pm, I'm guessing. Afterward we will hang out and individually take care of anything left over from that.
This event is at least partly pot-luck. Penguicon is providing burgers (both meat & veggie), buns, chips, soda, and perhaps a little beer. If you'd like something else, please bring it. I never like to coordinate who's bringing what, because it just takes all of the fun and chaos out of the situation. But pot-luck is fun.
Since we're going for a noon casual meeting, followed by a 1pm traditional meeting, we're not planning on feeding everyone right then, we are planning on having dinner-time grilling. However, if you protest enough, we might be willing to let you come early and help us get ready in exchange for early grill-time and eating. Protest away!
If you can, please RSVP to with whether you plan to visit his home for the Handoff Meeting on Saturday, so they can plan the food. Feel free to attend whether you RSVP or not, but we would appreciate the information.
MPCon's summer LAN is taking place July 24-26. That's right, it's my birthday LAN, so you had better frickin' be there. There will be COD4, Quake Live, CSS 5v5, cash prizes, Jer pantless, Trackmania nations for me to lose at...and hell, I'll even give you a chance to kick my ass at a RTS (game to be named later) in 1-on-1 combat.* That's right, you have a chance to beat a dude who sucks at video games like he stole a car! I assure you, there is nearly a zero percent chance that you are worse than me, so it is a certain win.
In all seriousness, if you've heard me write about this before, then you know I'm not even a gamer and I absolutely love this event. It is a lot of fun, and I can't think of anywhere else where $25 gets you a chance to hang out with 300+ gaming geeks, free pizza, all the gaming you can manage, and a chance to watch me cock-punch Kenco12 when he's not looking.** That's right, he has NO FRICKIN' IDEA! Even better, in a nod to the good folks from Saturday Night Live, I'm going to wait until he's getting ready to take a drink..then BLAMMO!***
Still not sold? I'm pretty sure their network guy is handing out blowjobs.****
Come to the Eastern Michigan Student Center, pony up your $25, and rock out with the boys from MPCon (now with 95% less console kiddies!!!)
Go to their site for more information or to register and make sure you have a seat.
As always, I'm here to answer questions. Also as always, I'm probably making up the answers.
* Until I get tired of losing and cry or become violent ** I am probably not really going to do this *** Okay, now that I've said this part, I really want to do this. I'm 20% more likely to do this now. **** I don't think this is true. If it is, I'm first.
As I’ve discussed elsewhere, my weekend began with a wedding. Mine. That was a minor miscalculation in terms of time management. It did, however, kick the weekend off on a high note. The weekend was too long and packed with too much stuff for me to just do my typical “chronological dump”, so I’m going to try to hit the highlights.
Let me lead off by saying that there is absolutely no way I could have enjoyed this weekend at all were it not for muteid10t and my new wife. Early Friday afternoon my left knee (affectionately known as the worse of two bad knees) had decided that all of my up and down the stairs action was too much, and gave out. I came very close to shoulder rolling down the stairs. It hurt a LOT. Shit, it hurts a lot NOW. Ron and Ger became my legs for the weekend. When I needed something, Ger was right there. When any of the A/V needs popped up or there was something time sensitive to be done that was far from my present location, Ron sprung into action. Seriously, I cannot say this enough, Ron fucking saved the con. At least, he saved the part of it that I handle, and that’s a not insignificant portion. Add to this the massive and profoundly useful efforts by rbradakis and overthesun (the former in his role as “fixer of all that is not facility related” and the latter in his role as “assistant to the hotel liaison” and “budget dude extraordinaire”) and I was actually able to ENJOY much more of the convention than last year, where I filled pretty much all of the above roles.
I co-moderated a polyamory discussion this year (my first year at the con) and had loads of fun. We were worried that nobody would show up, but we clearly underestimated the crowd at this con. Anyway, hopefully someone told some pics of it. I know it wasn't much to look at, but it'd be cool to have a pic for the memories...
So . . . there was a wizard rock band this year, which was great! But. Being a Harry Potter geek, I want more (and I'm fairly certain I'm not the only one). So, I suppose my question is, how do tracks get formed? I mean, I have contacts that would be useful to this in the case of HP stuff, and they have even more useful contacts. And I'd love to see it happen, if possible. If there's anything I can do to facilitate this, I'd love to.
I have photos of almost all the deliveries done at Penguicon *bing* but not all of them. I would like to include all the deliveries in an ACME Delivery photo gallery. I would also like to include some non-delivery photos such as candy distribution and just being around the con.
Thus I ask for photos of the ring delivery at the wedding on Friday, for photos of the opening ceremonies delivery (though those are not likely to be Orvan photos as such...) and of course "random hallway pictures" of Orvan. These, if used, would of course be properly credited to the photographer(s).
chipper![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
with whether you plan to visit his home for