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On Monday 19 April 2004 02:19 pm, Tracy Worcester wrote:
[snip]
> As I told many of you at the time: thank you for all of it, compliments,
> comments, suggestions, and volunteering for next year. And as I also said
> to many of you, my brain wasn't recording very well, so anything you told
> to me that you want folks to know about and consider for next year, I
> would suggest the following.
>
> 1. Post it to the suggestion forum on the website (linked off the menu on
> the lower left side of the www.penguicon.org page,) or
> 2. Post it for discussion on this list.
Thank you. I intend to do just that, since I left the "gripe" session on
Sunday before any actual griping took place. :-)
Here are my comments. There are some things I really thought went well, and I
will get to those items in a bit. First, however, my thoughts about what
could use fixing. They are arranged in (roughly) descending order--i.e.,
with what I considered to be the more broken stuff listed first.
BROKEN STUFF:
1. GEEKS WITH GUNS. So far as I could tell, the only thing the con did for
this event was to post a sign outside the Computer Room saying "If you want
to go on Geeks with Guns, meet here Friday at 6 PM".
*That's not enough.* When Eric and I arrived outside the Computer Room at 6
PM we learned that *nobody* was running the thing, and it took us a few
minutes to find a Detroit-area fan who knew the roads well enough to be able
to find the firing range suggested on the Web site. Fortunately, among the
people who wanted to go there were enough people with motor vehicles that
transport was no problem.
However, if there had been fewer fen interested in making this event succeed,
things could have gone very badly indeed.
What you need to do this event right is to appoint an official Organizer to
run it. This person should be someone from the Detroit area who does target
shooting and knows where the local ranges are and, at least in general terms,
what their rules are--including any rules based upon requirements of state or
local law. Eric cannot take on this role, not because he doesn't know guns
(he does!) but because he doesn't know the area or the ranges available in
the area.
Not knowing the law bit us slightly at the GWG. We had with us a teenager
who regularly goes with her father to pistol ranges and wanted to
participate. Unfortunately, the range we ended up at had a requirement that
shooters under 18 had to have taken a state-sponsored course to be permitted
to shoot, something which she, as a Pennsylvania resident, had no opportunity
to do and in fact had not done. If we had been aware of this fact in
advance, we could have at least warned her so that she wouldn't have made the
trip to the range for nothing.
I don't, by the way, think that advance registration for an event like GWG is
necessary, or even possible (though it might be useful; if you knew numbers
in advance, the con might be able to organize special range rates with a
particular range, which would be nice). But if you're going to plug Geeks
with Guns as a convention event, there should be someone who can promote and
facilitate it--instead of hoping it will just, well, somehow happen if you
just put up a sign.
2. THE POCKET PROGRAM. It was elegant. It was concise. It was small enough
to be folded and slipped into a pocket. But the way it was set up, it was
damn near impossible to use. Why?
Because it violated the Rule of Least Surprise, that's why.
Most convention program grids are set up so that the times of day are listed
along the top, horizontally, so people can figure out what's happening at any
given hour. The P-con 2.0 grid has the rooms across the top, the times of
day across the side, and the days indicated (unobtrusively) in small
light-colored print in the middle of dark bars that ran across the grid.
Matters were complicated by the fact that the first few programs on Friday,
and the last on Sunday, were listed elsewhere in the pocket program and were
not even on the grid.
Result: It was easy to tell what events occurred in which rooms, but it took
work to figure out, say, which events were running at 2 PM on Saturday
afternoon. I generally went to the full program book if I needed to know
what was happening at a particular time and day. This is not good! The
whole point of the pocket program is so that you can find out *when*
something is going on.
3. THE CON BADGE. Most of them were on DARK PURPLE PAPER. As a result, if
anyone wrote their name on it in any color other than white, gold, silver, or
yellow, their name would be unreadable except at embarrassingly close range.
This made socializing harder, to say the least. USE A LIGHTER COLOR OF PAPER
NEXT TIME!
4. COMPENSATION FOR PANELISTS. Some conventions offer free memberships, or at
least a membership discount, to brave individuals who agree to be on a
specified number of panels. For example, Confusion generally gives a free
membership to people who serve on 3 panels or more. A panelist who had done
4 panels was surprised and upset that no such membership benefit was being
offered here. While I'm aware that money does not grow on trees, I think it
behooves the con to provide as many incentives for people to serve on panels
as possible.
I think the con needs to set a policy on membership compensation for
panelists and publicize it well in advance of the con.
5. PANELS/PROGRAMMING. By and large, the panels I was on were successes, but
I felt I ended up working much harder to help make them so than I should have
had to. My suggestions for making things easier follow.
I. More Communication. I did not learn who I would be on panels with
until
the program book text was published on the web site, and I did not have
contact information for my fellow panelists. This was unfortunate, since the
panel descriptions were pretty vague, and I didn't have much of a clue as to
what we were expected to say. It would have been really useful to have my
fellow panelists' email addresses about 2 weeks before the con, or a more
specific panel description, or both, for planning purposes. As it was, the
only panel I was able to do this for was the Nethack panel, because Rich
Clark tracked down the relevant email addresses and initiated communications
himself.
II. More Panelists. Most of the panels I was on had only two people--me
and
one other person (usually somebody I'd never met, but that's a side issue).
On one of these, the other person never showed (fortunately, I was able to
recruit Howard Taylor to plug the gap). In my opinion, that's too few
viewpoints to generate a good discussion. Most panels that aren't "meet the
author/artist" or seminar/workshops should have at least 3 people (4 is even
better, 5 or more is too many). Compensating panelists with membership/s or
membership breaks may help in the recruiting process (see #4 above).
6. THE PROGRAM BOOK. Nicely laid out. However, the tables for program items
and anime items were identical in appearance and format, so it was a bit
tricky finding the right place in the book to look up the type of item you
were interested in.
7. THE CON SUITE. The location was good, but the room was so narrow it was
almost always crowded. As a result, I didn't go in there much.
Consideration should be given to selecting a different room for Con Suite
next year.
Here's a more personal quibble. -Although I understand the doubly caffienated
coffee was much appreciated, I think the con suite could have used a larger
variety of caffienated beverages. Diet Coke (one of my beverages of choice)
was in particularly short supply.
8. THE DEALERS' ROOM. It seemed to me that the Dealers' Room could have used
more pure geek items (no stuffed Tuxes!) and a bit less costume-related
stuff.
On the bright side, there were some things P-con did much, much better than
average:
Good points (in no particular order):
1. MASQUERADE ENTERTAINMENT. It was a stroke of genius recruiting Luke Ski to
be the Masquerade "half time" entertainment. Even closeted with the
Masquerade judges, I could tell he was the best Masquerade entertainment I'd
ever seen at a con (even though I didn't "see" his performance at all). How?
Because nobody left at half-time! Heck, *I* usually leave a Masquerade at
half time, and I'm a costumer!
2. MASQUERADE JUDGING. I like the developing tradition of Masquerade
celebrity judging. Last year, it was Illiad, Terry Pratchett and me. This
year, it was Jon "maddog" Hall, Sandra Brewer, and me. Having 2 guests to
one "just a competent costumer judge" is a good ratio, and I'm willing to
keep being the "costumer judge" so long as I can afford coming to Penguicons.
:-)
3. GREEN ROOM. The room selected was the perfect space for a Green
Room--spacious and well-furnished with comfy chairs, couches, and a nice big
table. Excellent. (But maybe next year you can have more hot food in Green
Room, hope, hope?)
4. SIGNS. There were enough of them and they were large, legible, attractive
and well placed. Good job.
That's the end of my comments. Thanks for having Eric as a Nifty, and I look
forward to next year!
--
Cathy Raymond <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
"Anything's within walking distance if you have the time." -Steven Wright
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