Penguicon: The Board Game, part 2
and I are talking about how to score the Penguicon game. It's running into the perrennial problem of "what subcultures attend Penguicon, in what numbers, and what do they want?" Every year we hear complaints from absolutely every quarter, that their contingent was underserved in comparison to the others. All of them. Simultaneously. There's no way to fix that misperception.
Keep in mind, Penguicon itself is not the game. The game is not played while at the convention. The game is essentially a planning tool that lets me run extremely simplified simulations of the convention in advance. I need to figure out how to score some of the more subjective aspects of whether one plan should be judged better than another. I solicit your advice.
The first metric that came to my mind was that I score a point for every chip (representing an attendee) which attends an event. agrees. But here's the question: should I lose points for events of the same interest group taking place at the same time? She says quite the opposite. She says you also score for every event that a chip wanted to attend but couldn't. She thinks if we don't hear "so many events were great, I kept having to choose which event to attend" at the feedback session, we would not have succeeded. There should not be time gaps in one interest with everything in that track bunched up into a few hours of conflict, but if you have so much that every hour has three events in that interest area, this is an embarrassment of riches. There are no other time slots where they could go; they are spread out evenly.
Best of all, this rewards crossover. You score big for a panel about, for instance, software in fiction.
You don't want a set of rules in which you can maximize points by scheduling the three biggest ticket items head to head, thus creating maximal unpleasant conflict, and leaving the rest of your schedule light. A scoring system in which that is a winning strategy is clearly undesirable. So you only get the extra points if your overall real bodies in real seats are high enough. Maybe the events they could have attended are only tiebreakers.
I'm also questioning the concept of representing attendees by their interests with chips in the primary and secondary colors. There are so many interests that fandom serves, I would also need Cyan, Magenta, White, Black and Clear as well. It would become too complex. No one can estimate how many people would attend such-and-such an event-- at least not anyone on my programming team, so far as I know. I need to assume that every computer person is attending a computer event, every fiction person is attending a fiction event, and so forth. They evenly divide among simultaneous events of the same interest. When I run out of chips of a particular color, I have enough of that kind of programming that hour.
This might be the way to make sure the various interests are fairly represented in the programming: just have an equal number of chips of each color and when it scores maximally, it's evenly divided up. I have no way to know what percentage of Penguicon's attendees enjoy any given interest, so it's as good as any method. ... No, that's pointless. I may as well just say the number of events of each interest should be the same in any given hour.
Alternatively, maybe I should have a series of "typical Penguicon attendee" archetypes, and have one miniature figure represent ten or twenty attendees. Each archetype would have modifier stats representing their interest in literature, futuristic tech, software, games, or anime... Roll the dice to see how many of them go with X choice instead of Y based on their modifiers for those interest. Unfortunately these archetypes would be made up entirely out of my imagination.
Messy, subjective reality is dicking around with my perfect, objective fake simulated convention.
Comments
rmeidaking on Jul. 25, 2006 1:11 AM
Suggestions, ignore or use at your leisure:
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Limit the number of sub-groups available. Which ones do you want at Penguicon? Target them, and ignore the rest.
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Get the whiners to be on ConCom. Put them in charge of the [fill in the blank] panel track. 'Here's a room, kids; you tell me what makes a great [theme] track.' Okay, maybe that's cheating. :-)
3)If they're all complaining, you're doing something *right*. It's like me and my sister: Growing up, we both thought the other one was the favorite child. This means our parents were doing a good job, because neither one of us felt overly entitled. (Yes, there were only two of us, so that makes it easier.) When pressured on the point, we had to admit that we never really felt neglected, either, just under-spoiled, if there is such a thing. I think the sub-groups are probably feeling under-spoiled...poor things... '-)
tlatoani on Jul. 25, 2006 1:21 AM
I agree with 2 and 3 to some extent (I think 2 can get you some really dysfunctional people on ConCom, so you need to be selective). I find 1 a real problem, since that would mean you're telling people who currently attend to piss off.
elizilla on Jul. 25, 2006 3:37 AM
I disagree about #1. You don't have to tell people to piss off, but you do have to make some decisions about what your event will be, and what it won't be. You can't be all things to all people, and with limited resources there are things you can't do well.
Over the years, the audience you program for will be the audience that returns. Who do you want that audience to be?
Most people are probably more interested in sex, gossip, and celebrities, but if you decide to do that, you're getting into highly popular turf that is already thoroughly mined by the pros who run the shopping malls, television, and the tabloids. Penguicon isn't going to be able to compete with their advertising agencies. Programming for SF and Linux geeks is a niche. You're targeting a small demographic. There's nothing elitist or exclusionary about having a focus and building your event around it.
When I was doing this I used things that were not quite our focus, but which seemed likely to be popular, to get audience into programming on Friday night and Sunday afternoon. And I used the Saturday space, which is always better attended, to highlight things that were more central to the convention's focus.
rmeidaking on Jul. 25, 2006 10:34 AM
If you focus on (say) SF books, Linux, Anime and Sword-Fighting, it doesn't mean that you're telling Furries, Gamers, and the Poly crowd to piss off. It means that you're allocating what resources you have to the areas you want to promote. (I was considering listing all thirty or so of the sub-groups I have personally found in the Detroit area, but it's a pain and too early in the morning for that.) Suffice it to say that no con on earth - well, maybe Dragoncon - has the resources to give them *all* what they want.
When you're a small regional con, you have to pick your audience, because it's impossible to to have thirty cons running in the same place. It's bad enough with the seven to ten (depending on how you count) that we do have.
elizilla on Jul. 25, 2006 3:18 PM
This is also where #2 comes in. One of the biggest limitations, is finding someone willing to do the work for that subgroup. Rather than saying "piss off" you say, "put up or shut up". IMHO this is entirely appropriate.
matt-arnold on Jul. 25, 2006 3:30 PM
The nice thing is that I'm getting that kind of willingness from those who have been offering feedback about what they want. The UHACC guys said there was too much theoretical stuff and not enough practical instruction. Then they handed me their business cards and said they'd do it.
dawnwolf on Jul. 25, 2006 2:31 AM
I agree with tlatoani's comments about numbers 1 and 2.
There's also a category of attendee that doesn't seem to be in your mix: attendees with multiple interests. Say, a Fan who is also highly interested in Open Source and who thinks that Anime is Very Cool. We probably get lots of people who have overlapping interests in the areas we cover.
That whole subjective reality thing really is a bitch, isn't it? Think of it as chaos theory if it helps... ;-)
Overall, though, I'm *very* impressed with the depth and breadth of your thinking on this, and your enthusiasm is infectious to say the least.
Go, you!!
elizilla on Jul. 25, 2006 3:07 AM
I don't think it's practical to schedule things in such a way that you avoid conflicts for people with multiple interests. Those people are simply going to have to choose.
dawnwolf on Jul. 25, 2006 5:06 AM
I wasn't trying to imply a suggestion as to what to do about that category of people. But they weren't mentioned, and given that Matt's post was about the ways that subjective reality is messing with his orderly game - I couldn't help but introduce another variable.
dbvanhorn on Jul. 25, 2006 2:36 AM
Sounds like something that needs to translate into software, so you can make atendees more varied without going nuts. Sim-Penguicon if you will.
Any survey/questionaire data available for generating users?
This does get to the problem I usually have with simulations, they are never accurate. In my domain, that difference can be huge.
users on Aug. 8, 2006 3:43 AM — Almost (but not quite) Completely Off Topic
Is there any way you can put me in touch with the gentleman that is going to be in charge of the Anime room next penguicon. I have an email address for someone who would like to volunteer I would like to forward to him. Thanks, and if it isn't readily available, I believe Chuck has my contact information.
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