My Annual Penguicon Panic
I have learned from experience that Penguicon will always be super fun for the attendees, no matter how it looks in March. I preface with that disclaimer because though I'm really excited about certain aspects of Penguicon programming, I'm discouraged and scared about the rest of it. Matt panicking in March and April* has become an annual tradition, and the convention always works out anyway, so take it with a grain of salt.
The parts I'm confident about are the parts I've always done well: coming up with fantastic additions to the convention and running them myself. This year they are the new Chaos Dispenser vending machine, and the Chess LARP, among other things.
The parts I'm nervous about are pretty much everything else. I'm not a good Head of Programming. I went into it knowing my deficiencies-- I'm not the type of conrunner with a personal vision of how things should be done. I didn't take over Programming for that reason. I went into it specifically because, as the program book guy, I was sick of getting the content late. I didn't care what the content said, I just wanted it on time! So, I devised an innovative plan which I hoped would compensate for my lack of strong opinions. I say "I hoped" because I knew it was complete speculation as to whether it would work. The experiment does not currently look like a success to me. The programming will be responsive and delivered promptly, but it will also be a sparse, incoherent hodgepodge.*
To say nothing of the fact that I don't own Microsoft Office, I don't know how to do those tricks where table cells update themselves, I don't know how to do mail merge and I'm not even clear on what it is, and I never found out I was supposed to know those things until last week.
A big part of the plan was to just be a referee and switchboard, get out of the way and let everybody else create the programming schedule events they are interested in doing, and constantly ferry emails back and forth between them. "I don't care what you do, just do something. I'm sure whatever you want will be fine." Well, most people need more leadership and initiative from the Head of Programming than that. This is why the schedule is so empty and hardly anyone is assigned to programming. I don't know much about what my panelists are interested in. Previous Heads of Programming did, I think. I have the ability to show up all the time and be deeply present and involved, while they tended to be absentees. (With one valuable exception, but even she had to put it together at the last minute.) What previous Heads of Programming lacked, they made up for in wisdom, knowledge and experience.*
Programming meetings don't solve the dearth of ideas, because everyone is tremendously bored while listening to the others try to brainstorm ideas concerning interests that they don't share. Half aren't interested in tech, the other half are mostly only interested in tech. Most of them are only interested in one guest of honor and don't have any knowledge or interest in the others. When I switched to holding programming meetings for only one type of interest at a time, the whole thing consisted of going through the backlog of emails from me they had been ignoring.
By the way, a big "thank you" goes out to Shay VanZwoll for the webcomics programming and many other parts. She was amazing. And to M. Keaton for pulling together a writing track, and to Aaron Thul for the tech track. GLLUG is pulling together a perfect computer lounge again. On and on the credits could go. There are so many to whom I'm grateful. I just wanted to be like the cover of Time's Person Of The Year issue, and say this year's Head of Programming was "Everybody."
Another thing about which I'm nervous was to change the time slots from one hour to a pattern in which we'd get some hour-and-a-half slots and half-hour breaks. I sure hope the tech attendees who've been asking for this for years end up liking it, because so far it's been insane trying to find any events that seem to need it. Not one presenter wants an hour and a half. Not one. So the last half-hour of each slot will go unused. Again, I just said "yes" with no personal opinion to whatever requests I got, and the schedule change was one of them. It's too late to change this, because where are we going to get anything to fill the additional hours with less than two weeks before this is due to the program book?
What, and be late to the program book? Words cannot describe the passion with which I cling to my one, my only, my original goal-- submitting on time to the program book-- now that I fear it may be among the few improvements I can claim on the previous years which so freaked me out.
This is just generally reducing my happiness in life overall. I can't sleep. People I was really counting on didn't come through. Important events are getting canceled left and right. I lie awake most nights. I keep getting visions of people I love and respect being angry at me as my reward for stepping up to volunteer for a job nobody wanted. I'm typing this at 4:30 AM in hopes I can get to sleep. I don't know how to get out of doing it next year, because if I do it will still fail. Did I mention the sleeplessness? Because I can't get to sleep. But Penguicon always makes me lose sleep at this time of year in any case. At least one thing's for sure, Penguicon will always be super fun for the attendees. But our Heads of Programming tend to GAFIAte never to be seen again, either burned out or run out of town on a rail... But I will still come out of this with friends.
*Maybe it's all in my head, in my perspective. Maybe I've just been holding myself and others to too high a standard. Am I?
Comments
users on Mar. 5, 2007 2:25 PM
If there's anything I can do to help you out... anything... let me know. If nothing else, I'm pretty solid with the catastrophe that is the MS Office suite and its various "tools". Sadly, I'm not really panelist material, so I can't help you there (unless we were able to draw on my only real skills with panels like "Trolling the Internet for Fun and Profit" or "Flamewars: How Much Smarter than You I Am"), but anywhere else... let me know.
tammylc on Mar. 5, 2007 2:41 PM
I'm also willing to lend a hand if you'd like.
You can do programming much in the way that you describe. When ConFusion has had this position, we've called it the "Program Wrangler." But the key to that working is to have strong track heads who are developing panel ideas and populating them with panelists. It sounds like the places where you have that are working okay, and it's the places where you don't that are a problem. The role of the program wrangler, then, is to pull those all together and make sure that panelists who cross tracks are not double scheduled.
Although it's late in the game, you could try to recruit "subject matter experts" for each of the tracks you have, and have them help you figure out who should go there and what the strengths of your panelists are.
Talk to the program book person now about when the real deadline needs to be. You need to check your completed schedule with all of your panelists prior to committing it to print - that's going to require at least a week of turnaround time, which would give you only a week to finish the schedule - which sounds like it's probably not really possible.
tammylc on Mar. 5, 2007 2:42 PM
*Maybe it's all in my head, in my perspective. Maybe I've just been holding myself and others to too high a standard. Am I?
Almost certainly. But I do it too. Remember that perfect is the enemy of good enough. Aim high, but understand that other people are always more appreciative of us than we are of ourselves.
etain on Mar. 5, 2007 3:27 PM
Matt, as I, and many others, have said, I can help you out in any way you need. (If there really are breaks in the programming schedule that are that bad, I know I can help with that.) Also, will you need help putting together panelist packets? I can do that too. I can do anything else for that matter, but that comes to mind as something that you haven't mentioned yet.
jeffreyab on Mar. 5, 2007 4:10 PM
If you need any help I am willing as well to help.
I wouldn't worry about cancelations too much.
With so many one person panels you are at the mercy of their lives. Make sure you get cell phones numbers for panelists so you can find them if they go missing or are late.
Just have your program book set up so that its easy to make deletions, changes and additions that you know about before the con.
Track how many panels each guest of honour, nifty guest and panelist is doing so you know they are getting enough hours but not too many.
The SF part of the scedhule looks good, many original topics being covered.
cosette-valjean on Mar. 5, 2007 5:37 PM — Hugs and kisses
Sorry you are feeling so stressed, darling.
treebones on Mar. 5, 2007 7:39 PM
The quick glance I just gave looks like it could use a little fleshing out, but that's not unusual. And there are programming items I think I've seen discussed which aren't on the spreadsheet (though I may just be recalling the food track). (:
I don't think you need to panic. (:
bardicwench on Mar. 5, 2007 8:18 PM
By the way, a big "thank you" goes out to Shay VanZwoll for the webcomics programming and many other parts. She was amazing.
Thank you. I needed to read this today.
matt-arnold on Mar. 5, 2007 10:22 PM
It's so true. Nobody pulled this programming out of the fire like you did. You deserve an "indispensable" ribbon.
rmeidaking on Mar. 5, 2007 9:32 PM
You need to relax.
There's this inevitability about conventions. They're like avalanches: Once you set them in motion, they *are* coming down the mountain. The best you can do is sort of steer them in the direction you'd like them to go.
If the attendees get their registrations, and there *is* a program, and it's mostly correct, they don't care about much else. Yes, they will complain. It's a sub-hobby of fans: Pick everything apart. They do it for fun, not to be mean (well, mostly; some are inveterate "I would have done it differently" people, and yet somehow *those* people aren't the ones at the concom meetings).
It will be fine. Really. Been here, done this, just a few weeks ago.
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