Penguicon In The Detroit Free Press

Have you picked up The Detroit Free Press today? Thanks to a press release from , a phone call from a reporter to , and a lot of organization work by , an article about Penguicon ran on page A3. It included location, dates, rates, website, and some fantastic reasons to attend. I am thrilled by the article, and bought three copies.

There have been a few complaints brought up in comments to 's blog entry. It didn't mention our Guests of Honor, it didn't sound like a literary convention, and it prominently featured the live reenactment of Buffy The Musical Episode which has been canceled. I would like to tell you right now why I agree with the journalist's writing choices and consider them probably for the best.

As to Buffy, that was canceled after the interview and before we knew it was in the article. If it attracts someone's interest, they'll like this year's convention. "Awesome" minus "some" is still "awe".

Granted, it didn't talk about the literary lights and public intellectuals, which last week prompted Karl Schroeder to say to me "Seriously, it's a tremendous line-up of panels, and far and away more sophisticated than what you usually see at SF conventions." But I don't mind that! It's extremely well-targeted to the mass audience that the Free Press will reach. What matters to Penguicon is to get a lot of attendees from this article so that next year's conchair has plenty of budget to work with, and I really believe they'll discover our depth, be impressed, and come back.

As for our guests of honor, I don't expect the article to comment on them. Charlie Stross once said the most famous Science Fiction novelists currently writing are probably known to as many people as the mayor of Des Moines. We've probably saturated the only communities who know who our Guests of Honor are, and I expect most Freep readers don't. Again, the public will find out about them when they get there, be impressed, and come back.

Much less do I expect a journalist with no specialist training in tech journalism to know or care about the philosophical difference within the Open Source community about whether the intended users should be tech experts or Windows users. She communicated in concise terms most laymen would understand. The best that can do is approximate the truth. Windows is "the thing that runs programs on your computer". So is Linux. From the point of view of the reader this is the only relevant issue, and in fact I myself only use Linux as a Windows replacement. I don't expect a light human interest story to educate about the difference between an operating system and a graphical user interface. The reporter approximated the truth to a degree of precision that exceeds my expectations and delights me.

Thanks so much to reporter Gina Damron and photographer William Archie.

Comments

dawnwolf on Mar. 20, 2007 12:57 AM — Good job

You've summed up the article and its audience perfectly. It makes no sense to fault the reporter for failing to mention names her readers won't know or care about.

bardicwench on Mar. 20, 2007 2:23 AM

Good comments, Matt. *hugs*

overthesun on Mar. 20, 2007 2:41 AM

Thank you. I have been thinking, since this morning when I first started to see people complaining about the article. . . . Well, that they were complaining about being handed a wad of money, that it was all Canadian currency, and all in annoyingly small bills.

We got free publicity. We got made out as interesting geeks, who do neat things, and aren't afraid of the label. We didn't get made out to be crazy, or freaks. We got a good sized photo, a great placement, all the article in one place, and our contact information added.

So, it doesn't go into great depth, cover all our bases, or cater to any one of our geek-mentality nit-picking detail oriented whims. Too bad. Im so sorry. Perhaps next time they will hand us gold bullion, in bulk on a silver platter? And then someone else will complain that it's only 99% pure, not 99.99. And that the ingots are too big and heavy.

So, yeah. . . Thanks for at least speaking what I was thinking.

And Yay for Penguicon!

netmouse on Mar. 20, 2007 3:16 AM

yeah, well, fuck it, you're right. I'm just a nit-picky spaz.

Hell, at least it's a great picture.

overthesun on Mar. 20, 2007 4:22 AM

Never said it, don't intend to. Perhaps I am just reacting to a glass half empty response. . . And desperately trying to convince myself that it's half full instead.

What I do know is, I just had to, with John, veto a Mailer we really needed to send, for budget reasons. I know we have gone to the well a lot in Fandom, and the local tech crowd. We have tapped out a lot of our resources. So, to me, this is the sort of publicity we need. And it's not perfect, by a long shot. However, it's better than I would have managed to end up writing, mostly because my built in bias, circumstantial knowledge, and short focal length would have ended up focusing on gnat's.

While what the public needed to know was that we exist.

So, I apologize if you took what I wrote wrong. I feel like you are examining the teeth of our gift horse, and proclaiming it too old. . When we really need a horse.

Anonymous on Mar. 20, 2007 11:56 PM

What was the mailer, and why was it really needed to be sent? Was it mentioned in ?

netmouse on Mar. 21, 2007 12:27 AM

I am hardly looking at it so closely, sir. Rather I am looking at your gift horse and declaring it a donkey. And it's a lovely donkey, don't get me wrong, and it will even handily get you to your parade.

perhaps those who are tech geeks will credit the less informed comments to the author, and perhaps those who come because of the siren call of a major event that's been canceled despite no mention of there even *being* guests of honor will both come and return in later years because Penguicon, for whatever reasons, still manages to be fun even if it's a little unsatisfying sometimes in the lost magic of a crossover theme that never seems to quite get legs. Like Matt said, the article has the website in it, so, you know, that's great.

I am sorry you have tapped your resources, but I've seen it again and again on this con and I am still waiting for someone to learn the lesson, which is primarily that a budget should be used as a planning and prioritization tool and not just a "whoops, look, we ran out of money" tool. For one thing, I think Penguicon needs to pick a number of guests and stick to it, and not spend bunches of money bringing people and toys, however well liked, who have been to it before. But that's just me. Being all glass half empty, and all.

rachelann1977 on Mar. 21, 2007 1:49 AM

I'm not sure it's very useful to worry about what's in the article after it's written. The author was informed of many things other than what she wrote about. She chose to write it the way she did, and that's how it goes with the press. You do the best you can, and then you move on.

Also wondering about the following two statements: "crossover theme that never seems to quite get legs," and "Penguicon needs to pick a number of guests and stick to it..."
What's up with that? It's cool if you just needed to rant or whatever. I get that. But it does seem sort of unnecessary here.

netmouse on Mar. 21, 2007 2:04 AM

Also wondering about the following two statements: "crossover theme that never seems to quite get legs," and "Penguicon needs to pick a number of guests and stick to it..."
What's up with that? It's cool if you just needed to rant or whatever. I get that. But it does seem sort of unnecessary here.

Have you ever had something you could point to and say "There! That's 'who got science fiction in my open source programming!' or 'Who put Linux in my science fiction'." Have we ever even had a panel on the occurrence of linux or other operating systems in SF? Or created an online tool to support open source fiction authoring? (There kind of is one this year, it's an AOL program called Ficlets). Or much of anything merging these two topics other than occassionally having Guests who can speak to both of them? The webcomic artist/author guest category kind of gets there, so why don't we _call_ it a webcomic GoH slot, and get on with it? It's not a comics GoH, it's a Webcomics GoH.

Is ranting ever necessary?

And if it's unecessary, can it thus at the same time be "cool", because frankly it sounds as though you're disapproving of it. Which rather indicates the opposite attitude from that which you pronounce.

I'm not worried about what's in the article, but if you don't criticize your own publicity efforts and contemplate whether or not they are likely to get you wanted results, then you will never improve them either, will you? I'm sure the author was informed of many things, and honestly it's a very cute little article - but though The Buffy event was not officially canceled until after its publication, Matt has known for weeks that it was iffy. And a year ago there was talk of a policy of "no shows for more than two years in a row" which, frankly, I was all in favor of, which would have made this particular last-minute cancelation a moot point.

I just think Penguicon should pick some policies and some structure, and a budget, and stick to it, and that if it did that I would see fewer instances of fine people like your Chuck finding themselves between a rock and a hard place looking at the budget.

rachelann1977 on Mar. 21, 2007 2:10 AM

OK, true, I guess I was disapproving of the ranting. And I shouldn't cuz I do plenty of it myself.

Still, with all its chaos , I love Penguicon, and from what I hear, other cons don't escape most of the hardships Penguicon experiences either. I know we'll keep trying to make it better though, and I guess constructive criticism helps in that vein. Of course, it helps more, with more sugar and less vinegar, but that's back to the ranting thing again, so 'nuff said.

netmouse on Mar. 21, 2007 10:52 AM

other cons don't escape most of the hardships Penguicon experiences either

Every con has volunteers who experience crises of life. Aside from that, actually, many many cons do escape most of the hardships Penguicon experiences. They do so by having a firm budget; an active and communicative chair who understands how the whole con works, recruits enough people with appropriate skills way in advance of the con, helps departments set workable timetables, and stays in touch with everyone so as to detect/prevent silent failures and burnout; substantial volunteer retention from year to year; mentoring and active knowledge capture; a set process of selecting and inviting GoHs and (typically) a building relationship with a hotel that suits them (which requires really good hotel scouting and contract negotiation, plus having a hotel that totally suits you in the area, natch, and of course everything can change if hotel management changes).

I have worked on at least one con with less executive support and year-to-year consistency than Penguicon, and it doesn't even happen each year, mostly because the executive is spread all over the midwest and half of them are burning themselves out working other cons and running their home clubs. Other than that, other cons have their own problems. Penguicon at least hasn't had too bad of a personal power politics issue - it has in terms of particular people throwing dramatic tantrums and causing tension, but not in terms of fiefdoms that split the con apart. But the main problems I see in Penguicon I would say that a lot of cons escape, most years. Or don't have to the degree that Penguicon does.

I'll aim for less vinegar, but I seem to be all out of sugar, sorry.

matt-arnold on Mar. 21, 2007 1:54 PM

The crossover track is better than ever this year. I think it's really going well. Those are some good ideas for next year.

Nobody interviewed me for the article or consulted me before being interviewed, or they would have known about Buffy. They probably didn't get a notification to do so before being phoned by the reporter.

netmouse on Mar. 21, 2007 12:40 AM

And just in case you think all I do is kvetch, I went out to make use of my frustration and got us listed in the Ansible international events page

Sadly, the sflovers con list is no longer being updated.

matt-arnold on Mar. 21, 2007 1:56 PM

That's wonderful! Thank you so much!

zifferent on Mar. 20, 2007 3:18 AM

I am very grateful for the coverage. Wonderful stuff.

But my question (and it's not a complaint just an observation) is, maybe it's the picture, maybe it's my imagination, but doesn't appear that Aaron is missing a few front teeth? Possibly it looks completely different in the paper.