Penguicon Report
I picked up Ron Hale-Evans from the airport at five in the morning on Friday and he slept on the futon at my house until ten. I eagerly showed him my set of Chaos Tiles, but he already owned one. Of course he did! Our discussions in the car were one of the highlights of the weekend for me. I wanted to know how he got a book published. He wanted to know of any mind performance hacks I may have used to rid myself of superstitious fears, and I told him what had worked for me. It's a shame he lives in Seattle and I live in Detroit, because all our interests overlap so much.
I attended all five Penguicons and was staff for the last four, but I never attended a tech event at any of them. Now that I work for a tech company I thought that would change this year. It would have been quite advantageous to me to attend "Intro To Python", "Moodle Open Source Education Software", or "Taking The Tricks Out Of TrixBox".
It would also have ruined Penguicon by turning it into something boring that I endure because I have to. So, when I wasn't making the rounds in my capacity of Head Of Programming, checking all the events to make sure they were happening, I spent my time actually having fun. Fortunately we recorded most of the panels, so I can still listen to the educational events. We'll be putting them online as podcasts with an intro or downloadable raw without an intro, but this will be a very slow process.
I did attend most of "Knowledge Gardening" by Sarah Elkins when my phone wasn't ringing and calling me out. Sarah approached me before her presentation to say she liked my article in the back of the program book so much that she scanned it and put it in her slides! Her presentation and ensuing discussion were stimulating.
That presentation occupied a certain category of tech-related event; I tried to figure out what distinguishes this category, and realized it was my own subjective level of interest. "Getting The Most Out Of The Web", "Intro to Blender and 3D Graphics", and "Animation using Eclipse and Draw2D" were in that category. I see them as ways to do something fun and creative with writing or art. Although I'm not saying this rules out usefulness, usefulness is not the criteria as it would be with a programming language or enterprise application.
Come to think of it, I didn't really attend any programming that I wasn't running myself, including the science fiction and futurics panels that I was really stoked about and specifically asked presenters to do. I sure hope we recorded them audibly. It is ironic that the year in which one may arrange to have all the personalities and events that one wishes to see, must by necessity be the year that one will be too busy to see them. Still and all, I'm quite pleased with the outcome.
Comments
Anonymous on Apr. 27, 2007 5:25 PM — Knowledge Gardening / Knowledge Ecology
Thanks for the kind words! I was thrilled with the level of discussion after my presentation. It was so cool that there were librarians and knowledge managers and open source folks talking together.
To clarify about your article, I took a picture of the *first page* of it (with the "Knowledge Ecology" title and your picture) and added that as a slide to my introduction of the term "Knowledge Gardening".
There was a lot of programming I was interested in that I couldn't get to either, due to schedule conflicts. I hope I can make it back next year and that some of the folks I missed are there again!
Chaos Tiles looks pretty. Given how I like playing with dominoes and Mahjongg tiles (clack!), and how I like dominoes and Aquarius (placement!), I assume I'd like this one too. Even the solitaire version looks fun.
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Sarah Elkins
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partiallyclips on May. 8, 2007 2:00 PM
"Fortunately we recorded most of the panels, so I can still listen to the educational events. We'll be putting them online as podcasts with an intro or downloadable raw without an intro, but this will be a very slow process."
I'd like to get a copy of the How to Offend an Audience panel if possible. Or at least request early priority for podcasting that one. I've done around 250 panels since starting my comic and that one had to be in the top ten. Thanks!
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