Penguicon 2010 Report
Finals week is over, so I have time for the writeup of the epic uber-convention that took place a week ago. (I was also delayed by my laptop going kaput. The battery, which has never held a charge, will now no longer allow the flow power when plugged in. I have purchased a new battery.)
1. Polyamory Meetup
Friday night's Polyamory Round Table, and the Meetup that followed, packed out Ballroom H. There were only 63 audience chairs, so some people got into really friendly seating arrangements.
My girlfriend and I are extremely independent of each other at cons and our paths rarely intersect. I convinced her to show up to the discussion panel just long enough to prove that I am not just making her up in my imagination. :) Then she went back to watching the Smithee Awards in the next room.
I handed out the relationship status/interest ribbons to everyone in sight. The badge ribbons read "FSCKHR LG MP", meaning "Friendship, Sex, Cuddles, Kisses, Hugs, Relationship, Ladies, Gents, Monogamy, Polyamory". You use a magic marker to black out the ones you are not interested in or open to. Someone asked "Do these ever work to hook people up?" I replied, "Yes", and added, "Sometimes on time delay after the con."
I was pleasantly surprised by some of the faces in the audience. When the session broke out into four smaller discussion circles, each with one person talking at a time, the acoustics were such that it was difficult to hear.
I wonder how packed it would have been, had it not been opposite "Flirting For Geeks" and "Sex Parts 101"? The demand for a polyamory event definitely merits taking down an airwall next year to use H and G together, or perhaps even putting it in Ballroom E (half the size of the Big Top room).
On the other hand, another solution might be to make it three or four separate panels in different timeslots to thin out the audience for each one. I suggest "Polyamory Meetup", "Curious About Polyamory?", "Styles of Polyamory: Your Mileage May Vary", and "The Correlation: Why Are There So Many Computer-Geek Pagan Gamer Bisexual Kinky Polyamorists?"
2. i3Detroit
I was impressed by this year's Hack of Honor, i3Detroit. It's a local hacker space-- a group that rents or owns a physical location in which to have code jams, collaborate on maker projects, share tools, and store their stuff that they make.
At first I was worried that it would be more of an Abstraction of Honor. My personal tastes by which to measure the value of a Hack of Honor is that they should provide a sensory experience with hardware hacking that you can't just get through YouTube. i3Detroit fulfilled this several times over!
They brought a little cupcake-shaped single-seat vehicle to drive through the hotel. The driver's head sticks out through a hole and he wears a red helmet with a cherry stem on it!
The Arduino-powered skeeball machine and foam/suction-cup dart shooting gallery were a ton of fun that I went back to again and again, without having to spend quarters. (Hmmm... Kingsburg-themed skeeball? That idea might rock and suck in equal measure.)
The i3Detroit room party was a transcendent masterpiece. There was a table at which attendees were soldering. There was a booth in which you could videotape yourself making an Epic Growl for a video montage. There was an educational display. That room was one of those things that you look at and say, "Why did Penguicon never have this before?" i3Detroit, you took it to eleven.
3. Lojban Festival
The annual Lojban festival, jbonunsla, had a record-setting Penguicon attendance from around the country, and even western Canada. I sold out of all the copies of "The Complete Lojban Language" which I brought to the con. We hung out in the board room in between Lojbanic events, and even had a video conference with someone who very much wanted to be there.
4. Dominion Tournament
I expected the first annual Dominion Tournament to be a highlight of the weekend, but it exceeded expectations. We had 28 players, with seven four-player games running at a time. That was during 8 - 10 pm, the peak demand hours for premiere Penguicon events to compete for attendees! The din made it difficult for the rest of the game room to hear themselves, which I regret. Next year, it will probably be even bigger. I definitely need to have a sign-up sheet at Ops.
There was enough equipment for everyone to play the same set of 10 cards simultaneously, then play a different set of 10 cards simultaneously. That helped make the games last relatively the same length.
Winning a game gave you four tournament points; coming in second gave you three tournament points; coming in third gave you two tournament points; placing last gave you one tournament point. I tried, when possible, to mix up the players on the second round, while arranging each game with four people who had placed differently in the previous game they played.
I handed out green badge ribbons with black text. Those who accumulated less than five tournament points received an Estate. Those who accumulated five or six tournament points received a Duchy. The six players who went on to the championship game with seven or eight tournament points received a Province.
The 2010 champion is Seth Blumberg, who wins a copy of the new Dominion expansion, Alchemy! When they found out I was paying for the prize out of pocket, several players spontaneously gave me money.
5. InForm7 Class
In the months before the convention, I requested several times that InForm7 be installed on the computers in the computer lab. I specified the download page and the precise package to be used from that list. Each time, the head of the lab responded in the affirmative.
Because of all the work that he did on the convention's internet connection, he forgot to do it. So instead of a hands-on collaborative learning project, I projected my laptop and they watched me demonstrate. Then the projector bulb burned out, and it turned into me talking about InForm7. Then our allotted time slot ran out, and people left to go to the other events they planned to attend, and InForm7 still had not finished downloading and installing on the lab computers.
There were about seven participants in this class, although because they couldn't use InForm7 it was difficult to tell exactly who was taking the class and who was just using the computer lounge. Nevertheless, most of them were highly enthusiastic about the topic, and asked excellent questions. Many of them have contacted me to get my source code to "Penguicon: The Text Adventure", and my hamster paranoia tale "Habetrayal".
6. Puppetry
I went to Mary Robinette Kowal's talk on puppetry, which was fantastic. She is not only an author, but a professional puppeteer.
One man brought his two small children, who disrupted the talk whenever they wished. Mary handled the situation with grace and poise. Both children sat on the chair next to me and wrestled so much that they practically pushed me out of the seat. I couldn't scoot over without knocking over the projector, and moving to another row would have come too close to making a scene, so I decided to ignore them.
Afterward, I showed Mary my marionette and she gave me an excellent tip.
7. Carcassonne and Chocolate Habanero Ice Cream
On Sunday I tought the game of Carcassonne. Julie made a video and put it online.
After Julie suggested the idea of Habanero Chocolate ice cream, I suggested it to Phil Salkie. He and Sarah Elkins went out, found some habanero, steeped it in cream overnight, made this flavor with liquid nitrogen, and kindly brought it to me and Julie during this game of Carcassonne!
There is so much to say about Penguicon, including posting my slide presentation for How To Help Run Penguicon, but I have been writing this over a span of three days and should just post it and start a new one.
Comments
atropis on May. 9, 2010 4:22 PM
thanks for all the detail. next best thing to being there. :)
also, tee hee to your habetrayal hamster paranoia tale.
matt-arnold on May. 9, 2010 4:43 PM
I'm very glad you liked it!
One of these days I'll figure out what I'm doing wrong in some of the fiddly things I'm trying to do with Habetrayal, and publish it.
darksunlight on May. 10, 2010 5:25 AM
I wasn't there for the beginning of the poly discussion, and only wandered for a little bit for the split up, but I did talk to a number of people who went in on it. Over all, the responses generally fell into two categories. People who had been in poly for a while/ were comfortable in their polyness got a lot out of it, while those who were new to poly/ weren't quite sure what they were doing didn't get anything out of it, and generally felt a little confused. I haven't written my writeup yet, but my suggestion was to have a more 'open' panel, with some people running it, explaining how poly works for them, give a little advice, and, most important, pass out pens and some paper at the beginning of the panel, so towards the end, the panelists can answer anonymous questions, so people don't feel on the spot.
Also, if you need ANY help with poly panels etc, I'm more than happy to assist. My wife and I have lived Poly for the past seven years or so (married 3 and a half) and I've been Poly damn near all my life.
The Duckman
matt-arnold on May. 10, 2010 1:26 PM
They had a roundtable in which the audience formed multiple freeform group discussions that wandered all over the place. In what sense could anything be more open? I would like a newcomers panel done the way you described precisely because it sounds less open. Personally I think those exploring the concept would be better-served by an organized presentation of one or two points of view, provided the speakers are knowledgeable of the variety of approaches.
darksunlight on May. 10, 2010 3:20 PM
Open was probably the wrong word, perhaps I meant 'focused'
toolmaker on Jul. 14, 2012 4:54 PM
Oh I just found this thread. I was trying to explain the badge ribbon concept to a friend and couldn't remember all of the letters.
I think a more 101 focused event would be nice. I don't know much about polyamory beyond reading stuff online or in books. I don't know many people who are poly, and I thought perhaps the event would cover pragmatics and logistics that people who don't know much about this might never have thought of.
"So, you think you might be poly..." and "Here's what we've learned by living this for so long."
That kind of stuff.
I don't know how to explain it... I guess it would be me wanting to hear it from a maker or engineer point of view than touchy feely stuff -- yes, I read that there is a word for it! compersion. that's cool. so there doesn't need to be something to explain to me that people feel happy when their partner feels happy. I kind of now want to know how people handle, I don't know, doing the dishes. (That's not the best example since I don't think you need any magic poly pixie dust to handle it, but I can't think of whatever things that sound as boring, yet important, as doing dishes.)
toolmaker on Jul. 14, 2012 4:57 PM
like maybe a techie analogy would be sharing dotfiles or package recommendations. I had been writing out a find/vim combo by hand and that was really nice to have, and then one day I made an alias for it. that was even cooler. and then later someone pointed out an improvement! omfg!
or like, hey, you've been using recursive grep to find things in your source tree when you forget where they are? dude, have you heard about ack?
stuff like that.
matt-arnold on Jul. 16, 2012 11:37 AM
Sounds like you should be on the panel! Of course, people problems are not like engineering problems, but it's fun to come up with metaphors all the same. I have a few I like to use:
-All new nodes need to be checked for viruses.
-They need to set up trusts with all other existing nodes, not just the ones with whom they are interacting.
-They need an agreed-upon protocol of all expected processes.
LVML
desfontaines on May. 10, 2010 9:57 AM
The Dominion Tournament was uber-awesome fun! And yes, I think a signup sheet is a brilliant idea! Ooo - if you have names beforehand, you can maybe use a spreadsheet or something to deal with organizing points!
However, do you think there's going to be enough sets to do much more than 7 sets simultaneously? Maybe figure out how many sets you have to start with, use that for a seat limit, with overflow on a wait list?
But dah-yum, Dominion Tournament was fun! :)
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