Handoff Meeting Report
Yesterday's cookout, handoff meeting, and bonfire party went really well. I've mentioned before that there has been an enormous outpouring of volunteerism, and it showed. There must have been 40 people wandering through at one point or another. Tyler Haske from Kalamazoo took notes of the meeting, which will be posted on this blog soon.

Speaking of Tyler, he's interested in helping us with marketing, and also handle relationships with sponsor companies. He wants to cold-call local businesses to sell ads in our program book, which is something we usually don't have. He'll also organize a software expo for us. We've scheduled a meeting with him, Jackie Petto, atdt1991, and jer_ next Friday evening at my place to create the new sponsorship prospectus for this year.

There will be a Programming Meeting at the home of rbradakis and sheryl67 in Livonia on Sunday, May 18. Let me know at conchair at penguicon dot org if you want to be on the programming team.

There is so much work to be done at the beginning of any year, that no one meeting can hope to do justice to cover all of them. So most of the kickoff meeting consisted of briefly describing a topic that need to be worked on, identifying those who are interested in working on it, and telling them to get together before they leave, to arrange a separate meeting about it.

Another thing discussed in the meeting was the new project management site through which we'll give each other progress reports and keep our job descriptions, bylaws, budget, milestone targets, staffing shift schedules, and other documentation. It's going to be at penguicon.info soon, but for now, you can see it here. Your penguicon.org email address will be your login, and you will get a password to access the site just as soon as muteid10t finishes setting up Google as our email provider.

Penguicon.org email addresses will still forward to the personal accounts that the concom members already use, so you won't have to log into Gmail to access it. However, if you CC your penguicon.org email address in your replies, the progress of your entire communication will be archived in a searchable Gmail account that you can hand off to your 2010 replacement to know what happened during the 2009 year. Few people have time to write instructions on how to do their job, so at least this is the next best thing.

Allison Anderson agreed, in addition to being our Program Ops during the Penguicon weekend, to be our Social Director during the year. This means she'll arrange the SMOS dinners.

Chris Genetti signed up to create our first Furry track.

Limey Zrnich will create our Costuming track. One of the costuming events will be the Masquerade. He's chosen Pinata Riders to return for that, and will work closely with Kendra Duane.

Two new folks got involved in the Alternative Therapy room that rachelann1977 is organizing, where free samples of massage, chiropractic, and other services will be offered.

sheryl67 has gleefully volunteered to the position of Secretary of Violence, which we haven't had since the first Penguicon. This has nothing to do with the swordfighting track; it has to do with dueling with Nerf firearms, an arsenal provided by Frank Schreiber. So we'll see what this turns into.

It was good to see Mara again, who attended the "How To Run Penguicon" panel discussion. Her skills seem to be very versatile, so we'll see which job she does, possibly either Ops or Scheduling Wrangler or acting as assistant to one of them. Those two positions are up in the air, but we have some good candidates.

Austin Howard, who works for Impressions 5 Science Museum in Lansing, will create a Science Track for us. He'll be able to bring more of the pure sciences than we have had recently.

Here are some things that we still need someone to organize:

• Brazilian Beef
• print fliers
• distribute fliers all around Southeast Michigan throughout the year
• badge ribbons
• press releases
• web advertisements
• signage at the convention