| Penguicon ConCom Meeting |
[Jun. 12th, 2009|07:38 pm] |
Our next meeting is on June 14th, 1pm at the Troy Marriott. 1pm for the individual conversations that make-up our pre-meeting, 2pm for the all-hands meeting. Walk through to follow, but that will be limited in number.
If you are ConCom you need to be there.
If you are Staff, you should be there.
If you, for whatever reason, you don't believe you need to be there, please check with your department head and make sure.
If you want to be part of Penguicon and would like to get involved, please feel free to email me or come to the meeting and find out how you can help make Penguicon ever more awesome. |
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| Saturday's Hand-Off Meeting - the reminder and expansion. |
[May. 14th, 2009|10:09 pm] |
The Penguicon Handoff Meeting, dinner, and party will take place Saturday May 16 at Castle Bradaki in Livonia. Please feel free to send me an email to get directions if you need.
We will arrive at noon, as we tend to talk amongst ourselves before the meeting. At one pm we'll conclude business for Penguicon 2009. I will sign and hand over the Penguicon Conchair Pillow to our host Randy Bradakis, kicking off his meeting to focus our attention on the ongoing business of Penguicon 2010. That will probably take until five pm, I'm guessing. Afterward we will hang out and individually take care of anything left over from that.
This event is at least partly pot-luck. Penguicon is providing burgers (both meat & veggie), buns, chips, soda, and perhaps a little beer. If you'd like something else, please bring it. I never like to coordinate who's bringing what, because it just takes all of the fun and chaos out of the situation. But pot-luck is fun.
Since we're going for a noon casual meeting, followed by a 1pm traditional meeting, we're not planning on feeding everyone right then, we are planning on having dinner-time grilling. However, if you protest enough, we might be willing to let you come early and help us get ready in exchange for early grill-time and eating. Protest away! |
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| MPCon XXIV |
[May. 9th, 2009|12:29 pm] |
MPCon's summer LAN is taking place July 24-26. That's right, it's my birthday LAN, so you had better frickin' be there. There will be COD4, Quake Live, CSS 5v5, cash prizes, Jer pantless, Trackmania nations for me to lose at...and hell, I'll even give you a chance to kick my ass at a RTS (game to be named later) in 1-on-1 combat.* That's right, you have a chance to beat a dude who sucks at video games like he stole a car! I assure you, there is nearly a zero percent chance that you are worse than me, so it is a certain win.
In all seriousness, if you've heard me write about this before, then you know I'm not even a gamer and I absolutely love this event. It is a lot of fun, and I can't think of anywhere else where $25 gets you a chance to hang out with 300+ gaming geeks, free pizza, all the gaming you can manage, and a chance to watch me cock-punch Kenco12 when he's not looking.** That's right, he has NO FRICKIN' IDEA! Even better, in a nod to the good folks from Saturday Night Live, I'm going to wait until he's getting ready to take a drink..then BLAMMO!***
Still not sold? I'm pretty sure their network guy is handing out blowjobs.****
Come to the Eastern Michigan Student Center, pony up your $25, and rock out with the boys from MPCon (now with 95% less console kiddies!!!)
Go to their site for more information or to register and make sure you have a seat.
As always, I'm here to answer questions. Also as always, I'm probably making up the answers.
* Until I get tired of losing and cry or become violent
** I am probably not really going to do this
*** Okay, now that I've said this part, I really want to do this. I'm 20% more likely to do this now.
**** I don't think this is true. If it is, I'm first. |
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| Penguicon Handoff Meeting |
[May. 6th, 2009|09:26 pm] |
The Penguicon Handoff Meeting, dinner, and party will take place Saturday May 16 at Castle Bradaki in Livonia. Please email info at penguicon dot org for the address.
We will arrive at noon, as we tend to talk amongst ourselves before the meeting. At one pm we'll conclude business for Penguicon 2009. I will sign and hand over the Penguicon Conchair Pillow to our host Randy Bradakis, kicking off his meeting to focus our attention on the ongoing business of Penguicon 2010. That will probably take until five pm, I'm guessing. Afterward we will hang out and individually take care of anything left over from that.
Concluding in dinner, where Penguicon will provide some food, but you are all encouraged to bring some. |
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| Penguicon Reports |
[May. 6th, 2009|09:27 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  content | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Fast as You Can - Fiona Apple | ] |
Okay, I have created a form for submitting Penguicon reports over on iBloviate... this is a really quick, ugly, hack job. Please don't be a douche. :)
Fire away... |
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| Friday Night |
[May. 2nd, 2009|01:42 am] |
Today's Penguicon has been a great success by all accounts.
We seem to have an unprecedented number of people (anecdotally) and more programming than ever before - including brand new tracks. Some of the great things on Friday:
The game FreeSpace has begun. IF YOU ARE HERE AT PENGUICON - you may participate in the hopes of winning a free embroidered lab coat from the Institute For the Future, even if you were not at the introduction. - GO TO http://play.signtific.org, create a character, and start contributing!
Our opening ceremonies were great, with amazing deliveries from our Acme Ox, a "speech" by our missing Guest of Honor, and an appearance by Dr. Horrible, who apparently kidnaps said guest each year. Also, our resident filker, Tom Smith, added a new stanza to his ever-increasing annual Penguicon song.
Jer and Geralyn got married just before the convention, and he managed not to swear or abuse our fragile minds in any way. I think he's afraid of her.
The Beltaine ritual, put on by the people from ConVocation, went extremely well, including the May Pole. They say no one got nekkid, but I don't believe them!
The Karaoke room is entirely full and has been crowded from the moment it opened.
Our Con Suite is INCREDIBLE. There has never been one like it. We've taken over their restaurant, which means the buffet is stocked from behind and well-heated, there are tables and chairs EVERYWHERE (and full of people), and there is lots of room for conversation. Our sponsor, Monster, arrived with 5 or 6 cases of Monster, and the girls were passing them out in the suite and at room parties.
If you're not here, you're missing an incredible experience. Come for Saturday! |
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| CandyFab Demos Canceled |
[Apr. 29th, 2009|06:55 pm] |
I'm sorry to announce that the CandyFab machine was damaged today and is not repairable in time for this weekend. However, one of its creators, Windell Oskay of Evil Mad Scientist Labs, will still appear in Opening Ceremonies, Desktop Fabrication Panel, Desktop Fabricator Q&A, Can Hardware be Open Source?, Fun Theory, and Maximizing Fun Per Pixel. We will hear about the desktop manufacturing revolution and their approach to it! Only the demos specifically of CandyFab are canceled.
As we say in the disclaimer on the website, events outside of anyone's control can happen. However, Windell Oskay of Evil Mad Scientist Labs is going to rock out with us and we will have a blast! |
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| Map of Pre-Registrants |
[Apr. 27th, 2009|10:35 pm] |
Click through to a map of all the cities of pre-registrants for Penguicon!  |
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| Come to the Masquerade! |
[Apr. 26th, 2009|06:19 pm] |
The Special Category is Steampunk!
We would love to see you there! |
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| Penguicon TV - Channel 13 |
[Apr. 26th, 2009|05:31 pm] |
Thanks to Nuri Gocay (our AV Guru) and our hotel, we now have our own TV channel!
While you're at Penguicon this next weekend, turn any TV to Channel 13 to see:
- Music Videos
- Promo spots
- Schedule of events
- Photos from our attendees (email them to penguicontv@gmail.com)
- Shout-outs and Song Requests by SMS (dial 41411, first word must be "contv", then make your request.)
- Possible live feed
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| Online Schedule |
[Apr. 21st, 2009|11:41 pm] |
The program book goes to the printer tomorrow, and the schedule is complete. Many of you have noticed that the version of the schedule on our website was almost a week out of date.
The reason the datestamp on that page reads "April 22" is that many of us have been attempting to update it all day. We encountered a file-size limit in the little content manager we wrote for the website. Our schedule is now so huge, it is 121,109 characters long. I think we may have set a record for how much is taking place at Penguicon. Such problems we should have! Unfortunately it now cut off the schedule at Saturday night. Don't worry, Penguicon is still a three-day event!
Everyone involved has buried their arms to their elbows in the series of tubes that go from our database to our Events listing page, and this will be done probably tomorrow or the day after.
In the meantime, for the latest changes, feel free to directly browse to the online database we used for managing the schedule to begin with. Tonight the Scheduling Wrangler Randy Bradakis and Program Book Designer Dan DeSloover confirmed it is perfectly synchronized to what goes to the printer tomorrow. |
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| Know your Guests of Honor! |
[Apr. 15th, 2009|11:43 am] |
Wil Wheaton reads at the Emerald City Comic Con
"If the embed isn't working, this link may get you where you want to go.
I thought it went well, especially considering that this was the first time any of these stories have been performed for an audience." |
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| Proofreaders, we need your help |
[Apr. 13th, 2009|02:42 pm] |
Everyone, we have two online documents to compare. They can be viewed
without any login.
The spreadsheet that will be exported for the pocket program:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=phTnPvey-qrQXocHcE3RoDA
The schedule database which will be exported for the program book:
http://penguicon.dabbledb.com/publish/penguicon2009schedule
That database gives you several links to view it with different
sorting, or limited tracks or categories. The one we particularly care
about right now is named "Program Book Output". Also "Events By
Participant" sorts into individual itineraries, if that is of
particular interest to you.
We need to know if the rooms and times vary in any way between these
two documents. Also, please let us know if you find a person is
scheduled in two places at once. Even if you find nothing to report,
if you let us know that, it would help tremendously. We need this
before 6:30 PM tomorrow, when it will go to the program book. Thank
you so much!
P.S. My apologies for scrollbar-within-scrollbar, an interface which I
know frustrates many of you, but rest assured the web technologies
that regrettably include that defect made our jobs vastly easier up to
this point. Thanks for your patience with that. |
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| Concom Meeting Tomorrow |
[Apr. 3rd, 2009|08:13 am] |
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Just a reminder that the first of the two April Penguicon concom meetings is tomorrow, Saturday April 4, 1 PM, at the Crowne Plaza, 8000 Merriman Rd, Romulus, MI 48174. The last concom meeting will be Saturday April 25, one week before the convention. 27 days left! |
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| Jane McGonigal, one of our Guests of Honor, speaks at the Game Developer's Conference |
[Mar. 31st, 2009|05:15 pm] |
Jane McGonigal, one of our Guests of Honor, speaks at the Game Developer's Conference
Jane McGonigal is the co-creator of many ARGs, Interactive Fictions, and other forms of mass storytelling. Her conference speech is reported to be "the talk of the GDC". In it, she talks about how gaming (especially multiplayer gaming) is an important part of society - something that energizes us, engages us, and prepares us to collaborate and compete with others for a greater purpose.
To that effect, this slideshow from her speech "Making Your Own Reality" is about how game designers will be turning our entertainment time into productive work for the betterment of our world.
Think about this: Wikipedia consists of 100 million mental hours from a highly diverse knowledge community - the equivalent of 5 days of World of Warcraft.
Check out the slideshow, and know your GoH!
Slideshow:
Her current project is Top Secret Dance-Off. From the site: "Welcome to the underground world of dance quests and dance-offs. Discover new dance battlegrounds and develop your top secret Choreopowers!"
Find more videos like this on Top Secret Dance Off
UPDATE: Jane McGonigal was interviewed by BoingBoing after the GDC! Come for the games discussion, stay for the Katamari Dance-off!
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