Just Casting The Fishing Pole Out There And Seeing What Bites

This is not a post about all the things that are going right with Penguicon. They are unprecedentedly vast. This is about where I would like some help.



I have such hard-working people in Penguicon this year. Their dedication is obvious. They even have a surplus of it to start a brand-new summer relaxicon. I don't see that as the problem. I'm just trying to decide if I've failed in achieving my ambitions, or if creating the more-organized Penguicon I have always dreamed of would be one that would suck the fun out of it, and that's why it remains disorganized. I'm having one of those days. It's an annual thing.

So, Trevor contacted me today to mention that the online Penguicon schedule is "despairingly empty" compared to what we had accomplished when he joined up in November of last year. The website is far worse than it was last year, because there is a new content editor that is broken and painful to use, and in the middle of being replaced. I'm feeling very down, and there is really no one to blame. I would love to blame myself, because that would give a feeling of control. Alternately, the realities of the environment could just be what they are, and I have no solution.

When I was Minister of Communications for Penguicon 3.0, it bothered me that I was distributing inaccurate information. You remember when Melissa O. was in charge of it. She said it was normal for the program participants to not know what their schedule was until they showed up at the event. The whole thing was a mess.

I became Head of Programming for 5.0 out of frustration with the consistently disorganized Heads of Programming. But we didn't have an information organizer at the steering wheel for the program book, website, and signage. So my accurate information went out inaccurate and unattractive.

I switched back to communications for the most recent Penguicon, but did most of the information organizing for programming because it was being neglected. Trying to do both, I did them both poorly. The program book, formerly the crown jewel of my performance, was a fiasco. Programming used DabbleDB and a Google Spreadsheet, but they were in conflict with each other. The Google Spreadsheet didn't let people collaborate, and because only the Head of Programing (who was not me) could operate it, it was a bottleneck and therefore incomplete. But DabbleDB doesn't catch conflicts like a spreadsheet does! So it was complete, but full of schedule conflicts. This year we talked about putting back Aaron's online scheduler that we used for 4.0. We have far more internet-administration work with the website than we have available tech-savvy labor, so it hasn't been implemented.

The only solution, it seemed at the time, was to become Conchair for 7.0 and recruit enough people to put sufficient work into every link in the communication chain.

This year I put in place a Scheduling Wrangler, and then he agreed to be Head of Programming for ConFusion. I said, please don't do both. It can't be done. But fandom in Michigan had no one to give to ConFusion. His dedication is frankly flabbergasting, and he deserves the thanks of all of you. More importantly, he deserves our support and help.

I also have some very organized people who I tried to place in charge of putting information on the website, so that Ron wouldn't have to do it. He has too much work on the technological side, and I don't want him doing information management on top of it. Ron has been very present and available. But I never see the information managers and they are complete absentees. I've gone to people and explained precisely what I needed from them. I tried to show faith and not nag them.

I know it wasn't the fault of previous chairs for not putting manpower in place along the communication chain who would get done sufficient work. You can only recruit from those who are available. With so many conventions, super organization is too large a job for our state's labor pool, period. Either that, or I am a failure. I am open to either hypothesis.

treebones once said I seemed to be dangerously similar to K.D. because of my high standards, and that was a very important warning for me. (When I worked with K.D. on 'Fusion she acted like I should have been born knowing all the steps that needed to be done for my job, without anyone training me.) The last thing I want to do is treat them like K.D. treated me. On the contrary, every time I see my people I'm amazed by their enthusiasm and willingness. They're doing so much. I just need to be bringing the whole convention together to communicate, and I need to do it every day.

What I realized is that I have been too private about how my year has been going. I have not asked for help publicly enough. That has been my biggest flaw-- I didn't use my biggest strength! I know there is massive support out there and everyone would love to see this work in an organized fashion. Every time I put something out there, you guys come to the rescue. So, I'm putting it out there. I have this longstanding dream of an unbroken chain of communication so that we won't have a big annual panic in March/April. There is still hope, but I am in the second act of my annual three-act play, in which I am discouraged, and it seems to me I should be open about that. I'm in charge: if you bring me a solution, I can say "let's do it that way!"

What we need right now:
1. An online scheduling app that catches conflicts, but allows multiple contributors. It must allow fields for rooms, times, titles, presenters, and descriptive blurb.
2. A tech-savvy and highly dedicated volunteer to install and maintain the online scheduler so our overworked web guy doesn't have to.
3. Someone organized, with excellent spelling and grammar, to be in charge of putting content on the website, who doesn't need me to hunt them down and make them do it. You need to be knowledgeable of our convention so that you know what we need up there, but you can use past websites as a reference.