shadowspar | Penguicon 5.0 con report novella

All right -- here's my long-awaited post-con wrapup. I was worried that I was going to be the last person in the known universe to finish a Penguicon 5.0 con report, but twoofdtm, in her benevolence, has kindly refrained from posting her Saturday and Sunday writeups so as not to hurt my feelings. *poke* *poke* =)

(Between the length of the text, starting a new job, taking a week-long trip down south, and the other sundry pressures of life, I suppose it's no wonder it took so long, but still.)

Intro

The last con I went to was Penguicon 1.0. Not long after, I moved to the west coast, which made attending successive Penguicons very difficult (though at least one person informed me sternly that a thousand dollars in airfare and spending two solid days in transit was simply no excuse.) Now that I'm back in the Sault, though, there was no way I was missing out.

In my con-newbieness at P1.0, I was so overwhelmed with taking in everything that was going on that the idea of volunteering didn't even dawn on me until we were pulling out of the hotel to head home. But I knew I had to be a part of this sheer concentrated awesomeness that was Penguicon, so this time I arranged to pull in Thursday night and help setting up (much thanks to Steve, Rachel, Shar, and anyone else who had a hand in finding me a place to crash.)

Thursday

The drive from the Sault to Detroit usually clocks in at 5h30 or so if you're making good time and not stopping very much. My original plan was to get going around midmorning or so, but it was 1315 by the time things finally got squared away and I was headed across the International Bridge. My daughter had woke up at 5 in the morning the night before, so I desperately needed the triple vanilla latte that I got from the newly opened Tsarbucks in Gaylord. I thought that was going to be enough to get me through to the hotel, but my alertness level started flagging a bit around Birch Run, so I stopped for an Americano boost there. Between my sleep-deprivedness and the fact that my rental car had no cruise control, it's not surprising that it was almost 8pm by the time I pulled into the Troy Hilton.

After running into tammylc in the parking lot (the 'conchair' license plate is a dead giveaway), I hooked up with a horde of other fen to schlep stuff up to the storage room and consuites from the cube van. (I'm still not sure who all was there at first -- though I believe Shar, jer_, and ellalthea were there, amongst others. Schlepped stuff back and forth between storage and consuites. Schlepped ice to the consuite so that Mark could charge up the jockey boxes and begin the chilling of beer and cider. As is wont to happen, all work ground to a halt after the cider keg was tapped so that we could partake in the sacred sacrament of Chuck's (the first of many such rituals to be held this weekend.) I ended up chilling out in the 'taproom' for most of the night with bardicwench, twoofdtm, Erin, and Mark; Shar and landley popped in; I'm sure there were several others who I'm missing (sorry! my bad). phecda -- el jefe maximo himself -- stopped in to make LN₂ ice cream. (As much as he looked sharp in his tux the next day, I have to admit that the white lab coat really, really suited him. I hear he had no grey hair a year ago, too, but that is an occupational hazard of being conchair.)

cathyr19355's game of Puerto Rico lasted far longer than I did -- in fact, I think that went for most of us Thursday-nighters. After the crowd had thinned significantly, I followed suit and toddled off to bed.

Now, Shar had told me to crash in the smoking consuite, but in my confusion (wasn't the hotel supposed to be split into one smoking and one non-smoking floor?) I ended up crashing in storage instead. This led to much fun in the morning, with Shar wondering if I'd slept in the streets or some such.

Friday

I was planning on sleeping in Friday morning to prime up for the weekend ahead, but it didn't happen. Instead, my eyes popped open at 7, which is usually around the time that my daughter wakes up and starts calling out 'dada...dada...' in the morning. =) I got up, cleaned up, and looked around the hotel for other fen, but (unsurprisingly) nobody else seemed to be up and about. Time to explore! After all, I wasn't going to get a chance to look around much for the rest of the weekend. I jumped in the car, grabbed a vanilla cap from the nearby Tsarbucks, and found the Japanese place that was near the hotel so I could buy pokki (ポッキー; y'all call it pocky over here) to give away at the con. Checked my bank account at an ATM to see if the wire transfer that was supposed to have come through had done (it hadn't).

Back at the hotel, I was definitely starting to notice my docs getting unpleasantly sweaty. They're not the most breathable footwear, and this pair are at that stage where they start to smell like rotting dead cow when they get really damp -- not a good attribute to have when you're packed in with a bunch of fen on a consuite couch.

Kimba (and somebody else whose name I can't recall) helpfully pointed me towards Oakland Mall, and I set off on a long-overdue quest for a new pair of sneaks. I was just looking for a simple pair of Vans or Airwalks or some such, but apparently I am on the wrong side of the fashion curve, because I tore through every shoe-selling store in the mall without coming up with something that fit me and that I could afford. To add insult to injury, my beloved iPod gave up the ghost just as I was heading in to start shopping. I stopped at Panera for lunch, checked out Dick's Sporting Goods (still no dice) and was ready to give up hope when I saw a beacon of hope on the horizon: Targé! Success! I left with a cheap pair of shoes suitable for the fashion-impaired such as myself, as well as a four-pack of Bawls besides (my first time trying it -- they don't appear to sell it in Canada.)

Unnerved that I was wasting all this time tracking down shoes instead of actually spending time at the con, I raced back towards the hotel, stopping at Nobana to pick up pokki now that they were open. Back at the con, I ended up tagging along with Mark because he had volunteer-ish stuff that needed doing and is just a generally cool guy. After setting up some presentation equipment, and using copious amounts of gaffer's tape to tack down the extension cords in the Northfield rooms, I set out to sort out my hotel room.

Now, when it came to booking rooms, I just barely managed to slide under the wire and snatch the last one. This was made even more obvious by the fact that the hotel website assigned me a smoking accessible room -- two features which I'd rather not have and don't need, respectively. Rachel Weisenfeld mentioned over e-mail that she'd try and swap me out for an unassigned room in the room party block if I didn't mind the noise, but I wasn't having much luck finding her Friday at the con. As it turns out, she didn't make it in until Saturday, but the hotel staff hooked me up anyway -- a nonsmoking king room directly across from consuite. Schweet! For anyone intent on getting a lot of sleep that'd be a bad thing, but I was planning on spending a lot of time in consuite and had come armed with earplugs, so as far as I was concerned this was the best room in the hotel.

I actually got to hit some panels on Friday -- opening ceremonies, chocolate ritual, and Aaron Thul's PostgreSQL and Explaining Explain. Some time during the day, I exchanged some (awesome) Free Hugs with twoofdtm and brendand, as well as making damn sure to get up to atdt1991's Free Hugs / Free Software room party -- that's a four-word summary of my interests if ever there were one.

As I recall, after that I was roped into the UHACC room party by JoeR -- he was aggressively herding people into their room so that you could check out their uber-cool trojan horse music setup. (Of course it runs linux!) Joe is one of the many, many cool people I would have loved to spend more time with, but didn't. He seemed totally tickled by every aspect of my Canadianness, and regaled me with tales of his Canadian aunt from long ago. So many nifty folks, so little time... *sigh*

I'd signed up for an 11-3 shift in consuite because I knew that things were going to pick up there as soon as the panels finished, and whoever was there would almost certainly not turn down some help. I actually meant to put myself on the board for 11-2, but as it happened I'd marked myself in until 3, ended up staying past 4, and finally getting to sleep about 5. I hung out behind the counter in the consuite kitchenette most of the night; it's blocked off when the second door to the room is open, so I was actually kind of penned in there. brendand, amongst others, asked what I'd done to merit my confinement and if there was some kind of further punishment I needed. (My wife's comment on hearing this: "I must really trust you.") Most of the night was spent with with jer_, caffeinatedelf, Cylithria, and two guys whose online personas I haven't yet found (sorry!). We mostly just hung around and talked shit (often literally -- if you know jer_, you'll understand what I mean.)

I have to say, so far as volunteering goes, I could stand to be in the consuite all convention. They say that beer troll is the easiest job at a con, but my stints in consuite basically consisted of:

Hanging out with interesting people and shooting the breeze,
Occasionally doing a spin around the room to load the tub, fill the snacks, and clean up a bit,
Making an occasional run for supplies, and
Answering questions from those who were not yet quite sure how to operate a consuite.

To elaborate on that last point, I offer this, the newly-minted Penguicon 5.0 Consuite FAQ:

Q: Where are the drinks?: A: Around the corner, in the tub.
Q: Where are the diet drinks?: A: On your left, opposite the tub.
Q: Where's the beer?: A: Room on your right; through the door with the sign that says BEER.
Q: Hey, I think you're out of (foo).: A: Thanks; I'll get some more!

Most of the folks I was chatting with were still up when I slunk off to bed around 0430 -- most notably, jer_ is the consuite hero who worked the 2300--0700 shift both Friday and Saturday nights. I knew I was going to be screwed if I stayed up till the break of dawn, though, especially since I seem to be cursed with an inability to sleep in as of late.

Saturday

For someone who really, really likes their sleep, I am surprisingly good at dragging my groggy self out of bed and into the shower. Saturday's first session was (of course) the 10am coffee ritual. matt_arnold makes an awesome pope -- totally channelling the essence of a Monty Python theologian. Next was the intro to penguicon panel -- not because I feel like I need an intro, but because I'm always interested in hearing what questions newcomers have, helping to fill in any gaps, and just being helpful in general.

In trying to follow the spirit of the '2' in '5-2-1', I took off to Panera for 'breakfast' -- 'breakfast' in this case being a steak sandwich. (Today was apparently to be a steak day.) I got back in time for the "Design better airport security with OSS methods" panel, which really branched out into the start of an insightful and thought-provoking discussion on how we might assemble a grassroots distributed, transparent (inter?)national security apparatus. As always, Penguicon fulfilled its mandate of making you wish that you could be in at least three places at any given time -- I could have just followed Bruce Schneier and Christine Peterson around like a lost puppy all weekend and still have come away happy.

Next, it was time to head up to consuite for the fine chocolate tasting. cathyr19355 had assembled a panel of about a dozen different chocolate, ranging from (I think) 35% to 80% cocoa and originating from all over the world. (My meagre offering of a 38% Cocoa Camino Mocha bar seemed a bit underwhelming by comparison.) I should know this by now, but there really is a distinct variance in different chocolates, just the same as there is in different wines, beers, sake, breads, etc... I'm not usually a big fan of the really high cocoa mass stuff, but there was a 74% bar there that I could have hoarded all to myself -- It had such a distinct nutty flavour to it that you were hard pressed to believe it didn't have almond powder in it or some such. Very illuminating.

Taking a break from the food track for a bit, I elected to go to work on a t-shirt design. For a while now, I've wanted to make up a Battle for Wesnoth shirt. It's a great game, complete with music and graphics of quality so amazing it's difficult even for me to believe that someone gave them away for free. Cool open source projects can always use more publicity, whence the shirt. I'd envisioned something simple -- one of the character icons from the game in the top right corner, with the text wesnoth.org beneath. With the MystPrint folks on site, I figured there was no better time to get it made.

[Wesnoth elven hero t-shirt image; 17K PNG] Of course, I didn't actually come prepared for this eventuality, but was able to capitalize on it thanks to the folks who set up the computer room. I grabbed a workstation, downloaded the image I wanted (Elven Hero), fired up the Gimp, scaled things up, and added the text. I was trying to find a good font for the lettering -- something vaguely medieval-looking -- but none of the system fonts really fit the bill. caffeinatedelf jumped in to give me a hand and try to jazz the text up with a drop shadow or some such. We didn't meet with much success, but I appreciated the help from someone who has a clue about graphical design (as opposed to, say, a hack like myself.) I settled on Courier to give it more of a techno-geek look, put it up on the web, and got the MystPrint folks to pull it down onto their own machine. They were totally overwhelmed by the amount of printing they had to do (yay! a good problem to have) so they told me I'd most likely be queued up for Sunday morning.

While waiting for my crack at the brazilian steak (5pm), I had the honour of having chupaquesos made for me by howardtayler and jmaynard -- the head chupaqueso honchos themselves. (Jay reprised his role of "Tron Guy" this weekend, but also had a Schlock costume I thought he'd done a wicked cool job on, including the floaty rank stars over his shoulders.) I witnessed caffeinatedelf relish a chocolate chupequeso with an expression that bordered on rapturous. The brazilian-style steak was pretty good; I noticed the saltiness of it, but since I eat very little salt on a regular basis, I'm rather sensitive to the taste of it. To round out the food notes for today, somebody else gave me pokki -- super cool! I got a kick out of the fact that I wasn't the only one passing out Japanese junk food.

After dinner, I took in the principles of swordsmanship panel. The folks from Aegis are awesome -- they kick ass and they're funny. You get the feeling that they'd all be right at home in a wisecracking swashbuckling flick. I skipped the next panel (which was to be either "Self defense through prevention" or "Technology as legislation") to make a phone call home and give my wife and daughter an update on the Penguicon goings-on. My daughter squeaked and squawked in delight at hearing her Dad over the phone. I could tell that she missed me, which was a bit heartbreaking. It's one thing to take a trip and take leave from those who can understand why, but quite another when your one year old daughter loves and misses you and doesn't understand why you're not around to feed her breakfast or tickle her ribs or read her stories or give her a bath.

I'd passed on the masquerade at Penguicon 1.0 because, being new to fandom, I hadn't realized what a big deal masquerades were. I made a point of attending this time. ellalthea did a wicked cool job on her Chun Li costume and was appropriately rewarded with a "Best Re-creation" trophy. The winner of the masquerade (I believe she was a mudkip, though not being Pokemon-savvy, I didn't know this at the time) had a good costume, but I think her wordless stage presence was what won her the prize -- she did a great job of eliciting the bouncy-happy-too-cute-for-words-anime nature.

After kicking around in consuite a bit to kill some time, I grabbed my djembe and headed down to the drumming class. Ryan (from Like Water Drumworks) was truly an amazing drum teacher. Despite my very amateurish and very out-of-practice drum skillz, I felt right at home, and we managed to get a pretty good rhythm going. He taught us a hunters' rhythm called sofa (pronounced 'So-Fa', not like the couch), and passed along some of his knowledge of and experience with African culture, which was super cool.

I thought about hanging around and taking part in the drum circle that was sure to follow the class, but I knew that I was going to have to get moving if I was going to be able to check out the room parties and get enough rest overnight to be able to make the drive home tomorrow. I hung out with the UHACCers and JoeR for a bit again, cruised the halls a bit, and ended up spending a while with the General Technics folks, who kindly served me some Turkish coffee with some kind of unidentifiable alcohol in it. So many people give of themselves to do such cool things at con, and don't really expect anything in return...it almost seems like a foreign concept sometimes. I still sometimes feel almost -- guilty? Along the lines of a new fan in consuite -- "You mean I can have any of this, and it's all free??" But when I reflect that a con is a collective effort that we're all putting on together, it's all good -- I just have to make sure I do my part too.

I never did find the sushi room party. I heard that they ran out of sushi supplies early, though that wasn't really the point for me -- I was more interested in hanging around and chatting with other Japan-o-philes. (日本語喋る?) twoofdtm's persistent attempts to guilt me into coming to her Guitar Hero room party paid off in the end (actually, I knew I was going to end up there for a while eventually; I just wanted to make sure I checked everything else out before I got comfy.) Thankfully, all of the virtual Jimi Hendrices who inhabited the room were kind enough not to mock my abject lack of Guitar Heroism. (I'm admittedly a bit surprised how little my practice with Frets on Fire helped.)

I called it quits at 3, at which point things were (of course) still going fairly strong. This time, though, I was tired enough that I didn't need earplugs to drift off to sleep.

Sunday

Knowing that few other fen would be up for staffing the consuite on Sunday morning, I'd signed up for a 9-11 shift. The alarm went off at 8:30, and I managed to drag myself out of bed just in time to haul myself through the shower, into some clothes, an into consuite to try to stock up for the breakfast crowd.

Ironically enough, coffee ritual was cancelled because matt_arnold didn't get up in time -- I believe that was due to an alarm clock that didn't go off and not an out-and-out lack of caffeine, though. I feel like I spent most of my time chasing breakfast-y food and playing coffee jockey. Charging up the drip coffee maker for a batch of rocket fuel by dumping two bottles of Water Joe into the reservoir was mildly exciting -- somewhat akin to what paramedics must feel when they charge up the defibrillator paddles, I'm sure. (I also confess to being a bit surprised at the reactions of some folks in the consuite when we did this -- did you not know that we were going to do crazy stuff like this? Welcome to penguicon! =)

When my consuite shift was up, I headed down to the dealers room to see if the folks at MystPrint had had a chance to get around to my shirt. As it turns out, there was a bit of a mix-up with finding my art, but nothing they couldn't sort out, and I soon ended up with my jazzy new one-of-a-kind wesnoth shirt. They didn't want to charge me full price on account of the image on the shirt being so small (a kind of feeling I can appreciate in my own line of work -- feeling like you're ripping people off when you charge money for doing something you love) but I've been on the other side of the small business equation in the past and pointed out to them that they need to make some money too.

Between packing up my hotel room and getting my shirt sorted out, I didn't manage to make it to the Women in Technology panel, a fact that was doubly distressing since I later found that it was renniekins' brainchild (another person who seemed super-cool but who I really didn't have a chance to converse with much at the con.) I would have really have preferred to stick around for the closing ceremonies / gripe session too, but I really didn't get enough rest relative to the drive home I was about to face. Instead, I helped twoofdtm clean up a bit from her room party, then picked up my volunteer refund as soon as the desk opened (gas money for the trip home).

(sigh) After that, it was time for that most melancholy part of any con -- bidding farewell. I made the rounds and tried to make sure to say goodbye to the folks I'd gotten to know best over the course of the weekend, because I'm not likely to see them in person again 'til next year. As much as I'd like to make it down to all the cons Michigan has to offer, I haven't yet figured out a way to attend one without dumping $350 or more, which really limits how often I can afford to do it. =(

In the end, I think I managed to track down everybody except caffeinatedelf. I reached the consuite just as jer_ was mixing up his batch of ManCream^tm LN₂ ice cream; etain offered me the last little bit of it off the spoon they'd used to mix it up. I have to say that that was about all anyone should consume of the stuff; while it didn't make me vomit, that's about the best there is to be said for it.

The drive back home was hard for a couple of reasons. The most obvious was the limited amount of sleep I was operating under, but taking things slowly and loading up on caffeine helped with that. (As an aside -- yes, McDonald's coffee really does exhibit the gastrointestinal properties we discussed in consuite Friday night.) But the real reason is that you just don't want to tear yourself away from the incredible people you've met and the utopic little microculture you've collectively created over the course of the weekend. When you've been steeped in this kind of geeky-fannish-all-embracing "safe space" over the weekend, it goes without saying that the prospect of venturing back out into the big bad mundane world fails to excite. I just put the pedal down, cranked the j-pop up, and tried not to think about it too much. I really misted up on the way out of Troy, but the thought of reunion with my wife and daughter began to lift my spirits as I drew nearer to home.

I suppose you can't really get to know somebody over the course of a weekend, but that hardly seems to detract from the kinship you feel and the bonds you form. Perhaps it has something to do with starting out with so much common ground -- fan or geek, a lot of us have had (and still have) the feeling of being outsiders in the mundane world, and IMHO, Penguicon tends to concentrate intelligent, interesting, and unconventional people besides. Perhaps, then, it's no wonder that being at con fills me with such a sense of community.

Conclusion

What more is there to say? A good time was had by all. Helping out was a blast; so much so that I volunteered to do more of it next time. Next year, I'll be one of the consuite staff, and in the meantime I'm going to assemble a Google Maps mashup showing food and other interesting things around the hotel. (Doubtless this is how the slippery slope to conchairship, penury, and insanity begins.)

So that's it! My con report, at long last. As an aside, if anybody's interested in the special limited-edition Penguicon 5.0 Road Mix j-pop mix cd that I burned just for the trip down, let me know and I'll go into more detail about what was on it.