bookmark_border2016’s Hack of Honor: Sirius

Time to announce another Guest of Honor!

Our Hack of Honor for 2016 is Sirius, an “open [source] end-to-end standalone speech and vision based intelligent personal assistant (IPA) similar to Apple’s Siri, Google’s Google Now, Microsoft’s Cortana, and Amazon’s Echo.”

Joining us in April will be Professors Jason Mars and Lingjia Tang to talk about how open source software and warehouse-scale computing work together.

More details

sirius

bookmark_borderCall for Event Proposals

SF Spelling Bee winners
The winners of the 2015 Sci-Fi Spelling Bee

Penguicon is now accepting proposals for events for Penguicon 2016!

Due to the very large number of awesome event possibilities we receive from our community, we’ve made some changes to our programming planning process.

Previously, the programming team approved submitted events throughout the year. Now, we will consider all event proposals after the submission deadline of February 1st.

This new system is a more organized way of determining which events to accept. It also allows us to potentially combine related events more easily so we can include more presenters.

Some events, like Guest of Honor speeches or events requiring alternate function space, may be accepted or declined early.

Contemplating Life Size Jenga in the front lobby
Contemplating Life Size Jenga in the front lobby

We have made a separate form for event suggestions – it should make it easier for you to submit more of your inspired ideas without knowing everything about what it would look like.

It will also be easier for the programming team to know the difference between “I’d like to see this” and “I commit to making this happen.”

  • To submit a proposal for an event you intend to present, please use our event proposal form.
  • If you have suggestion for an event you would like to see at Penguicon that you don’t want to present yourself, please use our event suggestion form.

We can’t wait to see all the amazing ideas you will submit this year!

bookmark_borderProgramming changes for 2016

IMG_9432Programming is hard at work getting ready for Penguicon 2016! There have been some changes to our track line-up that we want to share.

The planned tracks for Penguicon 2016 are: Action Adventure, After Dark, Anime, Comics, Costuming, DIY, Eco, Food, Gaming, Life, Literature, Mayhem, Media, Science, and Technology.

Our new Media track will include events related to film, TV, music, and online video. The Comics track is for both traditional and web comics. The Gaming track will now include events related to both table top gaming and videogames.

The music track has posed a challenge as we attempted to present quality music while holding to Penguicon’s policy not to to pay presenters’ expenses. While we will still welcome music events at Penguicon, we will not have a dedicated Music track for 2016.

bookmark_borderHotel Registration is now available for 2016!

bannerRegistration for the Westin Hotel is now available! Please visit our hotel page for details, and follow the link provided.

If you’d like special accommodations or if you’d like to sign up to throw a room party, please fill out our Special Requests form – this year, you only need submit one form for hotel parties AND for requests like a suite or a microwave, and our hotel liaison and our room party coordinator will work together to make that happen for you.

Please note that our regular room rate has gone up from 2015, though our suite rate has not.

If you have any questions, please email [email protected]!

bookmark_borderVolunteer Update

volunteersJessica Roland, Head of Volunteers, has asked me to share an update on volunteering at Penguicon. If you have any questions, she can be reached at [email protected].

I am so very excited to be heading up Volunteering for Penguicon for 2016. I hope you will all be just as excited to have me!

For those that don’t know me, I’m Jessica Roland, and most recently I was known as the Internal Communications person for 2014/2015. I loved getting to know so many Penguicon members through that position, but am equally glad to hand the reins off to Meghan, who will continue to help the community grow.

What you might not know, unless you have spent any time talking to me, is that volunteering is a part of my DNA. (Seriously. I get twitchy if I can’t give back to causes I love.) As such, I tend to gush a bit and like to share that passion with anyone that is interested in listening. I want to use that passion to help grow the volunteer aspect of Penguicon.

Penguicon is a 100% volunteer-run organization. No one makes any money off of helping bring this amazing weekend-long event to you every year—not even our speakers or GoH speakers are paid for their time. That being said, I think there is still opportunity for growth in our organization to help cultivate the volunteer culture that is really at the heart of our community.

I want Penguicon to be known as the con that gives back—not only to ourselves, but to the communities that we live and work in as well as the charities that we support each year. I want everyone that is volunteering to be excited to be a part of a well-organized event where they feel appreciated, accepted, and knowledgeable. I also want them to be in positions that they are happy to be helping with that only ask them to step out of their comfort zone if they choose to do so.

There are so many opportunities within Penguicon where you can help. It doesn’t matter if you can only give one hour at the con or volunteer continuously throughout the year—we have a place for you. It will be my job to help you find the perfect fit for your time, talent, and interests.

If you love volunteering with Penguicon, I hope you will take a moment to let me know what you thought worked well and what you thought we could do better. Please email me any feedback on your experience volunteering at the con.

If you are ready to start your own volunteer experience, please take a moment to fill out the volunteer interest form so we can find the right opportunity for you. I look forward to working with all of you this year.

bookmark_borderWelcome to the 2016 web site!

Penguicon_2016-logo_v2We are still working on the style for 2016, but in the meantime we’d like you to have access to the latest information and have a central place for news, so we’ve copied over 2015’s style. We will modify this as time goes on.

The important recent updates are that we are not meeting physically for ConCom meetings in early summer – all meetings will be done online through video chat until the meeting on August 30th. We will be sure to share that information with everyone – all of our meetings are open to the public.

We have finalized our hotel (the Westin!), and we’re also excited to note that we’ll be moving to a larger storage cube, which should lead to better organization and quicker transport on the Thursday before Penguicon.

See you again soon!

bookmark_borderAnnouncements from the May ConCom meeting

smos_picnicOur May ConCom meeting notes will be out shortly, but I thought I’d spread the word about a few things beforehand:

We are hard at work on our 2016 web site! We have a number of professionals in various specialties of web design contributing this year.

Each of our ConCom members will have an assistant (or Lead Staff) position, all the better to make sure our knowledge transfers and we continue to keep new people involved in running Penguicon.

Our Con Committee has expanded! Head of Volunteers will be a year-round role for 2016. Jessica Roland​ has some great ideas for how to keep everyone involved, fully trained for the positions needed, and feeling the Penguicon love.  The Volunteer Bash and the Staff Appreciation Party are likely to happen again this year, along with other volunteer-focused events.

We are changing the role of Assistant Chair to have a wider focus.  Some of the departments the AC will shepherd include our Maker Market, Charity Drive, and Maker Space, allowing our Head of Programming to focus on our tracks. Thanks very much to Daniel Dugan​ (who was critical to the success of our 3d-printing effort last year) for stepping up to a challenging role.

Julie Winningham jumped in at the last moment to make our film track fly last year, and has been asked to be the Assistant Head of Programming (one of the Lead Staff positions) – not only helping Janet with our main tracks, but sheperding our special event departments like Geek Prom, Chaos Machine, and Geeks with Guns. She did an incredible job as a Co-Head of Programming for ConFusion in 2015, and we’re lucky to have her help.

Other changes include Nicole Milkovich as Marketing, Heather Fish​ in Sponsorships, and of course Meghan Oliver​ (who introduced herself on FB) for Community.

We’re hoping to post our organization chart, along with the positions that are yet to be filled, very soon.

BX7U0562Also, we believe we are days away from announcing a contract – we have put our heads together with multiple hotels, each with their own positives and negatives. We’ll announce that as soon as we can, but worry not, those hotels have each committed to the dates of April 29th – May 1st, 2016.

FINALLY: We’ve decided that June and July weekends are too crazy for in-person meetings. Parties and other social events are likely to happen, still.

We intend to plan a mid-week video hangout for those months, and will be resuming physical ConCom meetings in August (30th, to be precise). Amanda Robinson​ has offered her place (and pool!) again.

I’m terribly excited to have gotten so much done at our first meeting. Thanks to all who attended!