Michael Lee's Train of Thought

MinneBar and the Organization of Conventions

2008-05-08T15:09:00.001-05:00

I would love to attend MinneBar but sadly I've had a conflict both this year and last year. But one of the things that interests me is that at least for me, the nature of how we try to do programming at the science fiction convention CONvergence is not that far off of the BarCamp philosophy.

Obviously, unlike a BarCamp there is a membership fee for CONvergence -- and if you haven't registered, now is the time to do so -- but that's because we aren't sponsored by organizations and companies in the same way either. We're renting the space, buying the food, flying in and putting up the guests of honor. We're also fund-raising for our non profit -- sending authors and scientists to schools, supporting our community in both the narrow and larger sense.

An event like a BarCamp is mainly scheduled collaboratively online by the participants -- it's user-driven and built by the people attending it. That's different from some other conferences where the event may be packaged by some corporate sponsor and you have people in the audience and the people on stage.

And as I look at this, I see that we have a similar sort of programming philosophy at CONvergence in a lot of ways, and did before the BarCamp phenomena really started -- we certainly encourage our membership to present and participate in programming. It's not identical -- we have a little bit more centralization and formal scheduling -- but I certainly find this sort of method a good way to do it for the more informal type of events like this.

Even as we bring in outside professionals and expect our programming to be organized ahead of the event -- so we can make it accessible and organized -- we certainly try to have it so our program in proposed and filled out by people that volunteer for events.

This is certainly a bit different from how some other sf events might do it -- while we do dig up panelists, and invite people to sit particular events -- the expectation is that most of the event is participant-driven.

One of the complaints I hear from time to time is that "CONvergence doesn't have moderators" -- and certainly I don't think the programming department should always be dictating who the moderators actually are -- but I would certainly encourage any panel to have a moderator. But that's really something that can be decided on a panel-by-panel level, and shouldn't (and with several hundred panels, realistically can't) be addressed by a programming head in many cases. That's the sort of thing that can --and to some extent, really should -- really be driven by the participants.

I suppose there is always some degree of overlap between technology and SF Conventions -- but I think sometimes it's not even as overt as Penguincon does it...

I'm a Marvel...and I'm a DC

2008-05-04T11:06:00.002-05:00

I thought Iron Man was fantastic -- and I'm looking forward to and have very high expectations for The Dark Knight -- so I love this little YouTube clip:

CONvergence Programming - Grid Lock!

2008-04-25T20:51:00.002-05:00

I may not be the programming head -- but the programming head will be reporting to me starting next year as part of the events division, and as I'd previously been a head, it's important for me to promote the schedule.

The schedule has started to solidify now, and to quote the current programming head:

And please, please, please - if you are attending the convention and see some panels you would like to be on - follow the email instructions at the top of the webpage and let me know. Usually we have a limit of six people per panel, so if you see a panel that already has six people on it, then it's full - pick some that have 0-4 people instead, you can really help the programming dept. out!

Likewise, some panels are just for guests of honor or are gameshow style panels that have certain panelists who are running the event (again, should be pretty clear which these are from the panel description).

We recommend a limit of eight panels per person to avoid burnout (but if you can handle more and I have personal knowledge of that - then we can make exceptions).

So, if you are attending the con, please sign up for some (more) panels and pass the message along!

It's going to be an exciting year -- and I'm really excited to see the schedule come together.

CONvergence: Best of the Twin Cities

2008-04-24T18:07:00.001-05:00

I'm astonished that CONvergence was chosen by City Pages as Best of the Twin Cities. Not because we were picked -- but that the category was even created this year.

It is a great compliment to the hundreds of people that have been involved in putting the event on, especially since the publicity was not searched for.

True, they had a typo and changed Marv Wolfman's gender (to Mary) -- but otherwise it was a very nice description and something I'm happy to point to.

Hopefully we'll see this sort of stuff really come out in the fall

2008-04-18T19:46:00.003-05:00

When it's the general election.....because I think this election can really have a lot of this sort of content really cut through the traditional media sources and political commercials...and yes, make it fun as well as serious.

The Universal Calendar

2008-04-18T18:39:00.001-05:00

One of the things that is a bit of a hassle is that you really would like one calendar to cover a number of your bases. You want to make sure that your calendar has your availability for work, and you can access it at home, or on your blackberry, or wherever.

And thankfully, I've finally got what I think might be a solution. With Google's mobile solution, you can sync your calendar with your BlackBerry. This is a good place to start.

One of the more complicated sides, then, is getting it synchronized with your iCal if you are a Mac user. I'm not synchronizing my BlackBerry with my Mac in a plugged in fashion -- but by using a tool like BusySync, I can sync it up with the Google calendar -- which will then sync with the BlackBerry.

Bingo, calendar unification has been achieved.

I'm still trying out BusySync -- it's not free, but if it works, I'll definitely go ahead and get it.

Harsh ABC Debate Coverage...

2008-04-18T15:44:00.001-05:00

I think the reviews of ABC's debate on Wednesday have gotten pretty harsh...

Funny!

2008-04-14T21:12:00.001-05:00

Well, at least now we know that a Cat with a Theremin is funny...I would imagine almost any other animal would be as well...

Keeping in Sync

2008-04-13T17:22:00.003-05:00

In general, the iTunes/iPod ecosystem works pretty well. By now I've had my music collection ripped and downloaded across a couple of different operating systems and computers over the last decade or so. And I'm able to keep the basics of the file formats in synch between my laptop and desktop Mac pretty well by using the rsync UNIX command.

But there are some things that make me very nervous. By now I've kept pretty good handle on my ratings and last play dates -- and I use both of those fairly actively when I set up the playlists to synchronize with an iPod, so I keep a mix of songs on my iPod based on how frequently songs are played and when they were last played.

And that's something that is a bit more of a challenge to keep synchronized across iTunes libraries used by different users across multiple machines. You'd like to be able to keep track of what the last playtime, date, and number of plays no matter what computer you've used. And if you have a library of songs, you really would like to minimize the amount of work you need to do to add songs to the various libraries.

I'm not sure I have a perfect system. rsync certainly helps things a great deal keeping the files in sync -- but it's a little less straight forward to keep the metadata synchronized across libraries.

Lock-in

2008-04-09T22:13:00.001-05:00

Garrick van Buren's thoughts about how Free & Open Is Its Own Lock-in triggered some of my own thoughts about lock-in that have been going in my head for a while about lock-in.

The simple fact is, we always are locked in to some extent -- we learn a tool set, or a technology, and we want to continue to use it. And we don't want to throw away an investment of years.

I've primarily been developing on the Microsoft platform for most of my post-collegiate career. And we're locked into Microsoft technology all the time -- C#, VB.Net, Microsoft Office, or SQL Server. There are downsides to that, as well as positive sides.

It is tempting to go and say that there would be no lock in if you were in the Linux utopia and then not be sharecropping. And that may be true from a developer perspective -- but the final end user, in most cases, won't be a person with a software development background. And they're really going to be more "locked in" to what their software providers give them in any case.

So unless you're constantly willing to develop and maintain all of the software yourself as an individual --- and very few organizations are willing or able to do that. You're going to outsource pieces of your IT infrastructure. From Operating Systems, to office productivity tools, to database management systems, to enterprise applications like ERP, CRM, Financial Software, or whatever -- organizations are going to have someone else built those pieces. And they should. And as most people aren't devloping software for themselves, but they're devloping it for other people, they're dependent on other people for their work. And you can always have the land whipped out from under you.

It is the investment of energy and effort learning how a tool works, understanding the quirks that any system has -- that's the real lock-in. So perhaps one thing is to focus on the pieces that make something unique -- how can you get to a solution for your unique problem as quickly as possible? It might need to go away eventually -- and so can you built what you need as high on the stack as possible? You want to find ways to be as agile as possible, to use the buzzword in the general sense -- how can you get to a result quickly?

In a related observation, I realized what much of this conversation reminded me of. It's like the work-for-hire debates that I've seen in the comic book industry, especially from people like Dave Sim or the founders of Image Comics. It's perhaps especially relevant as we look at what happens with the the rights related to Superman. I think some of the issues related to lock-in here are similar to the decisions to self-publish or do work-for-hire work in comics. Work-for-hire is really what we're talking about here -- but it is also what most of us are going to end up doing, most of the time, and is frequently what you want to do. To use the comics comparison, if you want to work on an established character, you're not going to have complete control over the situation.

James Bond as Fantasy Hero

2008-03-30T10:39:00.001-05:00

One of the challenges when defining what 'counts' in a science fiction and fantasy convention like CONvergence is that there's stuff that you think should count, but it sometimes is a bit difficult to get there at first glance.

James Bond is one of those franchises. It's one of those things that I know that I want to include -- but it's not obviously Science Fiction or Fantasy in the conventional sense.

So it is interesting to read an article about how James Bond is a fantasy character -- which is different from the usual handwaving that I and other people would give about how all of James Bond's gadgets push him into a high tech science fiction.

Very interesting little article.

CONvergence Call For Panelists

2008-03-27T22:26:00.001-05:00

I'm no longer CONvergence programming head - and they won't formally report to me until 2009 when I take over as Events Director, but this year's list of CONvergence Panels is now available. With the larger scope of this year's convention it's especially a good chance for people to sign up and participate in panels -- the one thing about a convention like CONvergence is that in order for a programming item to happen we need participation.

There are a lot of excellent ideas out there this year -- I certainly encourage checking it out and emailing programming for panels that you want to participate in.

A More Perfect Union

2008-03-18T18:57:00.003-05:00

I'm very pleased with how Sen. Obama handles the issue that is really just underneath his whole campaign -- and it hits me as a direct, sophisticated, and honest approach to the issues of race in this country. I'm as hopeful as ever that he can make it through this campaign as we look towards making our country better.

(full text here)

Of course, in the less serious fashion, it is fun to know that the Obamas have been watching Heroes on the campaign trail as well. One of the things that I enjoy about Science Fiction fandom -- and why it is important to me that MISFITS takes its non profit status seriously is that while at times it's not *the most* diverse population around, it is also more diverse than many communities of choice that I've experienced -- we don't all share the same racial background, or religious background, or political background, or economic background -- but we can all work for common cause by choice. It may be "just for fun" -- but really, the pursuit of happiness is a good goal.

Coultonfield

2008-03-11T18:32:00.002-05:00

If you're waiting for Jonathan Coulton to return to the Twin Cities on May 1st, you can keep an eye for him here...

Gary Gygax created the world

2008-03-09T17:03:00.001-05:00

I recommend the New York Times tribute to Gary Gygax -- as many of these things are, it says what I wish I had said myself.

Very good stuff.

Lost Again

2008-03-08T14:19:00.002-06:00

I'm really enjoying this season of Lost. I know that some people find the never-ending mysteries of the series frustrating -- but I think that is part of the fun.

It is amazing that a series over three series has been able to avoid explaining even some of the most basic rules of the universe that it is in. It is obvious that it is some sort of fantastical premise -- but it is not clear whether it is a science fiction or fantasy series, or "how much" of either of those it is. It is not always clear who the good guys are and who the bad guys are -- and certainly people do bad things for good reasons, and may do good things for bad reasons.

But despite being so vague about the rules -- I rarely feel that this is a show that "cheats" -- it seems to be consistently playing by the rules that they've set out. Even though we don't really know what those rules are.

Too early for lawn mowing?

2008-03-07T18:22:00.000-06:00

It's too expensive at this point in time -- but I am still very interested in this solar lawnmower and am very excited.

Though I'll admit that sometimes mowing the yard is one way to make sure I exercise...

The Geek Gods

2008-03-04T17:45:00.003-06:00

Every now and then one will get into one of those late night convention or web forum discussion about the people that everyone on the slightly geeky side look up to.

In every one of those discussions, Gary Gygax would end up as one of those names on the list, no matter how much or how little role playing games you actually did. If you're in this sort of subculture -- Gary Gygax had an influence that reached beyond just the hard core gaming community.

So his legacy is there -- even if you, like me, haven't role played in a very long time.

Do the Math

2008-03-03T22:41:00.001-06:00

I'm enjoying CNN's Delegate counter game which lets you work out how the delegate scores have to break for each candidate to win, and let you analyze the campaign. Pretty neat.

Messing with Texas

2008-03-02T23:08:00.001-06:00

I know that there has been a lot of ink about how confusing Texas's Texas Two-Step Primary and Caucus system is -- but I've got to admit I like it.

I agonized a little about my problems with Minnesota's caucus system -- but I also recognize that there are some virtues to the caucus system, and I'd hate to have a rush to eliminate the good part of it.

One of the challenges we have is that we don't ever really have a system where one person equals one vote -- a person in a larger state, after all, will have less impact in the senate. Congressional districts don't all have the same amount of voting participation, even if they're about the same size in population.

It may be a bit nerve wracking to have something as close as this presidential nominating process be impacted by the rules in a state like this -- but one of the things that is often true, especially when you have a very large voting population -- is that the rules tend to dictate the winner just because you're always going to have some error in the election result.

So sometimes, when it is close enough that a coin flip might as well decide it -- it's going to be the team that has the rules that will decide it. Sometimes, that'll be frustrating (like it was in 2000) -- but that's really almost inevitable at times.

The real campaign, however

2008-03-01T00:27:00.000-06:00

is for Harvey Dent as District Attorney.

He might be a little two-faced for me though....

Impressive Political Response

2008-03-01T00:08:00.004-06:00

One of the good things about a healthy primary season is to see how well the political organizations respond to each other. One of the challenges is that primary battles aren't quite the same battles that you see in a general election -- one thing that was very noticable when you compared Republican and Democratic debates from earlier this year was that there were times where it looked like the two parties weren't even on the same planet, as the subjects and tone of the debates were often very, very different.

So when the Clinton campaign has an ad (that could very well be an ad that John McCain would run in the general election) like this:

It's nice to see the Obama campaign counter it with an ad like this in a matter of hours:

If Obama is the eventual nominee, I think he's going to be a better general election candidate because of his campaign's experiences in the primary season.

The Geek Vote

2008-02-29T11:56:00.001-06:00

I can't believe for a second that it would actually happen, but I'd be very amused if Barack Obama made an appearance at the San Diego Comics Convention.

One of my strangest memories mixing politics and fandom was meeting Senator Paul Wellstone in the hallways of the Sheraton after a CONvergence planning meeting. We gave him a brief description of what we were doing -- though I regret not going into the non-profit side of MISFITS a bit more.

While I look at the convention and fandom as a whole as being a bit of fun and a recreational activity, I also think it's a good way for us to do good as well. And one thing I've also realized is that some of the skills that you get out of this sort of organization running transfer over into other realms as well.

On Day Passes for SF Conventions

2008-02-28T10:26:00.001-06:00

As I'll probably be getting day passes for Marscon - provided I get over this virus I've been fighting for the last couple of days -- I thought it was interesting to think about the reasons to have or not have day passes for your science fiction convention.

Day Passes make sense for some conventions and don't make sense for others. I think you lose some of the community aspect of a convention if you have people drop in for only one day. One of the appealing parts of a convention is that community aspect -- and day passes are more appropriate for the "show" events where people get tickets to see a celebrity, as opposed to the user-generated content of my favorite fan run conventions and the attendees are members and active participants.

I'd generally be against day passes for a convention like CONvergence -- if you have a large enough attendance that you don't need the additional people to make your budget, or if you were in a position where you need to cap membership (like Anime Detour) -- Day Passes make much less sense.

I can see where Day Passes would be useful for other conventions -- especially if you're looking to get as many people as possible. I can see it as being sensible if you've got certain sorts of entertainment guests -- this is why I think it makes more sense for Marscon, because they tend to have more celebrity actors, and their Dementia music track has a "show" quality that may have an appeal for day people.

The interesting thing is that Day Passes aren't really just an economic decision -- but one that can end up reflecting the kind of convention that you put on.

Still Alive Rock Band

2008-02-26T18:08:00.001-06:00

Jonathan Coulton performs "Still Alive" in Rock Band from Joy Stiq on Vimeo.