[GLLUG] more Penguicon thoughts

[Charles Ulrich]

On Monday 23 April 2007 20:12, Richard Houser wrote:
> I'm willing to take over the gaming machines for next year, but I
> personally feel that not keeping them in the lounge would be a
> disaster and would not really want to participate.  The security
> aspect is one of the bigger parts of it.  In general, the game
> machines are going to be the more expensive towers that we will have
> there.  They also tend to be larger and heavier (mine is about as big
> as they go, but few are easy to lug around, take down, and lock up
> mid-con).  The gaming machines could easily double as more terminals
> if you want to restrict the times gaming was offered.

You're more than welcome to head up computer gaming for 6.0 and I agree, 
it's better to have the machines in the lounge where they can be 
watched without having an entirely separate security shift.

> I agree that the gaming machine, and to a lesser degree the MythTV
> machine, ended up being a babysitters.  Personally, I would prefer we
> implement a rule of no unattended children under 13 (the attending
> adult would need to be 21+) in the lounge, period.  I had no clue
> there would be that many little kids, especially with how
> inappropriate much of the content at the convention was and the
> warnings during registration. Frankly, I wasn't expecting to see more
> than a few couple kids, and I was expecting those to be with parents.

Kids in the computer lounge seems to be bringing up a lot of debate, not 
just here but even on Friday when we were setting up the lounge. This 
is my opinion on it: The name of convention is not Disneycon. If 
parents are bringing their kids, they know (or had damn well better 
know) that there's a very good chance that the kids are probably going 
to be exposed one or more of the following:

1. "Dirty" language
2. Animated violence or even life-like violence (the Aegis track)
3. Partial nudity

We simply don't need any kind of disclaimer posted nor do we need to 
refuse them access to computer lounge. We're running a computer lounge, 
not ensuring the safety and well-being of every youngun who steps into 
the hotel. That's the parent's job.

Besides, there has always a warning in the program book stating that 
while children are not refused entrance to the con, not all content and 
activities may be suitable for them. That alone takes care of any 
liability on our part, not that there was any to begin with.

> I think the identification problem was more lack of any visible
> uniform/badges than having too many people around.  We had more techs
> than we had tech penguin badges, and those are small enough you can't
> always see them from a distance.  I'd be interested in a GLLUG
> T-shirt, would anyone else?

That would be fine, but we don't want to give the appearance that only 
GLLUG members are entitled to be installfest techs. We want everyone 
and anyone to both ask for help and offer it, must as we (used to) do 
at our own installfests.

> Also, I think we might have the potential to spread out the intensity
> of the installfest if we hold a 30-minute panel on Friday night to
> talk about the strengths and weaknesses of some of the distributions
> so that potential users have an idea what distros they would like to
> try.  This would basically be a "getting started with Linux" session.
>  We could use this as an opportunity to get an estimate of distro
> popularity and try to schedule time-slots for distro installs to
> ensure the correct people are present during those times and speed up
> the process.  I would of course volunteer for the panel, but we
> really would need some differing viewpoints from some other
> distributions to balance it out.

This is a smashing idea and I'll certainly volunteer to be on the panel.

-- 
Charles Ulrich
Ideal Solution, LLC -- http://www.idealso.com