Penguicon 2.0
Penguicon 2.0 was held over the weekend of April 16-18, 2004 at the Sheraton Detroit Novi in Novi, Michigan. This is a new location, since the hotel it was at last year is now closed for major remodeling, and possibly permanently. The con remains a combination science fiction convention and Linux expo.
We arrived early on Friday morning and got situated in our sleeping room in a nearby motel. Then we went over to the main hotel to see about getting into the dealers' room. When we were getting there, the hotel staff was setting up a buffet for the members of some business convention that was using the conference rooms before us. The smell was excruciatingly enticing for hungry people who couldn't touch a bite of it.
We finally located the dealers' room co-ordinator and found out where our tables were. But even as we were getting things situated, a very officious woman from the hotel came stalking in and carrying on about it being strictly forbidden to change the arrangement of the tables without it being cleared by the decorator. We went out to complain to the dealers' room co-ordinator, and the officious woman came out in a huff, saying there was "no cause" for us to be talking like that. And people think that science fiction fans are delusional.
We finally got all our stuff in and arranged, just in time for the dealers' room to be opened to the general membership. I then went up to the Green Room to pick up my programming packet, only to discover that there was no packet waiting for me. I went back to the dealers' room to wait until things were sorted out.
Later I went back to find someone in charge, and discovered that all my programming items had been deleted because they'd never heard back from me and thought I wasn't coming. The only thing we could figure out was that my reply had gotten caught by an over-vigilant SPAM-trap somewhere on the Internet. They suggested coming back later to see if there were any panels that needed additional members.
So I went back to the dealers' room to sit table. We had some sales, but they came rather slowly and in spurts. Between them I had time to do some reading. I also went up to the con suite and got some food. Later, I went to our room and got our supper, which I brought to the dealers' room for us to eat, since we were staying open very late.
When the dealers' room closed for the evening, we went around to the parties. There were several, including one for Linucon, another combination sf con/Linux expo like Penguicon. After we'd made the rounds of the parties, we turned in for the night.
Saturday morning we got up and had breakfast. Then we headed over to the dealers' room to get our tables open for the day. I asked about getting reinstated on my panels, but they really had enough panelists already, so I decided not to worry about it too much.
In the afternoon I went up to the panel on the Baen Free Library and finally got to meet John Ringo in person. We talked briefly about the future of the Posleen anthology, and what if anything could be done to help bring it to fruition.
After that I returned to the dealers' room. We were actually getting some pretty good sales by then, which put us in a much better frame of mind about the convention.
After the dealers' room closed for the night, we went back to our room for supper. Since it was still too early for the parties, we sat around and read for a while and I worked on my con report.
There were several good parties, including the Gaylaxians'. However, we got through them fairly quickly and were back to our room and bed in good time, which was a good thing considering how tired we were.
Sunday started bright and early with having breakfast and getting our personal belongings out of the sleeping room. Then we headed over to the dealers' room to get our tables open. Sales seemed rather slow for a Sunday, which was disappointing after a good Saturday. We wondered if the lack of an art show led to people going ahead and spending their money on Saturday.
We got our stuff packed and loaded out in reasonable time, although we had some trouble getting help with a few heavy and awkward items. This may have been a result of the con going ahead and refunding volunteers' memberships Sunday morning, meaning there was little incentive to help with tear-down and load-out.
After we got our stuff loaded out to the van, we went up to the con suite one last time. Then we hit the road for the long trip back home.
Copyright 2012 by Leigh Kimmel
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Last updated October 21, 2012.