Communications Plan for Penguicon
For all the benefit of the communications plan I devised last year for Penguicon 3.0, it has one drawback. With the four or five different versions I'm maintaining, it's difficult to track all the changes in multiple places.
1. programming's original spreadsheet,
2. website programming page,
3. program book PDF from InDesign,
4. pocket program PDF from InDesign,
5. kiosk html documents,
6. Master Wall Schedule document,
7. signs on the door of each room listing the events there,
8. Palm OS schedule doc
(edited to add: It seems that this list gave the impression that the attendees will only get a PDF of the program book and pocket program. No, they get them in paper, the PDF/InDesign is merely what I've got to deal with. This convention will have paper galore; in fact, more so than normal. The only thing we are not having is the newsletter. Also, I know that hardly anybody carries or uses PDAs, but the PalmOS schedule is a nice frill for the few of us who do.)
It's a lot of work but it's still worth it. Next year I would like there to be a way to synchronize all the versions together just by updating one place.
This communications plan imitates the organic nature of the world wide web, or as Vernor Vinge would put it, "The Net of a Thousand Lies." In any one given instance, at any one time or place, it does not have the reliability we expect from brick and mortar. But it is flexible and responsive in a way that no paper program book can ever be. It's redundantly distributed and has what seems like a million participants sharing the work. I was reminded of this while reading an editorial about the internet by Cory Doctorow's on O'Reilly: link
1. programming's original spreadsheet,
2. website programming page,
3. program book PDF from InDesign,
4. pocket program PDF from InDesign,
5. kiosk html documents,
6. Master Wall Schedule document,
7. signs on the door of each room listing the events there,
8. Palm OS schedule doc
(edited to add: It seems that this list gave the impression that the attendees will only get a PDF of the program book and pocket program. No, they get them in paper, the PDF/InDesign is merely what I've got to deal with. This convention will have paper galore; in fact, more so than normal. The only thing we are not having is the newsletter. Also, I know that hardly anybody carries or uses PDAs, but the PalmOS schedule is a nice frill for the few of us who do.)
It's a lot of work but it's still worth it. Next year I would like there to be a way to synchronize all the versions together just by updating one place.
This communications plan imitates the organic nature of the world wide web, or as Vernor Vinge would put it, "The Net of a Thousand Lies." In any one given instance, at any one time or place, it does not have the reliability we expect from brick and mortar. But it is flexible and responsive in a way that no paper program book can ever be. It's redundantly distributed and has what seems like a million participants sharing the work. I was reminded of this while reading an editorial about the internet by Cory Doctorow's on O'Reilly: link