Go to www.penguicon.org for info about this years Penguicon

Penguicon will be held near Detroit, Michigan. For more details, check out the new website, www.penguicon.org.

You can also view the the 1.0 convention reports.

Penguicon 1.0 was a combination Science Fiction Convention and Linux Expo, doing the whole "you got peanut butter in my chocolate" thing in May 2003. The overlap between the two worlds had been crying out for a combination event for years (the tux in a red starfleet shirt graphic predated us by a lot), so we did one.

To those of you familiar with the Linux and open source community, think of a weekend long LUG meet with hundreds of other geeks which just happens to have nationally acclaimed guests, its own wireless network, free caffeine and snacks all weekend, situated next to a place to buy really cool t-shirts and buttons and such, and with some extra events that involve things like amateur singing, anime, a costume contest, and a fantasy art show.

To those of you familiar with SF conventions, imagine all the convention features you know and love, with the addition of wireless internet, computer games, people who know about online publishing/books on demand/digital art, and two specialty programming tracks addressing introductory and advanced computing topics.

Our Guests of Honor were:

Other panelists included Eric Flint, author and founder of the Baen Free Library, Clif Flynt, TCL guru, Jeff Bates, the other cofounder of slashdot, and more...

The Linux show floor and SF dealer's room shared space. There was be an Art Show (click here for submission rules), Masquerade, and 802.11b wireless access to the internet throughout as much of the facility as we could manage. There were reading and signing sessions from our attending authors, 24 hour gaming, an anime room, and a LARP. Our guests of honor participated in a celebrity frag-fest (Unreal Tournament, capture the flag), which was a photo-finish 5-4 victory where the two cartoonists squeaked ahead of the Terry Pratchett and CmdrTaco's team. There was an installfest, birds of a feather sessions, tutorials, and email kiosks. We had what turned out to be an insufficient supply of "Water Joe" in the con suite, but ran out before we got to make caffienated Jello with it. I believe there was a writing workshop. There was filk. There were homemade robots.

All this was scheduled for the weekend of May 2-4, 2003. We scheduled programming for the second half of friday, all day saturday, and about the first 2/3 of sunday, in Warren, Michigan at the Van Dyke Park Suites.