Marketing:
  - Hit universities with flyers.  Early and often.
  - Bulk mailing of registration forms/coupons to last year's attendee list,
    stillyagi.  (No, not spam.  I mean on paper, and we pay for stamps.
    They don't mind if it costs us money, that's self-regulating.)

Panels/events:
  - later masquerade.
    - Dinner, masquerade,and dance scheduling conflict.
    - Maybe dinner on friday night?  With sufficient prereg...
      - Geezer's dinner, perhaps?
  - Rename "so you want to volunteer" to "how to get laid at a convention."
  - Make the installfest open to the public, schedule a kickoff for it as an
    event.
  - The Penguicon HOWTO panel.  "About the authors." :)
  - Put a 2 hour gap in panel schedule.
    - maybe 1-3, or 2-4.  Block ending noon or earlier geeks just sleep through
      (psychological: "morning" panels.)
    - Geeks keep going to panels as long as there are any.  Stop to eat, see
      rest of con, hit dealer's room.
  - Record the panels.  (I have contacts for this.)
    - Sell mp3/ogg/etc cd's in the dealer's room, $9/day.
    - Put on website (advertising for next year).
    - Baen guy says he can do video as well, up to 12 tracks at once.
    - Track down guys who recorded Pratchett this year, get THAT on web.
  - Saturday night status report (between opening and closing ceremonies).
    - GOH speeches more or less did this, but it should be explicit.
    - Doesn't have to be long.
  - Encourage more social activity/mixing in pool atrium.
    - More tables.
    - Coed twister.
  - Kid's space.  aka kid programming.
    - supervised play space for 6-10 year olds.
    - Junior computer game area.  (Don't make the LUGs or SJG babysit again.)
  - Try again on tutorials (friday morning?)
    - CGI
  - Track on non-computer geeking.
    - "Hacking nutrition", geeks and food, etc.
  - Panels on costuming.
  - Panels on writing, publishing.  (Can we get an editor Guest of Niftniness?)
    - computers and writing

Positions:
  - sign wrangler
    - Complete panel schedule outside ops, green room, registration, front desk.
      - With updates.
    - Room specific schedules posted outside each one, listing what's in it.
    - How to find stuff signs (starting at front desk: arrows, feet, etc).

Program book:
  - It was really cool this year.
  - explain consuite, masquerade, dealer's room, art show, volunteering, etc
    in program book.  (Geeks don't know.  Neither do other con virgins/newbies.)
  - If we can have it ready 2 weeks ahead of time, can we do a bulk mailing to
    preregistered people?
  - Bad geek pun name for the program book: "README".  (All one word.)
  - Program index, pocket program.
  - Restaurant guide.  (See this year's web page.)

Online registration:
  - Advance notice/registration on web for anything requiring money.
    - Banquet, geeks with guns...
      - Can't do banquet until we know the guest list.
    - We can even provide paypal links for the scotch tasting people and
      con suite and such.  Hey, maybe we'll get lucky?  We're a non-profit,
      and we accept donations...
  - Online registration should up our numbers tremendously.
    - It's an impluse buy.  It can BE an impulse buy.
      - buy-in.  Once they've bought a ticket, they'll probably come.  But
        if they resolve to come register at the door, but friday night they're
        tired from work and saturday morning they don't feel like getting out
        of bed and of course sunday the con's nearly over...  That's assuming
        they even REMEMBER if we don't remind them, and how can we if they
        haven't registered yet...
    - Marketing efforts need sales to close the deal.  Don't give them time
      to forget about you or lose the initial "gee, that's cool!' buzz.
    - Money ahead of time is worth more than money at the door.
    - We're a linux expo, paper makes us look bad.
    - Ability to take credit cards is a GOOD thing.
      - Ability to challenge credit card purchases lasts what, 30 days?  45?
        Preregistering more than a month ahead of time means we've locked in
        the money before we hand out the badges.
    - We get a live registration count to play up a supply squeeze with.
      - "Act now supplies running out".  Sales 101.
  - Try to sell out convention entirely via preregistrations, months in
    advance.
  - Accept credit cards.
  - Computerized at-the-door registration.
    - Line leads to computer(s), select your prereg name/handle or fill in
      a web form if you're registering at the door.
    - Submitting info prints badge at front desk, where you hand over money
      and get the badge.  (For prereg, show photo ID.  For at the door, only
      care about photo ID if you want alcohol.)
    - This way bottleneck is lines to computers, not lines to human.  Easy
      to add more computers, and we can redeploy them as email/websurfing
      machines when registration slows down.

Organize the ribbon ordering further ahead of time, and online, and via paypal.
  - Get categories and money ahead of time.

Hand stuff off to LUGs.
  - Wireless access on entire ground floor, including dealer's room.
    - Wireless in con suite?  Parabolic/yagi drop through window?
  - Hand off intranet to lugs, get it live thursday, somebody monitor it.
    - More mail reading infrastructure for those without laptops.

Traffic management.
  - Think in terms of traffic flow.  Crowded is better than empty, as long
    as people can move ok.
  - Drive people to dealer's room.  (See tour of facilities.)
    - Signings in dealer's room?  Other events in dealer's room?
      - Have dealers stamp your card, get something?  (I dunno, a dealer
        suggested it.  Ask dealers how THEY would drive traffic to dealer's
        room...)
    - Email access in dealer's room.
    - 2 hour panel break, people will be looking for food.  Have hotel set up
      snack bar outside dealer's room.  (Potential down side: people wandering
      through dealer's room with food. Get vote from dealers, is extra traffic
      worth it?)

Run a tour of the facilities.
  - Should start from the front desk, hit con suite, dice gaming, paper gaming,
    major panel areas, ops, registration, pool, and dealer's room.  End in
    dealer's room.

Encourage room parties.
  - Free registration for each party suite room night.
  - How to throw a room party panel.
  - Room party directory, ahead of time, online.
    - In program book if at all possible.
    - Paper version on ground floor at base of elevators.
      - Bulletin board, add your own room parties.

Masquerade
  - Contact costume.org way ahead of time.  Let them know about it.
  - Make sure judges have award items.
  - More masquerade build-up.  Let geeks know about it.

Get our own domain and server to replace sourceforge.
  - penguicon.org?
  - web page, mailing lists, file space, online registration
  - Private web page, private mailing list for concom.
  - penguicon email addresses.
    - For concom.
    - For guests.
    - For attendees.  Virtual voodoo board.
  - email confirmation (and monthly reminder/newsletter) to preregistrants.
  - Put event schedule in database, searchable.
    - TimeCzar?
    - Allow attendees to log in and select their own schedule and have the
      system remember it for them, so they can print it out.
  - Online virtual tour.
  - Better news blog infrastructure, multiple posters.
  - Contact services
    - rides
    - rooms
    - room parties
  - event intranet
    - at-con web page.
      - Hourly news items: the radio free penguicon people, perhaps?
    - At-con electronic voodoo board.
    - dynamic DNS
      - registry of machines online at the con.
    - ISO server, with public CD burners and con-supplied blanks.

We have a 24 hour pool, we can do a lot more with it.
  - Pool/hot tub party.  (Remember: no glass containers.)
  - Water polo.
  - 3 am skinny dipping.

Printer onsite for fanzines, signs.
  - Free paper, toner.
  - panel on flyer design.

Art show
  - Don't even have one if we haven't got the bandwidth to pull it off.
  - something called "Artists's alley".
  - Advertised better, put it in the tour, program book, online, etc.

Con suite
  - It worked really well.
  - More water joe.
    - Tang, jello, just plain water joe.
  - More Blenheim.  (My fault.)
  - Liquid nitrogen ice cream.
  - Hot sauce party
  - Better chocolate.  More varieties of chocolate.
  - Easy to make foods (cheap)
    - Deviled eggs.
    - Special K bars.

Convention security:
  - somebody wanted it to be more conspicuous.  This may be a bad idea.
  - Conspicuous gophers isn't a bad idea, though.  Badge checking, etc.
  - Try once again for on-site paramedic.  (Ha, I know...) First aid
    station...
  - If we get the video guys, hook up a couple of security cameras.
    - Try to find the guy who stole stuff last year and beat him to death
      very, very slowly.

SCA outreach next year.  Fencing, costuming, how to make chain mail...

We should write up a "convention running HOWTO".

The to-do list of starting any new con is (in order):
  - Study how to do conventions
    - Read http://catb.org/~esr/writings/sfshows/
    - Read http://www.smof.com/conrunner/index2.htm
           http://www.smof.com/smofiles.htm
    - Go to something like http://www.swoc.org/ccubed/
    - Find an existing local convention and apprentice yourself to their
      concom.
  - Incorporate.
    - This gives the hotel somebody to sign a contract with.
  - Sign contract with hotel.
    - This gives you a date and time your event will be happening.  Until
      then, nothing else can be scheduled.  (Your event isn't "real".)
  - Invite Guests of Honor.
    - These are your big draws, their presence gives you something to
      advertise.
    - Invite them a full year in advance, if possible, so they have no prior
      committments and their schedule is clear.
    - Offer all expenses paid.  (Transportation, hotel, meals.)  Make it
      clear that they will be worshipped as gods.
    - Do NOT offer them money directly: it screws the relationship up and you
      can never pay just some of your guests.  You're a not for profit.
      You're fan run.  There are cons that pay people to appear, and you are
      NOT competing with them because you're not in that niche.
  - Advertise, advertise, advertise.
  - Organize concom.
  - Advertise more.
  - Pull together panel list.  Staff it.
  - Advertise more...