Zombie Ducks Want Your Brains

[axiom_of_stripe]

The Dead Duck panel is the final panel of the con where the con comm takes your feedback on the good and the bad of CON.TXT 2014. If you missed the Dead Duck or if you've thought of something you wanted to say to us since 4 pm, we would love to hear from you now! You're welcome to comment here (anonymous commenting is turned on if you want it) or to email us at info@con-txt.net.

Comments

[aka_rat]

I had a great time!! So much thanks to the con comm for putting on a wonderful event, and for giving me the minotaur scholarship, I was so honored (minotaur's site was very... educational when I was a young slashling) and I am so grateful because there was no way I could have attended without it. <3 <3 <3 -- Libby

[axiom_of_stripe]

Fantastic! I'm so glad you enjoyed our con, and I'm sure Minotaur would have been glad too. :)

[katbear]

Great con. Good panels, the lunch thing with Jimmy John's worked really well, loved the breakfast buffet and having the tabletop games concurrent with Disco Duck was great idea. Hotel was good, room was nice, and there was no strict insistence on a 3 pm check-in - we got there Friday morning about 0845ish and were able to immediately get our rooms. Front desk staff was very helpful.

Recommendations:
- have 55 minute panels. That would give people a few minutes to switch rooms, go to the restroom, get water, answer their phone etc. Quite a few panels went over a bit, so that would be less of a problem if the starting goal was 55 minutes instead of 60.
- didn't seem to be a clearly identified, findable place to put money for the swap table items (if there was, I couldn't see it).
- Hawthorne panel room was consistently too hot. This was worst on Friday, not so bad the other days but the room was fairly small so if you closed the door to eliminate the noise from the hall the heat built up quickly.

[beck_liz]

Got to agree on both the 55 minute panel recommendation and the Hawthorne Room temperature. I think even if we could have just moved a fan in there to move the air around it would have helped.

[axiom_of_stripe]

Thanks for letting us know! The fan could be a possible solution if the central air conditioning system is not reconfigured by the next time; thanks for suggesting that.

[axiom_of_stripe]

Thanks for the feedback! It's great to hear so many things went well and we'll try to keep them as good or better next time. We will work on getting the panel transitions easier for everyone and labeling the swap table donation box more clearly; thanks for letting us know about the problems there. The heat in Hawthorne was definitely a problem! We will work with the hotel ahead of time next time to make sure it will be more comfortable.

[enviropony]

Just wanted to say that I enjoyed the Word Wars, even though only a handful of us participated, and I would not be averse to a second one on the schedule. It was a great way for me, as a newbie, to dive in without feeling awkward. Maybe a Sketch Wars, too? (Er, not that I can sketch, but I'd love to see other people's work!)

[axiom_of_stripe]

That's great to hear, and thank you for the feedback too! We will definitely keep it in mind for next time.

[aka_rat]

I didn't participate in Word Wars since I'm not a writer, but if there had been a Sketch Wars I would've been ALL OVER that!

[axiom_of_stripe]

So noted! :)

Guidelines for panel mods

[(Anonymous)]

I modded a panel this year, I had several friends who modded panels but were super nervous and not sure how to do it, and I had a bad experience at a panel this year. I really feel like we would have benefited from a panel mods advice sheet or something like that.

Re: Guidelines for panel mods

[axiom_of_stripe]

Thanks for letting us know! We are definitely going to be thinking about more ways to help moderators out.

[lightgetsin]

Writing down the various things we've talked about so you have it in one place: (1) putting a note on the bit of wall where everyone was writing their names/rooms/phone numbers telling ppl not to take a picture of it. Lots of people were taking quick pics of the walls on Sunday, and probably no one wanted a pic of that, but it made me twitch from a privacy perspective. (2) getting the word out better re the difference between the quiet room and the loud room for vid shows, specifically so ppl understand that e.g. if they are going to get snotty at someone standing up during a vid, they belong in the quiet room. (3) brief post con survey, specifically asking for favorite/least favorite panels. (4) thinking about having a few panels go 90 minutes -- if it was only two, that's only one slot lost, and it wouldn't make room scheduling difficult. (5) better resources for mods. maybe a quick mods-only session right between con.txt 101 and first panel? dunno. I could put something together. (6) re-thinking the list of content notes for vids for streamlining/intuitiveness/applicability across years. (7) figuring out something slightly more official for DIY panel planning, since there were three separate groups who all thought they had Hawthorne at the same time on Saturday. Just writing on the wall didn't seem to be enough coordination.

[cyprinella]

Variant on your post con survey would be a post panel survey. I've done them at work related cons and they generally ask about content and panel modding.

[axiom_of_stripe]

I will add it to our list. Thanks!

[axiom_of_stripe]

Thank you so much for writing that out!

[(Anonymous)]

Wanted to say that I've been enjoying using my new ConTxt pen at work this week! Thank you for that and the new fun pins on my bag too. Fun swag, and I can never have enough pens :)

I second two thoughts from above, I agree that 5 minutes between panels would be nice (but hard to schedule!) and I do think that a few longer panel sessions would be great, esp for meta topics. I felt like we could have benefited from more conversation in a few of the meta panels I attended. I would also have played Fannish Pictionary for much longer - that was a super fun panel!

[axiom_of_stripe]

Awesome! We are very pleased with the pins and buttons this year. And thank you for the feedback on panels!

[(Anonymous)]

I love having a vid show, but the guidelines for the vid show submissions were really confusing to me. It would be great if the rules about what you take and what you don't could be more clear. Also, could we have some kind of panel for vidders?

[axiom_of_stripe]

Thanks for letting us know! We'll see about clarifying the guidelines with the feedback we've been given this year.

As for panels, as always, please suggest them!

[(Anonymous)]

- (better stocked) first aid kit: all the basic stuff for cuts and scrapes and so on, but also pain meds and antihistamines and a small stock of pads and tampons (for those times when you just need SOMETHING in there to get you to either your own supply or somewhere you can restock 8D ) [if this exists already, then awesome, but when I went asking for it, it didn't seem to]

- more fruit at breakfast: the stuff that was there was delicious, but there wasn't much of it in comparison to all the bread products and protein. maybe some bananas and/or grapefruits would go over well in future?

- a specific suggestion in relation to advice to give mods: in a perfect world, everybody attending a panel, including the mod(s), is comfortable with the direction the conversation takes - and sometimes it's useful to check in with the group about whether or not the conversation has already gone to a bad place (or just might be heading there). thus my suggestion: if a mod is feeling uncomfortable about a turn their panel seems to be taking and doesn't see their unease reflected in the group, rather than pre-emptively shutting down that conversation entirely, I suggest what I call a group gut check or check-in. to do this, the mod tells the panel attendees what had been making them uneasy and asks whether anybody else in the audience had been feeling the same and whether the people having the discussion that had caused the unease can provide reassurance on the subject. then, if reassurance can be had, the conversation continues. the benefits are fourfold: potentially interesting/innocuous discussion doesn't get shut down out of hand; audience members who might not have felt okay speaking up to either support the mod or the conversation all feel heard; the conversation has a chance to be deepened as a result of the mod's checking in; and everybody involved is reminded of the value of speaking with care and compassion.

[(Anonymous)]

Though maybe the guidelines could suggest a more neutral way of phrasing it than "I'm uneasy", because I feel like that would totally shut down conversation.

[(Anonymous)]

fair point - and a good one for the con-comm to consider. I tried to be as careful with my words in writing that up as I could, but didn't really think about what specific words the mod should use in raising their concern. so cheers for your having useful thoughts!

[axiom_of_stripe]

Thanks for mentioning that!

[axiom_of_stripe]

This is some great feedback -- thank you!