[Seattle IF: 254] IF At Foolscap

[Jason Wodicka]

So, at the April Meetup, I brought up the idea of trying to get some IF-related programming on the schedule at Foolscap, a local SF con that I'm involved with. People seemed to think it was a good idea, and I said I'd follow up.

Today, at the Foolscap committee meeting, I brought up the idea of inviting the local IF community to Foolscap. The response was overwhelming and positive. It seemed as though half of the people in the room had played IF at some point in the 80s or 90s, and hadn't realized there was still a thriving community. The head of programming asked me to get her some IF-related panel concepts within the next week, before she sits down with the programming team to work on the schedule. At least one of the members of the committee will probably be joining this list, too, so he can get more involved in the IF community.

So, I'd like to echo the question we're posing for PAX: What panels should we try to hold? I've got a few suggestions I'd like to propose, and I'd like to hear more:

(The playful titles are by Foolscap tradition - everything tends to get a pithy title of some sort along with its fuller, dryer description.)

"You Got Game In My Fiction!" - An introduction to Interactive Fiction, covering what if means for fiction to be interactive, early works (like the early hypertext literary experiments, CYOA, and other non-computer-mediated stuff), the Adventure / Infocom / "Text Adventure" years, and the current state of creative growth as a hobbyist field with real innovation.

"The Best Stories You Haven't Played Yet" - An overview of critically interesting IF works for an audience that reads and writes SF and fantasy, but hasn't heard from the IF community since Infocom closed its doors. The sort of panel where participants leave with a list of interesting places to start enjoying modern IF.

"IF Out Loud" - An active, verbal play-through of a short work of IF, using an emcee and shouted commands. Think "Action Castle" as an interface onto a standard work of IF, in order to make it more audience-appreciation friendly. (One of the Foolscap folks came up with this, without having heard of Action Castle, and I thought it was worth sharing.)

There's also some enthusiasm about finding a space in a public area to put up a terminal with some best-of-IF suggestions for people to play, like what was described as being at PAX East. If we set up such a terminal for PAX Prime, we might well want to bring it to Foolscap, too.

Also, logistically: Foolscap is a small convention (under 150 people in recent years), where everyone participates. The committee was also talking about getting folks from an IF background to sit on some of the other panels, and I'd encourage that - I think we could have some very interesting discussions that way. Since everyone participates, the committee doesn't give free passes to the panelists - everyone at the con, including the staff, buy memberships. So, if you're interested in coming to Foolscap, I encourage you to pre-register - you save a few bucks, and the Foolscap folks know to expect you, and can match you up with programming you might want to participate in.

From a tactical perspective, too, having a bunch of IF people register soon would be a good way of sending the message to the folks behind the con that the IF community is interested in being a part of the convention, and the con should create a space for the conversation we want to have. I'll be pushing for that from my spot working for the con, and being able to point to a group of new people coming who are from the IF community will make it easier to convince the programming team to find time and space to fit us in.

Foolscap's web page is at: http://foolscapcon.org/ - anything the page isn't clear on, you can ask me about, and I'll get an answer from the convention committee. If you're interested in doing IF at Foolscap, let me know - we've got some time to prepare for this, and it might dovetail well with our PAX Prime preparations.

- Jason

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[Emily Short]

On Apr 18, 2010, at 6:29 PM, Jason Wodicka wrote:

> So, at the April Meetup, I brought up the idea of trying to get some IF-related programming on the schedule at Foolscap, a local SF con that I'm involved with. People seemed to think it was a good idea, and I said I'd follow up.
>
> Today, at the Foolscap committee meeting, I brought up the idea of inviting the local IF community to Foolscap. The response was overwhelming and positive. It seemed as though half of the people in the room had played IF at some point in the 80s or 90s, and hadn't realized there was still a thriving community. The head of programming asked me to get her some IF-related panel concepts within the next week, before she sits down with the programming team to work on the schedule. At least one of the members of the committee will probably be joining this list, too, so he can get more involved in the IF community.

That's great! I'm glad they're enthusiastic.

I can't promise I'll still be in town myself by that time, which is why I'm not signing up to help put together anything for PAX Prime or for this, but if at some point (now or later) you'd like me to publicize something on my blog, let me know.

[Jason Wodicka]

Thanks very much for that offer!

If we get something together, and we'll have an IF presence at Foolscap (and at PAX Prime, for that matter), then it certainly makes sense to use the Awesome Power of your blog to mention it. It worked so well for yesterday's meetup, after all!

- J

[Ron Newcomb]

For a panel, "Genre in I-F" would likely be a decent one, as Foolscap
seems to be genre-specific. It would discuss the common genres in I-
F: fantasy / sci-fi have heavy representation, murder mysteries (esp.
in English manor houses), horror in the Lovecraft vein. But very
little romance, despite it being bigger than anything in the trad fic
world. The panel would go into why certain genres are more amendable
to int fic.

If someone is familiar with the hypertext and CYOA communities, that
would be good.

-Ron

[Andrew Plotkin]

On Mon, 19 Apr 2010, Ron Newcomb wrote:

> For a panel, "Genre in I-F" would likely be a decent one, as Foolscap
> seems to be genre-specific.

This idea also came up when we were talking about Readercon. My instinct
was and is that it's the wrong tack. You look at an SF convention and
think "these people are here to talk about genre", but you're wrong:
they're here to talk about *writing*. Genre is the shared community that
the discussion happens within.

The Reader panel idea we came up with (after some ifmud discussion) was
"An introduction to the unique literary possibilities of Interactive
Fiction".

The relevance to the SF convention is not IF about SF/fantasy, but the
presumption that SF/fantasy fandom has an unusually high proportion of
geek-and-tech-junkie types.

--Z

--
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*

[Jason Wodicka]

I think Zarf's points about how to think about what goes on at an SF convention are right on the mark. Thanks. If you think of the membership of Foolscap as being more or less like the membership of this list, with somewhat less recent exposure to IF, you'll probably have a good picture of who will be there.

That said, I will float the genre panel to programming. The worst they can do is say no, and maybe they've got someone at the con who'll want to talk genre - in general, they're pretty good about culling panels down to things that should get some interest out of the members of the convention, so I try to throw them lots of ideas and let them sort out the most workable ones.

Have any other interesting things come out of the Readercon discussion? I've been told that Foolscap is not dissimilar to Readercon, so any insight from those conversations could probably be ported over to this coast.

- J

[Andrew Plotkin]

On Mon, 19 Apr 2010, Jason Wodicka wrote:

> That said, I will float the genre panel to programming. The worst they can
> do is say no, and maybe they've got someone at the con who'll want to talk
> genre - in general, they're pretty good about culling panels down to things
> that should get some interest out of the members of the convention, so I try
> to throw them lots of ideas and let them sort out the most workable ones.

Entirely reasonable.

> Have any other interesting things come out of the Readercon discussion?

I don't remember anything else concrete. (Maybe Emily or someone else who
was there does.)

ReaderCon is not my home ground. I tried it for an afternoon a couple of
years ago, but I didn't know anybody, and I didn't get into what was going
on. (Although one person recognized my name and thanked me for writing IF!
So, a panel audience of at least one...) The subject came up again because
we met someone at PAX who *does* know the ReaderCon folks, and is also
interested in IF, so she got the ball rolling. Networking, as usual,
is everything. :)

[George Oliver]

On 4/18/2010 6:29 PM, Jason Wodicka wrote:
>
> So, I'd like to echo the question we're posing for PAX: What panels
> should we try to hold? I've got a few suggestions I'd like to propose,
> and I'd like to hear more:
>

Maybe a 'What if <blank> did/was IF", where you take a popular book or
author and talk about how that book or author would 'work' as IF, in
terms of plot, character, setting, what you would want to change, what
elements maybe would enhance or detract from the experience. Maybe a
good way to involve the people attending the panel?

I checked out the programming from the last Foolscap btw, saw a few
authors there I liked and the panels sounded interesting. I've never
been to a SF con but I think I'll throw my hat in for this one.

[Jason Wodicka]

This panel sounds like fun. Whether or not we do it at Foolscap, I'd love to do that if we've ever got spare time at one of the meetups. =)

Also, George's comments about this being his first SF con made me want to mention something in relation to Zarf's point yesterday - I thought of Foolscap as a good place to try this specifically because it's got a pretty good history of being friendly to new folks, and I'm interested in getting some programming going in part because I think that will help bridge the two communities. I'm convinced that the IF and SF communities have a lot to talk about, but making that introduction is important. I don't want anyone to have the experience Zarf had at Readercon.

- Jason

[Cathy Saxton]

I'll help with IF events at PAX Prime and/or Foolscap. I don't think
that I'll be able to contribute much in the way of suggestions for (or
participation on) panels, but I can help with logistics and will pitch
in some money, e.g. for a hotel room/suite, postcards, flyers,
whatever.

FWIW, for Foolscap, there's a Residence Inn next door to the Mariott
hosting the con. A 2-bedroom suit (including kitchen w/ fridge, etc;
630-850 sq ft) at the Residence Inn looks like it's $189/night.

I'm happy to do legwork to the Foolscap area (Redmond Town Center) if
you want someone on this side of the lake to check out options / etc.
It's about 15 minutes from where I live/work.

Are we thinking about doing something at both PAX and Foolscap? If we
just choose one, I like the idea of the smaller con, but I also
identify more with SF readers than game players, so that may also be
influencing my opinion. Of course, those of you who have been involved
with local IF for longer will probably have better insight into what's
likely to be best, so I'm happy with whatever the group decides.

Cathy

[Jason Wodicka]

So, I would not recommend doing Foolscap to the exclusion of PAX. They're very different sorts of outreach. At PAX, we're liable to reach hundreds of people over the course of the con, and help show people in gaming that they can get more story than they're accustomed to. At Foolscap - well, the entire convention has less than two hundred people; it's not a good place for massive outreach. But at Foolscap, even the non-IF programming is about writing, and probably relevant to many of us, and almost all of the people there are involved in writing - either as writers, or heavy readers. At Foolscap, we also have some support from the convention committee, which means we're more likely to be able to do IF-related things in the core of the convention, and generally have a more actively sanctioned presence.

So, they're very different things.

As far as hotel space at Foolscap goes, I would not recommend going next door - the con is small enough that it doesn't really overflow the hotel, and so asking people to go next door is likely to be enough of an impediment that they just don't show up. If we want space for an IF lounge, I can probably go through the hotel liaison on the con committee, and look for space that's next door to the hospitality suite, or possibly even in the main programming space - someplace in a naturally high-traffic area, and someplace that we can know about far enough in advance that the convention can mention it in their publications. (As I said, it's a small con.)

I should also reiterate the disclosure I made at the April meeting - I'm on the convention committee for Foolscap, so I'm pretty familiar with the con and its space, and I have outreach hopes in both directions - I'm hoping that the people attending Foolscap for the SF con will learn about IF, and I'm hoping that people in the IF community will stick around and join the Foolscap community, too.

Really glad to see the enthusiasm about the idea, though! I'm looking forward to having more interesting discussions about IF, on here and at cons.

- Jason