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I have returned from Penguicon 3.0, which was held last weekend at the Sheraton Detroit Novi in Novi, Michigan.

If you read Slashdot, you have already heard of Penguicon. It's a science fiction convention! It's a Linux expo! It's a floor wax! (Okay, so it isn't a floor wax. Yet.)

This time, I was only on three panels and there was still so much to do that I never got around to hanging out in the gaming area. (Which I regret, since a game of Star Munchkin d20 was supposedly held sometime during the weekend, along with numerous Mayfair games). Steve Jackson's infamous Chaos Machine was back, ably chauffered to the con by co-founder landley and Wrangled by Web cartoonist howardtayler. Probably the fact that I helped judge the Masquerade, and played runner at the combined CritterCare/EFF Auction, and took part in a SWAT team training exercise (see "Black Sweater Party"), had a lot to do with .... why I had no down time.

A lot of the fun things from 2.0 were back, including the live Rocky Horror Show and Luke Ski. And there was more. A consuite well stocked with food and numerous ways to ingest caffiene. A large dealer's room, a floating pirate ship party, "Buffy the Musical" (which I also missed), and many panels. I was on three of them, all various flavors of what-Open-Source-Means-For-The-Future-of-IP, with GOH Cory Doctorow, who is well-known for his EFF and Creative Commons connections (and will cheerfully speak about both subjects and many others intelligently and for hours on end).

And that's just the stuff I know about.

There was some disarray behind the scenes. Some of the programming items did not come off, like the "Perl Jam" with GOH Nat Torkington, which foundered due to a failure to locate other musicians whose repetoires jibed with Nat's folk banjo music. One of the panels started a half hour late because somebody had inadvertently scheduled a dinner event that included all of the panelists for the wrong time. Many of the concomm members were plagued with car trouble, and serious snow had begun to happen by Sunday morning.

But, in the end, the logistics sorted themselves all out. I had a great time seeing old friends, like GOH Peter Salus, and making new ones, like tlatoani. I can't wait to see what treebones and her merry crew make of Penguicon 4.0. I know I'll be there.