Conventions at Light Speed: What Hackers Can Learn From SF Fandom

By the time I went to my first Linux convention in May 1997, I had been going to science-fiction conventions for twenty years. I immediately noticed that the people who attend and organize Linux conventions are much like science-fiction fans; they have similar interests, strengths, and weaknesses.

I also noticed that, by the standards of SF conventions, hacker-run gatherings are, well, primitive. SF fans have a continuous tradition of amateur-run conventions going back sixty years; in that time, they've forgotten more about how to run conventions than hackers have yet had time to learn.

In this document, I try to adapt and summarize some of these techniques for the use of people running Linux and open-source gatherings. If you apply these, I guarantee you'll give the customers a better time and be less stressed-out from running things.

If you're looking at HTML through a Web browser, you can download SGML source or Postscript here.

This document will be updated as I think of things to add. (The hard part isn't writing them down, it's bringing to conscious attention things that I have soaked up through my pores over a period of many years.)

If you have questions or comments about this document, please feel free to mail Eric S. Raymond, at esr@thyrsus.com. I welcome any suggestions or criticisms. If you find a mistake in this document, please let me know so I can correct it in the next version. Thanks.