kevin_standlee | Preparations for Silicon

I went down to the Doubletree Hotel in San Jose this afternoon for the SiliCon staff meeting so I could meet briefly with the head of programming and the hotel liaison to review the set-up we'd prefer to do Match Game SF at SiliCon. The current plan is for us to be the final program item before the "Hiss & Purr" session on Sunday, with a run time from 2 to 4 PM. That means that in practice we have until 1:45 at the latest, and based on our usual run time per game, the most we could conceivably fit into that time is five games, and four -- or even three if we go into tie breakers -- is possible.

They are putting us in the primary programming space -- the same room as the Masquerade and other "big tech" items. That's good and bad. The good is that it has a stage and therefore we should be able to do the staggered-tier seating for the panelist. It's good because we'll have the mainstage tech available. It's bad because it's likely that the convention tech team will want to run the tech, and that's likely to going to cause Lisa to not want to do anything at all. She can do a very good job on the tech if people get out of her way. What's not easy is bringing people up to speed on exactly what we want to do with no rehearsal or set-up time.

Remember that I fret a lot over set-up, and that the shows normally go pretty well. As the show's executive producer, my job is to worry. As the host, my job is to smile and make everyone else look good on the day.

The SiliCon folks were kind enough to let me get my business done early, so I could go ahead and leave less than an hour after I arrived, which meant I only had to pay for an hour's parking.