Hello all. I am Micki Hedden. I bring color and life to the Penguicon scene. I am the Talent Wrangler. We have a great line-up of GoHs and Nifty Guests for this year. So far, the following GoHs will be attending:

Tech GoH - Joe Brockmeier

In 1999 Joe started writing about Linux as a freelancer. That experience eventually morphed into a career focused on writing about Linux and open source as a technology journalist, more or less full time. In 2005, Joe joined Linux.com as editorial director, and in 2007 Joe was with “Linux Magazine” as editor in chief.

In the February of 2008, Joe started with Novell as the community manager for openSUSE. You can read more about Joe at <http://zonker.opensuse.org/about/>

Tech GoH - Marcel Gagné

Marcel is an award-winning author and columnist, probably best known for his Cooking with Linux column which appears monthly in Linux Journal. His best-selling “Moving to Linux: Kiss the Blue Screen of Death Goodbye!” is the premier guide for those wishing to take the plunge into desktop Linux. His first book was the acclaimed “Linux System Administration: A User's Guide”. He most recent book is “Moving to Free Software”. One of the best known voices of the Linux and open source world, he has written numerous articles (several hundred of them) on Linux and open source projects for various publications including Linux Journal, InformIT, Unix Review, SysAdmin magazine, and several others. He also folds a mean Origami T-Rex.

You can read more about Marcel at <http://marcelgagne.com/>

Hack GOH - i3Detroit

What does i3 stand for: Imagine, Innovate & Inspire. i3 Detroit is a collaborative environment for people to explore the balance between technology, art and culture. They feel the best way to create this environment is to bring like mind people together that share a common passion for technology, art and culture. Their goal is to stay a community resource through continuous hosting of various classes and events. They have created an environment that promotes learning in a fun non-traditional format.

Author GoH - Karl Schroeder

Karl is an award-winning Canadian science fiction author. His novels present far-future speculations on topics such as nanotechnology, terraforming, augmented reality and interstellar travel, and have a deeply philosophical streak. One of his concepts, known as thalience, has gained some currency in the artificial intelligence and computer networking communities. You can read more about Karl at <http://www.kschroeder.com/>

Author GoH - Spider Robinson

Since he began writing professionally in 1972, Spider Robinson has won many major awards, including three Hugos, one Nebula, and the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. He is best known for his Callahan stories, about the most bizarre band of barflies you're likely to meet in this or any other galaxy, and for the Hugo and Nebula-winning Stardance Sequence, Stardance, Starseed, and Starmind, written with his wife, writer/choreographer Jeanne Robinson. His opinion column “Future Tense” has appeared in Canada's national newspaper, The Globe and Mail, since 1996. The Robinsons currently reside near Vancouver, British Columbia, where they raise and exhibit hopes. You can read more about Spider at <http://www.spiderrobinson.com/>

Spider will be with us VIRTUALLY this year.

Author GoH - Jeanie Robinson

Jeanne has been married for over 30 years to Spider Robinson. Jeanne is a Boston-born writer, choreographer, former Modern dancer, and teacher of dance and the Alexander Technique; she studied at the Boston Conservatory, the Martha Graham, Alvin Ailey and Erick Hawkins schools, Nikolais/Louis Dance Theatre Lab, Toronto Dance Theatre, and the American Dance Festival. She also studied under Hawkins principal dancer Beverly Brown, and performed with Beverly Brown Dancensemble, at the 1981 Riverside Dance Festival in New York.

The Robinsons collaborated on the classic Hugo-, Nebula- and Locus-winning STARDANCE TRILOGY [to be reissued in hardcover by Baen Books in September 2006], which created the concept and basic principles of zero-gravity dance. Jeanne was on NASA's short list for a Space Shuttle seat, to try out zero-gee dance in practice — until the Challenger Tragedy ended the Civilian In Space programme. She is currently writing, co-producing and choreographing a short film about zero gravity dance, titled “Stardance.”

She is a lay-ordained Soto Zen Buddhist monk in the lineage of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi; Tenshin Reb Anderson Roshi gave her the dharma name Buchi Eihei (dancing wisdom, eternal peace). You can read more about her at <http://www.spiderrobinson.com/jeanne.html>

Jeanne will be with us VIRTUALLY this year.

Comics GoH - Howard Taylor

He's two guests in one! Howard is both the creator of the WebComic Schlock Mercenary, and a former Product Manager for Novell, where he was responsible for Novell's collaboration product line. He's also spent time with a rock band and a comedy troupe.Howard spent over a decade working for Novell, during which time he did tech support, on-site consulting, technical marketing, and four years of product management. His last efforts at Novell included the successful to push to get GroupWise on Linux, and to embrace OpenSource development for iFolder. He's been cartooning for five years now, and has been doing it full-time since September 2004, giving up his GroupWise fanbase (and Novell paycheck) to pay attention to the tens of thousands of Schlock Mercenary readers world-wide. Considering that he's a ScienceFiction fan, a computer gamer, a writer and an artist, and a Linux guy, Howard fits right in at Penguicon. We just have to stop him from intimidating the other guests. You can read more about Howard at <http://www.schlockmercenary.com/schlock_author.html>