Because I’m curious, mostly — this constitutes no promise about my own future intentions, and I have no affiliation with Matt Arnold’s idea of a workshop at Penguicon other than to help publicize the idea — it seems worth asking:
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Emily Short's Interactive Storytelling 
Regardless of skill level, it seems to me that something like this is best learned through practice/experience — which would probably explain the high percentage of votes for “writing a short game together”.
Well, sure — I imagine a workshop on one of the other topics might still include some exercises and “let’s practice this” kinds of stuff.
The question was more whether people were looking for a topically focused kind of practice or a start-from-the-beginning-and-do-everything kind of practice. (Which I may not have articulated clearly enough. Was trying to make the poll concise.)
I think I’d rather see a “start from the beginning” type of thing for two reasons:
1. I myself am just beginning.
2. It may encourage more new users/old players to become writers, thus creating more content and giving the genre more voices.
However, I would expect that most of the people attending the workshop would be familiar with the basics, and therefore wouldn’t need this sort of instruction. They would do better with a more specific approach.
Seconded. Those who have already immersed themselves in IF writing would be more deeply invested. Of course, that leads a bit of a vicious circle as far as getting new voices is concerned.
I got along okay (so far) with a tutorial from Brass Lantern and some help from the community, but to be honest, I haven’t really tried anything too ambitious just yet. I’m almost afraid too.
I feel like most beginners could do fine with some more online tutorials, but I have yet to find more than the one. Sure, the documentation is great for Inform 7, but tuts are just so much more engaging and easier to understand, since you’re providing your own example as you learn.
I agree with your last paragraph: I suspect that something like this would be pitched more at people who already know they want to write in Inform than to totally new people. It’s great to rope in the latter too, where possible — but how many are really likely to wander in to a session at a convention or the like, without any previous knowledge of/interest in the subject?
I wouldn’t say that it’s divided into “writers” and “people with no previous knowledge or interest”. As Gregory said, neither new writers nor old players would have advanced knowledge, but they would know about and be interested in the skill.
That depends on which convention is providing the pool from which the sample is taken.
To use a different example, my talk on “Lojban, the Logical Language” consistently draws walk-in crowds at Penguicon from those who have never heard of it. That built an in-person group of Lojban enthusiasts meeting in my house, the largest non-online community in the fifty-year history of the project. I support that method of going about it; I think it works.
I think the workshop should be tailored to the levels of those who sign up for it. There could be at least two separate sessions for different levels.
I speculate that students at more advanced sessions would be willing to serve as tutors in less advanced sessions. This community is not of sufficient size to draw a sharp line of expertise, call those above it the givers, and those beneath it the passive receivers. There will always be some who are too shy, and that’s fine, but we all benefit when we participate and invest in helping each other. I for one will give whatever I have.
For some reason, the poll results visible to the public don’t seem to be displaying the text of the two “other” votes, which are
“The code for Things That Don’t Quite Work, and how to go about resolving them”, and “narrative game theory”.
I confess I’m not quite sure what the first request means — a session specifically on things that are wrong/buggy/broken about Inform? I’d rather try to get those fixed. But possibly that’s not what the poster meant.
“Narrative game theory” might well be an interesting talk, but it’s not something that would need to be tied to a specific language, I don’t think.
Anyway, this is all interesting — thanks for the answers.
It would be nice to have an “Advanced Techniques” workshop at the convention, and a bucketload of online tutorials launched each day of the convention. Maybe three tutorials a day?
I don’t know who would be up to do it, but if someone did it eventually, that would probably be the most effective way of gaining some new voices.
I promise to do at least one tutorial when I am adroit enough to consider myself one of those new voices.
Doing professional training for niche software, one of the problems with a workshop is that it’s easy to get attendees of widely varying levels – some just seeing the software for the first time, others having worked with it for six months and making sure they haven’t missed anything before they dive into a two-year project.
In the end, we never can have enough depth to please all the attendees, but getting really deep seems to require turning it into a “freeform clinic for WIP problems”, which leaves everybody who doesn’t have a similar problem unhappy.
Tom,
I think the freeform clinic would be the most valuable part. Even if one has not had the problem being discussed, the longer they work in InForm, the likelier they are to encounter that problem. So, it’s all training. I want to become proficient in the system, not just finish writing my current project.