[Palindrome] Looking back and ahead

[Trip Payne <trippayne bellsouth net>]

Wow.  That was a lot of fun.  I'll post about it soon on my LJ blog, of 
course, but for now: great Hunt, great time with all of you, and of 
course great result.

I am really looking forward to the creation of the next Hunt.  I'm eager 
to get started discussing potential themes, structures, and so forth; I 
know that many team members must have general ideas already, to say 
nothing of specific puzzle concepts.

But of course we can't discuss that yet.  I guess the first order of 
business is getting the people who don't want to be on Palindrome '08 
out of earshot.  Do we know who's leaving the team yet?  It would be 
convenient if those people told us as soon as possible, so that we could 
start those sorts of general talks.  We could even say something like 
"If you want to solve on another team in 2008, you need to let us know 
by X date; if you don't, you will read emails that give away Hunt 
information and will be ineligible to solve on other teams."

Once those people are known and taken off this list, it seems to me that 
we can discuss general thoughts (themes, ways to potentially change the 
structure of the Hunt, and so on) on this main list, at least for a 
time.  I don't know whether there needs to be a second list for other 
Hunt puzzle discussion or not; if there's one main leader and a small 
group of core organizers, that can probably be handled in normal 
off-list emails.

(By the way, don't interpret that last line about "small group of core 
organizers" the wrong way.  I think that everybody on the team who wants 
to contribute to the making of the Hunt should certainly do so as much 
as they want.  I simply meant that there will probably be, for example, 
a main computer person, a main web design person, a main MIT-centric 
person, a main puzzle editor and perhaps some subeditors, etc., who will 
have a lot of day-to-day issues that won't need to be run past the whole 
list.)

I think I agree with the Sprout philosophy, which Fuldu mentioned in his 
email, that there needs to be one person at the top with a sort of 
ultimate veto power if it comes down to it.  I think that the basic 
decisions, such as the Hunt theme, should be democratic -- the whole 
team needs to be happy with what we're doing, after all -- but when you 
have 100 puzzles and all kinds of complexities, committee-based 
decision-making can be problematic, which is why I think the "one 
overall leader and a small core group of subleaders" is the best way to 
go once we're settled on the general direction.  I've sort of 
tentatively put my name forward to Fuldu; I don't know for sure whether 
I'd have the time to be the main leader (even if other people wanted me 
in that spot), but I would like to at minimum be in the small core 
group, since I have a lot of puzzle-editing experience.

I am so happy we won.  We rocked and we deserve it, and we are going to 
kick ass on this Hunt-making thing, y'all.

-- Trip