2015.08.13 But do They Know?

Yesterday it was discovered that Ken Whitman is listed as a Guest of Honor for Con on the Cob, a multi-faceted convention I'd heard good things about in the past. The convention is in two months and their website lists a slew of guests, which the are also promoting on Facebook.

At first glance it looks like maybe they just have their guest list from last year up because that section's lead-in paragraph ends with, "We are exceedingly proud to present last year’s special guests (we’ll update soon with the 2015 guests):"

Now with only two months to go before the convention you'd hope that they would have an update guest list, and while they are at it an updated list of their 2015 sponsors! It looks like the names might be right and they just need to remove edit the references to last year's event, "Yeah, that's a misprint. These are indeed this year's guests."

My question at this point is "Do they know that one of their guests of honor is a scam artist?" I'm thinking that answer is a resounding "no". Ken Whitman was a Guest of Honor at Mediopolis (you can read some of the details over at Tenkar's Tavern), but it looks like a few people reached out to them and informed the convention that they may not wish to have a noted Kickstarter scam artist run a panel called, "GET THE DOUGH: CROWD SOURCE FINANCING VS. TRADITIONAL (BIZ)". Evidently the Con Staff have wisely decided to  remove Ken Whitman from their event as he doesn't show up on the schedule and his special guest page is now a "404" entry.

An email response to my inquiry into the matter was replied to:
"Hi there!

Thank you for reaching Mediopolis Expo. We have received several emails regarding Ken Whitman and are investigating these accusations. I truly appreciate you preserving the integrity of our expo.

I hope to see you at the show.

Sincerely,

Kevin Marshall

VIP Services"

Good enough for me.

As I said earlier, I've heard good things about Con on the Cob and I'm running with the assumption that they simply don't realize the type of "special" their Special Guest Ken Whitman is. Now I'm not saying that people should email the con to demand they drop Ken Whitman from their guest list, but it would probably be a good idea to inform them they might want to look into Ken Whitman's recent behavior and decide for themselves if this is the kind of person they wish to bring in to their convention.

There is a contact page for Con of the Cob here, but you can also use their Facebook page and the con runner's email is listed at the bottom of the page.