WisCon 41 at-con newsletter — A Momentary Taste of WisCon, Sunday edition

It’s Sunday! Which means the Dessert Salon and Guest of Honor speeches are tonight — CAN’T WAIT!!

Sunday’s also a great time to slow down for a minute, catch your breath, and make sure you’ve eaten recently. And, oh, hey, have you taken your meds? I almost missed mine this morning until a friend reminded me.

By the 3rd day of the convention we also have a fairly HUGE newsletter for you, so find a comfy chair and put your feet up for this one!

Amal El-Mohtar — Schedule changes

Amal will be doing her honey-tasting at 1–2:29pm today in room 627.

Unfortunately, she’s had to withdraw from her other appearances today in order to rest her voice for the Guest of Honor speeches tonight.

Register now for WisCon 42!

Start planning your 2018 trip to WisCon now — memberships and hotel reservations are available today!! WisCon 42 will take place Memorial Day weekend — May 25-28. Full details on membership costs and next year’s room rates are in this blog post. Adult memberships for WisCon 42 reflect a small price increase to $55 (all other memberships remain the same).

Toilets for all

We’ve had some questions about our arrangements for all-gender toilet — because it really seems like WisCon should just have all-gender toilets everywhere, right? We agree! But unfortunately, that’s not possible for the time being. At this time the hotel cannot accommodate this need; the issue remains open. In the meantime, WisCon wishes to be very clear that we support all people’s right to use the restroom they consider appropriate.

We have all-gender toilets in two locations:

In Conference 1, on the 2nd Floor (Yes, this is an awkward location.)
On the 6th Floor, between rooms 627 and 629

And, of course, all women are welcome to use the women’s restrooms. All men are welcome in the men’s restrooms.

Questioning anyone’s right to use a restroom based upon a perceived mismatch between their gender and who a restroom is “for” is a violation of WisCon’s Code of Conduct. If you feel unsafe or harassed, our Safety Team is here to assist you.

email: safety@wiscon.net
phone: 608-957-7233 (957-SAFE)
reporting form: wiscon.net/report

Or look for one of our on-call Safety volunteers. They’re wearing bright yellow/green high-visibility vests.

Magic the Gathering tournament

Sunday, 4-5:15pm
Room 606

Formerly the Teen Programming Magic the Gathering tournament, the tournament is now open to all WisCon attendees. THERE WILL BE PRIZES. Tap your mana, shoot with your dragon — BOOM! — victory.

Film project; Researcher

At WisCon this year we have two folks working on projects who have asked for our help connecting with people.

Clara Pacotte — Film project

You may see Clara filming during WisCon. She’s familiar with and has agreed to our photo policy; if you need to ask her to stop filming you, of course do so.

Here’s what Clara has to say about her project:

The project is a splitted interactive “movie”. It is composed of four videos parts and textual, audio and visual documentation.
In each short documentary that will constitute the movie’s poles, I will explore one of the following themes:

Genre and sexuality in science fiction : interviews of guest writers about genre questionning in sci-fi, social alternatives and women’ status

Testimonies for the future : members of the Wiscon tell how they imagine women in 2070

From the 70s to the present day : the link between Wiscon’s original history and its current situation, focus on Wiscon as a community as well as a concentration of ideas

Fictionalized Madison : this part present several sequence-shots of Madison from different transportation means, mute and surrounded by voice recordings of Wiscon members telling their favourite part of their favourite science fiction story.

I need your participation to make this project exist. To be interviewed or give an audio or textual testimony, you can contact me at clarapacotte@gmail.com (in french, english or spanish). This way, we can already get in touch as I begin to plan the filming.

I’m available for any question and will be glad to give you more details if you send me an email.

Joey DiZoglio — Researcher

Joey DiZoglio is a student from Brown University’s Medical School researching women and non-binary health care providers who write speculative fiction. He will be in attendance at WisCon. If you identify as this kind of author or want to meet him or suggest authors you read or know then contact him at joseph_dizoglio@brown.edu or on Twitter @JoeyDiZoglio.

Workshops — Clarification on how to join them

We’ve caused some confusion about how our Workshops operate, and we are deeply sorry about it. To clarify:

The WisCon Workshops are sign-up in advance. This was not made clear in the program; we apologize for the oversight. Many of the WisCon Workshops are full and unfortunately cannot take drop-ins. Some can! Email workshop@wiscon.net to ask! This was something we missed when Workshops expanded from Friday-morning-only format. Again, our apologies! We are already fixing it for WisCon 42.

Volunteer needs

Sunday

Safety: Needs volunteers for shifts throughout the convention. Training provided! Contact safety@wiscon.net.

Con Suite: Openings today until 8pm. Stop by and ask the person with the orange apron for shift openings. Everyone visits the Con Suite at some point — this is a great way to see people you may miss otherwise!

Art Show: Needs a volunteer for the 5-6pm shift today. Stop by the show in Senate (1st floor) to sign up.

Monday

SignOut: Still needs volunteers to help with set-up and during the event. Contact volunteers@wiscon.net.

Art Show: Desperately needs help packing up the art of the 8 artists who mailed their work into the show. Also needs help for breaking down displays during tear-down. Stop by the show in Senate (1st floor) to sign up.

Tear-down: MANY departments will need help to tear down after the convention. Stop by the volunteer board (2nd floor, next to Registration desk) to see where you can help!

More details on volunteering in the section at the bottom, or email volunteers@wiscon.net.

Lost & found

The Registration desk (2nd floor) has the following items in Lost & Found:

orange bag with white paint on the side
jumbo Hefty™ zipper bag containing a lot of brown fabric (sweater? shawl?)
black zipper hoodie with roller derby team logo
gray T with long navy sleeves
black sweater
stripey-grey Mossimo hoodie
red composition book
ball of multicolored yarn in the blue-purple range, with attached crochet project
ball of multicolored (rainbow) string
small dolphin pendant
two magnetic “pin” backs

If you’ve lost any of these items, please come and retrieve them from Registration.

We also found a con badge. Ask at the hotel front desk.

Today’s big events

Dessert Salon

7:30-8:30pm
Capitol/Wisconsin

What’s a little decadent, a little laid back, and full of great conversation? Our Dessert Salon! Every year, right before the Guest of Honor speeches, WisCon members (who have purchased a salon ticket) enjoy delights crafted by the Concourse’s pastry chef, up to two desserts per ticket-holder. You can peruse the selection of desserts to find one that suits your particular dietary needs on this blog post.

Guest of Honor Speeches
& Tiptree Ceremony

8:30-9:45pm
Capitol/Wisconsin

The Guest of Honor event is the high point of the WisCon weekend. This is when we celebrate and honor our guests, and our guests honor us with a speech, a song, or whatever they wish. At the end of the evening, we’ll announce our Guests of Honor for WisCon 42.

Gaming

Open Gaming Space will be open 8pm – 12am in the second floor lobby in front of the Dealers’ Room doors. We will teach and play a variety of modern games open to casual drop-in players. Most games will be suitable in theme and content for players of a variety of ages from children on up. New players are welcome and encouraged to join us! This year, we are excited to share new additions of Braille-marked accessibility kits to our collection, for the popular Pandemic and 7 Wonders board games, as well as a Braille RPG dice set that can be loaned out for scheduled (or impromptu) role-playing games. We welcome you to bring games to share with fellow attendees, or to choose a game from our collection to play.

Today’s Open Writing Salon

Sunday, 8-10pm — With drive-by drabbling!

Looking for a quiet place to get some words on the page? Join us every morning and evening from Friday night to Sunday night for an opportunity to share space with other writers. The full weekend schedule is in this blog post.

Weekend drabble challenge!

For the WisCon FanFic Drabble Challenge, we’ll be accepting works that are 100-250 words long, from any fandom. These will be collected and included in a collection on the Archive of Our Own. The challenge is open from Saturday at 12pm through close of con on Monday at 4pm. This post has all the details!

Today’s Con Suite menus

This blog post has the full list of menus for the weekend.

Sunday dinner (3-5pm)

Ian’s Pizza

CART / live-captioning service available

WisCon is proud to offer live-captioning services — available all weekend long, at request, for (almost) any panel. We always offer the service for Opening Ceremonies, the Tiptree Auction, and the Sunday night Guest of Honor Speeches. But would you like to have CART for a panel you’re going to attend? Our CART providers will be hanging out in the Green Room (2nd floor) all weekend long. Check with a Green Room volunteer to see if the CART provider is available. Or you can email access@wiscon.net! Want to follow our CART captioning on your own device? The URL is: bit.ly/wiscontext

Location typo in the Pocket Program Book

Our printed Pocket Program Book has a typo for the location of the Safer Space for People with Disabilities. It’s in room 625.

The once & future WisCon

How can WisCon improve? What programming would you like to see next year? Who would make a great Guest of Honor for WisCon 43? Please check out this blog post and help us continue to build a great WisCon.

Got an hour or two to volunteer? #WisConGiveBack

What makes WisCon go are the volunteers. Have a free hour or two? Would you like to help out and earn a rebate on your membership? If you’re up for volunteering, please email us! volunteers@wiscon.net

Current urgent needs are posted on a white board next to the Registration desk on the 2nd floor.
We always have a strong need for folks who can help out in the Con Suite.
We also have a regular need for volunteers at Registration Desk and the Art Show desk.
Other specific needs are added as needed to the blog’s volunteers tag.

Need to contact Safety?

Reminder: Our Code of Conduct

email: safety@wiscon.net
phone: 608-957-7233 (957-SAFE)
reporting form: wiscon.net/report