In-person attendance cap, Guest of Honor updates, and more

Hi all! We have a few major updates to share with you as we reach the end of March:

1. We are capping in-person memberships at 600 this year as a safety measure. Most years, our cap is 1,000, which is the maximum capacity of the hotel. At the last couple of in-person WisCons we’ve reached roughly 850 to 900 members. To date, we have sold about 260 in-person memberships for WisCon 2022.

If you are planning to attend WisCon in person, we strongly encourage you to register ahead of time and book your hotel room as soon as you’re certain of your travel plans. Discounted hotel room rates are available until April 26, 2022. We understand that planning travel during the pandemic is more complicated, but for the safety of all our members, we will need to stick to the 600-person cap and may not be able to sell tickets at the door this year. Remember you can always double-check your registration status and convert between online and in-person memberships!

Note that this cap does not affect online memberships! We have no plan to cap online memberships and are happy to welcome everyone who wants to attend virtually.

2. Regarding our Guests of Honor:

We’re thrilled to confirm that Sheree Renée Thomas will be attending WisCon 2022 in person and will also be available to participate in virtual programming.
Unfortunately, due to family commitments and the ongoing pandemic, neither Zen Cho nor Yoon Ha Lee will be able to participate either physically or virtually in WisCon 2022.
We have yet to receive confirmation whether Rebecca Roanhorse will be able to participate virtually (for the second time) or physically.

WisCon Guests of Honor are chosen by, and often from within, our own community, and we want to honor that choice by continuing to celebrate all of these amazing authors during WisCon 2022, just as we would if a Guest of Honor were suddenly sick and unable to attend. Thank you for your understanding!

3. With the pandemic, things are definitely different for WisCon this year: we’re having to make major changes both in response to the disease and in response to the limited time and energy volunteers have to run events. Here are a few updates:

The People of Color Dinner (organized by the Carl Brandon Society) is cancelled.
All of our Safer Spaces will be operating online only (the Safer Space for People of Color, the Safer Space for Trans & Genderqueer People, and the Disability Safer Space).
We will not be serving meals in the Con Suite; we’re working on safer alternatives assuming we can get the volunteer power to do so (see below). We will have Grab & Go!
The Vid Party will be running both physically and virtually this year!
We will be having a Gathering (activities to be determined based on COVID-19 safety).
We’ll have at least one Guest of Honor speech. The Dessert Salon is likely to be very different due to safety concerns. We’re still working out what that will look like with the hotel, so more updates to come.
If you don’t see your favorite event listed here: We’re still sorting out a lot of details, and we’ll give more updates as soon as we can.

4. We still have some significant volunteer positions that need to be filled. We’re at the point now where if we don’t get volunteers, we’ll have to start making cuts to what WisCon can offer.

We’re looking for more members for our new COVID-19 Safety department.
We need a Lead for Con Suite so that we can have robust alternatives to our usual dining room.
We need at least one more Kids’ Programs Lead by the end of this month or we’ll have to cancel Kids Programs for this year.

More updates on these and other opportunities coming soon! If any of these volunteer opportunities interest you, please complete our Volunteer Interest Survey as soon as you can. Questions? Email personnel@sf3.org.

We’ll continue to provide updates as the con approaches! If you haven’t already, please subscribe to our email newsletter: It’s the best way to guarantee you don’t miss any announcements.

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