SF3, the parent organization of the WisCon convention, has announced its Annual Member Meeting. The SF3 Board and current SF3 members will meet Sunday, Oct. 18, at 11:30am (Central Time). Details on how to attend the meeting (in-person location, phone/virtual access information) will be provided to members in the meeting packet to be sent the week before the meeting.
Membership in SF3 runs for one year only, beginning at the Annual Meeting and ending just prior to the next year’s meeting. Were you a member for last year’s Annual Meeting? You will have to purchase a membership for this year if you wish to attend and vote at this year’s meeting.
If you will be purchasing your membership online via PayPal, you must do so by 11:59pm (Central Time) on Friday, Oct. 16.
If you will be purchasing your membership by mailing a check and printed form via postal mail, it must be received in Madison as of Thursday, Oct. 15.
If you will be bringing your printed membership form to the meeting so that you can pay in person, your payment must be received at the beginning of the meeting, otherwise your membership will not be processed and you will not be able to vote. Members who do wish to pay in person at the meeting must contact the SF3 Treasurer via email [treasurer@sf3.org] by 11:59pm (Central Time) on Friday, Oct. 16, to inform them of your intent.
Voting
All members in good standing are eligible to vote on all voting matters during the Annual Member Meeting. If you cannot attend the meeting (either in person or by phone/virtually) and you wish to appoint a proxy to cast votes on your behalf, review the information on the SF3 website — your proxy form must be received via postal mail on or before Thursday, Oct. 15, or delivered to an SF3 Board member at the beginning of the Annual Member Meeting.
SF3 grants
SF3 has funds available to distribute as grants to projects aligned with SF3’s interests. Grants are awarded based upon vote of the membership during the Annual Member Meeting. Details of how to apply, as well as examples of past recipients, are available on the SF3 website.
Grant applications are due at 11:59pm (Central Time) on Sunday, Oct. 11.
Appendix: A handy time converter to find out what time U.S. Central Time is for you.
WisCon 1 was forty years ago. I can no longer write a chronological narrative of what happened, who did what and who said what. I’m frankly amazed that I actually recall or can find as much about that long-ago convention as I present to you here. But I have no doubt that I am forgetting what was the most important part of the convention to one or more WisCon 1 attendees, or that I am forgetting to mention people that I will be embarrassed to have neglected. Please forgive me and add your own memories!
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WisCon 1 was a winter convention, held on the weekend of February 11–12, 1977. It was actually scheduled for these risky dates ON PURPOSE, in order to avoid conflicting with the dates reserved by other established Midwest conventions. Weather was always a worry; we began saving money each year in a “blizzard fund,” for the likely event that weather would eventually force us to cancel. Luckily, we never had to cancel on account of weather or any other reason.
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Before WisCon 1, most concom members had attended only one or two other conventions. We were total neos. The exceptions were Hank and Lesleigh Luttrell who were experienced and famous fans. (In years to come, Hank Luttrell would run the Dealers Room for more than 20 years, and has sold in the Dealers room for 40.) Hank and Lesleigh had run cons in Columbia, Missouri, before moving to Madison and were editors of the Hugo-nominated fanzine Starling. Hank and Lesleigh joined the other founders of the Madison SF Group, Jan Bogstad, Philip Kaveny, and Thomas Murn, and put an ad in The Badger Herald, a local student newspaper, which attracted me to the first weekly Wednesday meeting in 1975, along with John Bartelt and a few others. Hank and Lesleigh had to teach us about “zines,” and “LoCs” (Letters of Comment), and mimeography. Hank encouraged many of us to attend our first conventions — Minicon 11 and MidAmericon 1 (1976 Worldcon in Kansas City). In turn, the attendees of the first WisCon were mostly people who had read and enjoyed copies of Janus or Starling, or fans we met in St. Paul or Kansas City. There may never have been a zine called Janus or a convention called WisCon if Hank and Lesleigh hadn’t taken under their tutelage a totally inexperienced group of (mostly) college students who loved science fiction but had no knowledge of the world of fans, fanzines, and conventions.
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In the mid 1970s most members of the Madison group were students at UW-Madison, and so we received assistance from the Wisconsin Student Association and from the University of Wisconsin–Extension. George Hartung of the UW–Extension generously offered his support and influence to help make the first WisCon happen. The UW-Extension provided program space at the Wisconsin Center on Langdon Street (now known as the Pyle Center). In addition, attendees booked very affordable rooms at Lowell Hall, a UW-Extension dorm facility one block away from the Wisconsin Center.
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WisCon 1 honored two women as Guests of Honor — Katherine MacLean and Amanda Bankier. MacLean is best known for short fiction published in 1950s pulp magazines like Analog, Astounding SF, and Galaxy. Bankier was currently editing a wonderful fanzine, The Witch and the Chameleon, the first and only other feminist SF fanzine other than the Madison group’s Janus. TWatC’s contributors included Joanna Russ, Racoona Sheldon (aka, Alice Sheldon and James Tiptree, Jr.), Marion Zimmer Bradley, and Vonda N. McIntyre. Their speeches were inspiring and were the first of many GoH speeches that have always been WisCon highlights for me.
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Janice Bogstad and Douglas Price co-chaired the first WisCon. In a record that has never been beaten by any other WisCon chair, Jan went on to chair the next three WisCons for a total of four consecutive years! A mere 16 additional concom members are listed for WisCon 1. Planning meetings happened once a week at Nick’s Bar on State Street as part of our group’s weekly meetings. Milwaukee fandom turned out en masse, filling the need for gophers that, as first time con-runners, we hadn’t clearly anticipated. If a time traveler had joined us at one of those weekly meetings and revealed our future, we would never have believed how large WisCon and its concom would grow!
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The Madison Science Fiction Group was committed to a quarterly publishing schedule for its feminist SF-focused fanzine, Janus (6 issues were published between 1975-1976; Janus would be nominated for a Hugo three times, 1978, 1979, and 1980). But time got tight when the group added con-running to its to-do list, and it didn’t seem possible to meet the Spring deadline in addition to making WisCon happen, so we had a brainstorm: Janus 7 was assigned double duty as both fanzine and WisCon program book. Besides articles and bibliographies on the GoHs, the zine included book, fanzine, and film reviews related to the Guests’ work.
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Both Jeanne Gomoll and Janice Bogstad had been impressed by an event that happened during the previous year’s Worldcon (MidAmericon 1). Susan Wood had struggled and succeeded in getting a single “Women and SF” panel scheduled, though the concom frankly didn’t expect many people to actually attend and therefore placed it in a tiny, out-of-the-way room. As it turned out, there was a rather huge number of people interested in it, and the 100 or so folks who had managed to squeeze into the room, or who had stood around outside the room trying to hear what was being said inside, stuck around in the lounge outside the panel room for several hours afterwards, talking with one another and networking. Victoria Vayne proposed A Women’s Apa during that extended conversation. And Jeanne and Jan began to talk about a convention where there would be more than a single “women and SF” panel. WisCon 1 programming got kickstarted in that lounge and many women left it intent on making new kinds of cons, publications, and networks.
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Everyone on the first WisCon concom contributed program ideas. In fact, in the early years, there was no separate department that managed programming. Many panels were inspired by articles written for Janus and/or rehearsed in the group’s monthly public meetings. The group met weekly at Nick’s Bar on State Street; in addition, the group produced a monthly program at UW’s Union South, advertised in the campus press. Members volunteered to present (For example: “Your First Time…Reading SF” and “Will the Real James Tiptree, Jr. Please Stand Up!”); I designed flyers for these events and they were posted on campus kiosks. Many group members found one another through these events and eventually joined the concom. The best of those monthly presentations were turned into WisCon programs. For many years, the task of creating programming was shared by everyone on the committee. Most planning meetings devoted significant time to brainstorming and refining program ideas. Although I love the crowd-sourcing process used by WisCon nowadays, I sometimes miss the camaraderie of those early meetings when it felt as though we were inventing WisCon.
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The WisCon 1 panel I remember working hardest on was “Alice Through the Looking Glass of Science Fiction” with Amanda Bankier, Katherine MacLean, Mary Bedami, Janice Bogstad, and me. Our idea was to try to cover various fields of knowledge and describe how changes within these fields had resulted from feminist awareness, and could be applied to the writing of science fiction. I talked about matriarchy theories being developed within anthropology. Mary Badami touched on the relationship between sexism and racism. Jan Bogstad focused on linguistics and talked about how the words we use can support or degrade an egalitarian society. Amanda Bankier pointed out that traditional psychological societies equated mental health with typical male behavior and women’s behavior with neurosis. Katherine MacLean spoke last, throwing out dozens of ideas impressing everyone with her wide-ranging and wildly imaginative mind.
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Katherine MacLean had a marvelous time talking with everyone at the convention. Her passionate debate with Thomas Murn at his panel, “Contemporary Science Fiction,” in which she championed the notion that IDEA was the most important part of an SF story, was one of many discussions that spilled over into the Center’s lobby and continued long after the panel had ended.
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Amanda Bankier was and, I expect, still is a very private person, and she was less comfortable than Katie with diving into conversations and debates with people she’d never met. But she belonged at WisCon. Her ideas and her contributions to the conversations were invaluable.
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There were many panels and no doubt there were substantially more panels than we absolutely needed for a small, 200-person convention. But the concom had imprinted on Worldcon programming and assumed there were supposed to be too many programs for any one person to actually attend. And thus began WisCon’s tradition of packing in as many programs into a weekend as possible. Programs that year included: Doug Price’s “Can Fans Still be Fannish with Frostbitten Noses?”, Philip Kaveny’s “H.G.Wells: a Multi-Media Presentation,” Diane Martin’s “Religion & SF,” Richard West’s “The Literary Pleasures and Possibilities of Heroic Fantasy,” Greg Rihn’s “A Fantasy Upon the Theme of Education,” and Jan Bogstad’s “Political Issues in SF.” John Bartelt invited UW Physics professor Dr. Robert March to give a talk on quarks, “The Things that the Things that Atoms are Made of are Made of.” There was also an art show, a dealers’ room, and a masquerade.
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In spite of its multi-track schedule, WisCon 1 (and the next few WisCons), often felt to attendees as if panels consisted of one continuing and evolving conversation. Topics that began at one panel were built upon in the next and developed in conversations in the lounge among folks who had attended other panels that intersected with similar ideas.
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Hank and Lesleigh Luttrell, Philip Kaveny, and Demmie McGinley (director) created an elaborate play, Galactic Banana Dealer, for opening ceremonies. Thus began WisCon’s frequent thespian aspirations in opening ceremonies for decades to come … some good, some not so good!
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Richard S. Russell ran the registration table, greeting everyone with a happy smile. He would continue in this role for 38 years. In addition, Richard’s and Diane Martin’s thematic film review column ran within the combination program book/Janus 7. Eventually Richard’s annual film review moved from print to presentation and became a regular part of WisCon programming, each year examining a common theme running through the year’s crop of SF/Fantasy films.
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The convention was a mass of “firsts” for nearly everyone on the concom. James Cox ran his first art auction at WisCon 1. It was the first of many: Jim became a familiar figure at Midwest art show auctions.
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The first WisCon hospitality suite occupied two connecting rooms in the UW-Extension dorm, Lowell Hall. I don’t remember how we got around the fact that entry to each floor required a room key for a room on that floor, but we did. I also recall a problem with the unfortunately excellent sound-conducting properties of Lowell Hall’s steel walls, but no police were involved and we decided to do WisCon 2 before the first had even ended, so things must have turned out all right. The con’s total attendance (around 200) was small enough that there may not have been any other parties than the one held in the consuite. I do not recall. I do remember riffing on the elaborate maps I’d seen published in worldcon program books: I drew a map of the party suite, showing the location of the trash can, TV, and other individual pieces of furniture.
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Perri Corrick-West insisted that we show The Rocky Horror Picture Show as part of the film program — this was well before the movie had acquired a cult following. There was no audience participation at WisCon’s showing; the audience laughed and clapped, but did not sing along or dress in costume as would soon happen at weekly midnight showings at local art houses.
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People didn’t own videotape machines in 1977, so conventions’ film programs offered welcome opportunities to see older movies. Besides Rocky Horror, that year’s film program included Metropolis, Nosferatu, Siegfried, Little Shop of Horrors, Night of the Living Dead, and Island of Lost Souls.
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WisCon and Janus were, for me at that time, about discovering and examining the connection between science fiction and feminism. About erasing the embarrassment I had felt with feminist friends when I admitted that I read SF. About being proud of being a feminist among SF fans who did not think feminism should be part of the field. That connection turned from a dotted line to a fully functional and permanent bridge by the time WisCon 1 had ended. The folks I worked with on the concom, the many people I met for the first time who attended WisCon, became lifetime and lifework family, who changed my life, and I think, the science fiction community, too.
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Unwilling to go home when the convention had finally ended, the whole concom, both guests of honor, and many attendees strolled over to the theater at University Square to see Wizards, which had premiered over the weekend.
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Because we paid attention to political ideas, especially feminism, and because we supported women, lesbians, and gays in our program, WisCon gained a derogatory nickname from some Midwest fans. They called us “PervertCon” for a couple years. We thought the label was quite hilarious and considered using it in our advertising for WisCon 2.
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I wrote a con report about WisCon 1; here is part of what I wrote: “Having once seen a convention from the peculiar vantage point of one of the con committee members, I don’t think I’ll ever go to another convention with quite the same, uh, innocence as I did before WisCon. It’s sort of like a small child who sees the world as both a very complex place (in terms of their lack of understanding of it) and, at the same time, an almost magically, effortlessly mechanized machine. Now I know about the incredible concoms who pour sweat and adrenalin into the machine of conventions and make them work. Now I’ll always be aware of the stage crew.”
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Jeanne Gomoll helped create the first WisCon concom and worked on WisCons #1 through #38, except #24 in 2000 — when she took the year off in order to better enjoy being Guest of Honor. Jeanne chaired WisCons #20 and #30 and over the years wore many hats: publications, programming, Tiptree Auction, art show, the Gathering, scholarships, and others. She has frequently served on the SF3 Board and chaired it several times. With much sadness, Jeanne resigned from both the WisCon concom and the SF3 board in 2014. Jeanne was active in fanzine fandom and nominated for three Hugos for her work as editor and artist on the Madison SF group’s feminist SF fanzine Janus; she has been honored as guest of honor at quite a few cons, including the 2014 WorldCon, Loncon 3. She is a member of the James Tiptree, Jr. Award Motherboard; she also served as a juror/chair for the 1993 Tiptree Award.
It was a dark and stormy February. Suddenly, a shot rang out.
WisCon.
Well, maybe it wasn’t “dark and stormy” — the official WisCon record says that February of 1977 was “bitterly cold.” I wasn’t there, so I couldn’t say. I was, in fact, not quite five years old and living in Pennsylvania. I didn’t even know what a Wisconsin was let alone a WisCon.
But I did know who Wonder Woman was, would shortly know what “Battlestar Galactica” was, certainly knew what “Star Trek” was. And I know that when I (finally) discovered fandom in my 20s and learned about WisCon thanks to a friend who’d already attended once, I knew with complete clarity that WisCon was what I needed. I wasn’t wrong — when I attended WisCon 29 it was everything I could have hoped for, everything a ‘70s kid who loved Wonder Woman and “Star Trek” could have wanted.
Now, WisCon is turning 40. Four decades of being a home for those of us who’ve needed both science fiction and feminism!
To mark this monumental anniversary, we are kicking off a blog series — “WisCon: 40×40.” Every week we’ll focus on a WisCon (or two), celebrating and reminiscing about this space that’s gone from being known as “PervertCon” to an institution that’s inspired so many people and has spawned a whole host of other organizations over the years.
Later today you’ll see the first post in this series, written by none other than Jeanne Gomoll, who was at WisCon 1 and has graciously written an incredible recollection of that first convention.
We are especially excited to hear memories from the WisCon community. Please join us in comments on the blog posts in the coming months! Think of this as a crowd-sourced history project.
Would you like to write one of the posts for a particular WisCon? Please contact me directly at comms_chair@sf3.org.
Was WisCon a shot that rang out across ’70s fandom? Has it been a home for you, an annual reunion of sorts? How has WisCon and its community been inspiring for you? Which guests of honor have particularly moved you? What were your favorite Con Suite conversations? Let’s count down the past 39 years together as we anticipate WisCon 40’s opening on May 27, 2016.
This year was the first convention where we had a formal procedure in place for what to do when individuals attending WisCon violate the code of conduct described in our anti-harassment policy. The policy is intended to be flexible to allow for different situations, but its basic idea is that if somebody reports a harassing behavior to Safety, the person responsible can be issued a warning and asked to do something differently (such as staying away from a place or person). If warnings aren’t attended to or harassing behavior escalates, the policy describes a few more options, including –– in the worst case scenario, which we hope to avoid –– that Safety and Chairs in consultation with available Anti-Abuse Team members can make a collective at-con decision to ban someone from WisCon.
Now that the convention is over, Safety has handed off their at-con reports to the full Anti-Abuse Team, which is reviewing reports that are still open post-con and evaluating how well the policy performed on- site. Here’s how things looked in our first year:
11 issues relating to the anti-harassment policy were reported to Safety.
4 attendees were issued warnings for harassing behaviors.
1 disruptive non-member was escorted off the premises by hotel staff.
1 person was banned, after several warnings, in response to reports both from multiple departments and from the hotel –– some relating to patterns of behavior going back several years.
What have we learned from the first year of the harassment policy?
Many members have stated that WisCon felt safer this year because they knew that the concom was explicitly trying to make WisCon a place where members could be free of microaggressions and harassment, even if that’s a goal we can’t ever expect to 100% reach. This is what we have been hoping for in our work on the policy and we are very pleased to hear it.
Other members have stated that they fear not being welcome because of the new policy; we have heard terms like “feminist thought police” thrown around. To this we can only say that we do not intend to be a disciplinary committee, and our intention is not to police but rather to be part of a community that holds its members accountable to the principles that we have organized ourselves around. But we also understand that the line between accountability and policing can be a hard one to walk, and we will continue to listen to your feedback on how well we are managing to walk it.
A member who received a warning stated that they would like further information about recourse: what is there for someone to do once they have been given a warning? We agree that this is a gap in the current policy, and we will revise the policy to fix this before WisCon 40. In addition to providing a process for members to appeal decisions with which they disagree, we want to be able to support members who receive warnings that they recognize as justified, so that they can reflect on their behavior, make amends if necessary, and work to be a part of change for the better in future. After all, the structures of white supremacy, patriarchy, cissexism, ableism, colonialism, and capitalism live within all of us as we live within them. Our aim is to make WisCon a place and time in which everyone can be liberated from these oppressions as much as is possible, not to punish those who misstep.
The newly redesigned (and somewhat space age) lobby of the Concourse Hotel.
WisCon has, once again, come and gone, not unlike the Faerie Market of Wall, and just as full of strange and wonderful delights, although fewer hot dogs this year.
Were there any panels you’d like to have seen? Were you inspired by the conversation of a panel to propose one for WisCon 40? Our idea submission form is open and will be available for suggestions until January 2016.
What did you think of this year’s WisCon? Our surveys will be open for about two more weeks (edited to remove link, as the survey is now closed). If you have a few minutes, please tell us what you thought of programming and of WisCon in general.
This week we’re also going to be running something of a post-postmortem here on the blog. The WisCon postmortem panel at the end of the convention is always an excellent time to deconstruct the weekend and offer suggestions on what could be improved. But did you miss this year’s postmortem discussion? Look for a few posts from us assessing the convention from a few angles and inviting your feedback.
134 Call Out Culture II: Follow-up to the Discussion Held at WisCon 38
Feminism and Other Social Change Movements • Senate A • Sunday, 10:00–11:15 am
Riley is no longer a panelist.
156 Triple the Strength, Triple the Power!
Reading • Conference 2 • Sunday, 1:00–2:15 pm
Laura Lis Scott was unable to attend WisCon.
163 Don’t You Think He Looks Tired: Strategies for de-Moffatting Doctor Who
Reading, Viewing, and Critiquing Science Fiction • Caucus • Sunday, 2:30–3:45 pm
Christopher Hatton has been added as a panelist.
166 Communities and Languages: A Dialogue Across Worlds
Feminism and Other Social Change Movements • Wisconsin • Sunday, 2:30–3:45 pm
Kimberley Long-Ewing is no longer a panelist.
172 Intersectional Body-Positivity
Power, Privilege, and Oppression • Conference 4 • Sunday, 2:30–3:45 pm
The Rotund is no longer a panelist.
173 Elim Garak’s Weird Cardassian Penis
Reading, Viewing, and Critiquing Science Fiction • Conference 5 • Sunday, 2:30–3:45 pm
Christopher Hatton is no longer a panelist.
179 Identity outside the United States
Power, Privilege, and Oppression • Senate A • Sunday, 4:00–5:15 pm
Ashok Banker was unable to attend WisCon.
186 Historical Vampires and Buzzfeed Monsters
Academic • Conference 3 • Sunday, 4:00–5:15 pm
Tassie Gniady was unable to attend WisCon.
(First in a one-part series.)
Okay, okay, so that’s not the actual title, but it’s a lot more fun than Dessert Salon Coordinator, don’t you think? Plus, it comes with a sash. Seriously.
So what does a Dessert Diva do?
It starts at the beginning of the year when I contact our hotel’s banquet coordinator and ask for a list of desserts and prices. They talk to the pastry chef and eventually I get a list of 25 or 26 options from which I choose 20. I make sure we have a variety of flavors and textures and I make sure that we have plenty of vegan, nut-free, and gluten-free items. Then I start crunching numbers. Did you know we order 822 individual desserts each year? (A secret: We order 7 dozen chocolate-covered strawberries.) I not only have to balance flavors, textures, and allergens but I have to make sure that we order the right amounts. I order a lot of chocolaty desserts and a few of each of the vegan offerings. I don’t want you to be disappointed and we don’t want a lot of one thing left over because I ordered too much. I also want to make sure that everyone feels like they have plenty to choose from, even those with the strictest diets.
Once I decide on amounts of things—including the coffee, tea, and milk—I put it all on a spreadsheet which tells me how much it will all cost. If that isn’t too heart-stopping, I send it back to the hotel and then I kick back and answer your questions about allergens—which are sent from me to the hotel banquet coordinator to the pastry chef to the hotel banquet coordinator and then back to me—until the night of the Dessert Salon when I dress up, make sure you don’t have any questions or concerns, and order more beverages if we run out before the speeches start. The number of desserts I make off with is a closely-guarded secret. (Six, okay? I tried six last year. Don’t judge me!)
Did you know I can hold a dessert or two for you if you have allergies and want to make sure you get something that you’ll be able to eat? That’s part of my job, too. I even have an email address: dessert@wiscon.net
After the con, I contact the hotel’s banquet coordinator again and they tell me which desserts were left over and which disappeared really fast so I have an idea for the next year of how to better balance the order. Voila! Job done!
How did you become the Dessert Diva?
Well, in this case, it was all about who I knew. I had a friend who wanted to take a break and I just happened to be ready to take on a little responsibility. But you don’t have to know someone to get in on the action! When we have volunteer opportunities we post them on our blog. You can also check our at-con volunteer board on the 2nd floor for at-con volunteer opportunities.
It’s a delicious job, but somebody’s got to do it!
Panelist Jeanne Mealy brings these highlights from the Lighthearted Shorthand Sans Fail panel:
“The moderator is laughing too hard to moderate.” said Sumana Harihareswara at one point, and Heidi Waterhouse says she won’t soon be getting over the “douche industrial complex.”
The alternatives to terms like “you guys,” that we perhaps unconsciously use all the time, were (and may still be) posted outside of Capitol A (on the second floor to the left of Registration).
What do I do if my plans change at the last minute, and I suddenly want to go / can’t go to the dessert salon? Come by Reg if it’s before 4:30 to buy / sell your ticket. If it’s after that, don’t despair! There will be a Dessert Salon Bourse as usual, for last-minute buys and sells of dessert tickets. The Bourse will open at 5:15 and close at 7:00, at the Reg Desk. No ticket buy-backs or sales after 7, so hurry on in if your plans change!
The Where Is WisCon Going? panel on Saturday quickly opened the floor to audience members to ask questions and offer suggestions about the future of WisCon. Some excellent dialogue was exchange and really good ideas were offered and Mary Prince (whose work you can find in the Art Show, check it out!) doodled this picture of panelists Bronwyn Bjorkman, Sandy-sashafeather, and Jacquelyn Gill while we all enjoyed a session of Q & A. Not pictured, Kristin Livdahl and Shayla D (me!).
If you bid on and won an item in the auction and have not yet paid for it, you can find it in the Art Show on the display tables for the Tiptree Auction. The winning bid and bidder will be circled on the item’s tag. Simply take it to the front and hand over your cash. There are also Buy It Now items still available.
While not, perhaps, actually art, Tahlia D.’s redesign of the art show layout is spacious and delightful. As a person with a visual impairment, I often feel like a bull in a china shop, so the wide aisles make me feel safe enough to actually stop and appreciate the art. Granted, I snuck in in the middle of the night… Regardless, it’s a space that feels spacious and lends itself to stopping and really appreciating the works of art being displayed and, as usual, they cover a wide range of media, subjects, and styles.
While voting ended last night for the “Best of…” awards, you can still vote with your pocketbooks and take some of this beautiful craftsmanship home with you.
SF3, the parent organization of the WisCon convention, has announced its Annual Member Meeting. The SF3 Board and current SF3 members will meet Sunday, Oct. 18, at 11:30am (Central Time). Details on how to attend the meeting (in-person location, phone/virtual access information) will be provided to members in the meeting packet to be sent the week before the meeting.
The Where Is WisCon Going? panel on Saturday quickly opened the floor to audience members to ask questions and offer suggestions about the future of WisCon. Some excellent dialogue was exchange and really good ideas were offered and Mary Prince (whose work you can find in the Art Show, check it out!) doodled this picture of panelists Bronwyn Bjorkman, Sandy-sashafeather, and Jacquelyn Gill while we all enjoyed a session of Q & A. Not pictured, Kristin Livdahl and Shayla D (me!).