Official Announcements

Update from Anti-Abuse

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Jacquelyn Gill, chair
Anti-Abuse Team

Since last year, members of the concom have been hard at work developing new policies and procedures for handling harassment reports and for improving member safety and well-being at WisCon in general. Our guiding principles have been to make harassment and abuse rare, reporting easy, and follow-through timely, respectful, and reporter-centered.

One of our first steps was to implement a new Anti-Abuse Team model.  The AAT will be a permanent, year-round concom department that will include a Safety representative and a historian/archivist — a model which we hope will help prevent past issues with institutional memory, mishandling of reports, and lack of follow-through.  The policies that the AAT will operate under will afford improved flexibility to handle both individual reports and to address general concerns.  The AAT will also strive to maintain a diverse team that reflects the diversity of WisCon’s membership.

Here are a few of the things we have been working on:

  • We completely rebuilt our anti-harassment policy, working off of the Ada Initiative policy for conventions. Our draft policy is currently under review by the concom.  We will also be sharing it with our membership for public comment.
  • We have developed a new policy to address member conduct outside of WisCon that may threaten member safety at the convention, including doxing, outing, stalking, assault, and online harassment.
  • We have been working very closely with Safety, Registration, Programming, and Volunteering so that decisions on reports (e.g., bans, programming restrictions) are communicated to and enforced by relevant departments.
  • We have been working with Safety and AppDev to design a secure database for incident reports.  We have also adapted our policy to include informal communications or general concerns raised about individuals or the climate at WisCon in general.
  • We are re-evaluating the formal member advocate position (implemented just before WisCon 38) and have drafted some alternative policies.
  • We are investigating training opportunities in advocacy, bystander intervention, and other relevant skill sets for members of the concom.

A draft document of our new policies will be available for public review in the next few weeks, so that we will have our new policy implemented in advance of WisCon 39. In the meantime, please feel free to contact me and the Anti-Abuse Team (antiabuse@wiscon.net) or Safety (safety@wiscon.net) with any concerns or questions.

[Footnote:  The policy and procedure revision is a separate process from the work of the subcommittee convened to consider Rose Lemberg’s report of harassment by F.J. Bergmann.  That subcommittee should soon be asking the concom for the final vote.  We will announce when that vote happens.]

WisCon 39

Call for proposals for Alaya Dawn Johnson essay in WisCon 39 Souvenir Book

LaShawn Wanak
GoH Liaison — Alaya Dawn Johnson
I am soliciting proposals for an essay on Alaya Dawn Johnson for this year’s WisCon 39 Souvenir Book. Previous essays in the Souvenir Book have been biographically geared towards the GoH, but the essays can also be more personal, discussing how Alaya Dawn Johnson or her work influenced you. The essay will need to be between 800 and 1500 words. Payment will be $20 upon publication.
If interested, please send a proposal and writing sample to me at gohliaisons@wiscon.net with the subject header “WisCon 39 ADJ Essay.”  Proposals will be accepted up to Saturday,  Feb. 28 March 7 (deadline extended!). If chosen, I would need a full copy of the essay by March 18. If you have any questions or if you would like to look at previous Souvenir Book essays for examples, please let me know.
WisCon 39

Academic programming — Deadline extended to March 2!

Lauren J. Lacey & Alexis Lothian
Academic Programming

WisCon’s academic programming is open to independent scholars as well as undergraduate and graduate students. We invite individual papers and panel presentations on science fiction and fantasy, with an emphasis on issues of feminism, gender, race, and class. Work on
fandom is also actively encouraged. Full information on the academic track is available on our website: http://wiscon.net/programming/academic/

To submit your proposal, log into your wiscon.info account and then
visit this page: http://account.wiscon.net/paper/

If you have any questions, please email:  academic@wiscon.net

WisCon 39

a compendium of deadlines

Chris Wallish
Media & Communications

If it’s February, it must be deadline season for WisCon.  Here’s what’s coming up in the next month.

Academic Programming will close to proposals on Feb. 23rd (next Monday) March 2 — http://wiscon.net/programming/academic/ (Deadline extended!!)

The Dealers’ Room will close to applications on Feb. 28th (Saturday a week from now) — hhttp://wiscon.net/events/dealers-room/

The Art Show will also close to applications on Feb. 28th (Saturday a week from now) — http://wiscon.net/events/art-show/

The ever important Parties will close to proposals on March 1 — http://wiscon.net/programming/parties/

The Souvenir Book is taking submissions until March 18 — http://wiscon.net/2015/01/wiscon39-souvenir-book-call-for-articles/

And The Gathering is taking proposals until March 22 — http://wiscon.net/events/the-gathering/

One important non-deadline to note:  Reports of Panel Sign-Up being dead closed have been greatly exaggerated!  Panel Sign-Up will not begin until later in February.  What has passed is the window for submitting a panel idea.  We are now looking over panel ideas & will open Panel Sign-Up soon.

Interested in Readings or the Writers’ Workshop?  We’ll be announcing deadlines for those in the next two weeks!  Don’t touch that dial.

WisCon 39

WisCon 39 Art Show Call for Artists

Tahlia Day
Art Show

Attention artists! Applications for this year’s WisCon Art Show will be open until the end of February.

The WisCon Art Show focuses on art exploring feminist themes and WisCon’s principles, work by women artists, and work by Midwestern artists. In the past the show has included painting, drawing, prints, comics, photography, 3D art, fiber art, and jewelry, among other media.

We prefer that artists in the show also attend the con, but mailing in art is an option if you’re comfortable with us hanging and handling your work. The Art Show operates like a gallery or store: you set the prices for your work and customers can purchase it during the show’s open hours (Saturday through Monday during the con). WisCon takes a 4% commission on all sales (8% for mail-in art).

See http://wiscon.net/events/art-show/ for more information and to apply. Completed applications (including images of your work or a link to a website with images) must be submitted online by February 28, 2015, and artists will be notified of acceptance in mid-March.

WisCon 39

main website temporarily down

Chris Wallish
Media & Communications

Looks like our website got so excited by all the amazing panel suggestions you’ve been submitting that it had an attack of the vapors and passed out on the fainting couch.  If you haven’t had a chance to submit your suggestion yet, jot it down somewhere so you don’t lose your inspiration!  We’ll let you know when the website has returned to itself and is ready to go again.

WisCon 39

WisCon39 Souvenir Book: Call for articles!

Gabby Reed
Souvenir Book

The Souvenir Book is WisCon’s gift to the community, featuring profiles of our Guests of Honor, pieces highlighting the work of WisCon’s child-organizations, and essays from community contributors. We now call on our community members to submit their essays of 500 – 1000 words for the WisCon39 Souvenir Book! Previous essay topics have included: an exploration of Working Class Studies, a report on Foolscap 2013/Potlach 22, and an ethnographic intro to WisCon. The only topic requirement for the Souvenir Book’s essays is that they be relevant to the WisCon community. We encourage everyone to submit their work, whether this is your first WisCon or your nearly-40th!

Guidelines

  • Essays should be 500-1000 words
  • Topics both current and historic that are relevant to the WisCon community
  • Authors will be paid $20.00 USD at time of publication
  • All essays or questions should be sent to souvenirbook @wiscon.info (Please use the subject line “WC39 Souvenir Book Submission: [Your Name]”)
  • Please submit essays as .doc or .rtf attachments.

Submit by March 18th, 2015 April 1st! (Deadline extended)

Official Announcements

update from subcommittee reviewing harassment report

1 Comment

Chris Wallish
Media & Communications

The subcommittee convened to consider Rose Lemberg’s report of harassment by F.J. Bergmann is beginning to wrap up its work.  Finalizing conclusions and recommendations will yet take several weeks.  The last stage of the process begins with the concom voting on whether to accept the subcommittee’s final report and recommendations.

The subcommittee’s next update will be an announcement when the concom begins voting.

Tiptree Award, WisCon 39

WisCon 39 hosts the Tiptree Auction in 2015

The Tiptree Motherboard
Karen Joy Fowler (ex officio), Jeanne Gomoll, Ellen Klages, Alexis Lothian, Pat Murphy, Debbie Notkin, Jeffrey D. Smith

Given the recent changes in WisCon leadership, the Tiptree Award motherboard has been asked if our relationship to WisCon will change. The relationship between the two organizations, whose passions and intentions are so strongly aligned, remains vibrant.

The Tiptree Award owes so much about its existence and success to WisCon that people sometimes get confused about where the award leaves off and WisCon begins. So let’s clarify.

The Tiptree Award was originally announced at WisCon in 1991, at founding mother Pat Murphy’s guest of honor speech (Pat cooked up the idea with Karen Joy Fowler). Pat was instantly surrounded by WisCon attendees who wanted to help, and who spent most of the next year fund-raising and generating ideas. The award is named for James Tiptree, Jr., a pseudonym and persona of Alice Sheldon for many years, and it recognizes works of speculative fiction which explore and expand gender roles.

Pat Murphy holding check of seed money for the Tiptree Award
Pat Murphy holding $1800.

In 1992, the first winners (Eleanor Arnason’s A Woman of the Iron People and Gwyneth Jones’s The White Queen) were announced at WisCon. The award ceremony included a marvelous skit in which WisCon founder Diane Martin, in the role of Alice Sheldon, put on a mustache and an overcoat and slyly provided Sheldon’s work to publishers without revealing Sheldon’s gender. SF3 (WisCon’s parent organization) presented a generous $1800 in award seed money, in the form of a three-foot long check.

Over the ensuing years, the Tiptree Award became more formal, and stopped being run out of Pat’s private checking account. As a registered 501(c)(3) corporation with its own “motherboard,” the Tiptree Award does not have any official relationship to WisCon or SF3, although over the years many people have worked on, volunteered for, and been in the leadership of both organizations, either at the same time or sequentially.

The motherboard has arranged in the past and may arrange in the future to host award ceremonies at conventions other than WisCon; however, WisCon is uniquely situated in the center of the country, at a perfect time of year, and with a very supportive audience, so we anticipate coming back frequently even if not annually.

The Tiptree Award auction has been a feature of WisCon’s Saturday night entertainment for many years, although the first auction was not at a WisCon, but at a Readercon. Ellen Klages, our hilariously engaging auctioneer, has been a WisCon guest of honor, and is a Tiptree Award motherboard member. Some of the proceeds of the auction flow through WisCon’s treasury to the Tiptree Award, while others go directly into Tiptree accounts. All proceeds are used for travel and monetary awards for the winners, plus other Tiptree Award projects.

In the past, we have also donated auction proceeds as “seed money” for other WisCon daughter organizations (Broad Universe and The Carl Brandon Society are two examples), and used funds to help members of the Tiptree community who are in need.  The volunteers of the WisCon art show graciously supervise and manage Tiptree Award auction items for viewing on Saturday, and handle sale of t-shirts, cookbooks and Space Babe tattoos throughout the weekend; that money also flows through WisCon to the Tiptree Award accounts.

We are all looking forward to the 2015 auction. Coincidentally, 2015 is the 100th birthday of Alice Sheldon; the motherboard will work with WisCon’s programming team to include appropriate recognitions and celebrations of this milestone in WisCon programming.

WisCon 40

planning WisCon 40

Andrea Horbinski and s.e. smith 
Co-Chairs, WisCon 40

We’re celebrating 40 great years in 2016 and we can’t wait to see old and new faces!

WisCon wouldn’t be what it is without all the wonderful members who make it home every year, from those who have been attending for decades to newbies who are just getting ready for their first Con. As we prepare with some special events behind the scenes, we’d also like to hear from you — what do YOU want to see at WisCon 40?

We welcome your nominations for guests of honor, comments, and ideas, big and small, by 5 January 2015. You can comment here, comment on Facebook, or Tweet at us — as well as emailing directly to chairs@wiscon.net.

WisCon 39

Call for donations and nominations to WisCon Member Assistance Fund!

Lisa Cohen
WisCon Member Assistance Fund

Do you remember your first WisCon?  I remember mine.  I remember going to panel after panel where people were talking about fiction, about social justice, about Buffy and Xena, about the future, and about history.  I was amazed.  I was enchanted.

That’s the reason that I choose to work on WisCon, and that’s the reason why one of the things that I work on is helping people who need a little help coming to WisCon to make it here.  The WisCon Member Assistance Fund isn’t just for first-timers.  It isn’t just for old hands, either.  It’s for people who are drawn to WisCon, but can’t make it there on their own.

Every year, we try to help as many people as we can come to WisCon. It’s the time of year when we ask you to please consider contributing to the member assistance fund. All contributions should be made to SF3 and sent to:

SF3
Attn: WisCon Member Assistance Fund
P.O. Box 1624
Madison, WI 53701

SF3 is a 501(c)(3) organization, so your donations are tax deductible. Every penny will be used to help potential WisCon members attend in May. You can also use Paypal and send the money to treasurer@sf3.org.

We are also accepting nominations for potential recipients of assistance. Nominate someone else or nominate yourself. Tell us why the potential recipient would be a good person to attend WisCon and give us an idea of what funds would make the difference between being able to attend and missing the convention. Typically, we give amounts between $200 and $500.

We are often asked whether a previous recipient of assistance can receive help again. The answer to that is that yes, that is a possibility, but if we do not have enough money to help everyone who applies, we will give priority to people who have not previously received assistance. Depending on the number of nominations and the amount of donations, the WMAF committee will try to help out as many people as possible who would like to come to WisCon but need some support to do so.

All nominations need to be made by midnight, PST, February 15, 2015. Assistance recipients will be notified by March 15, 2015. These deadlines are timed to allow people who receive assistance time to sign up to be on programming. Nominations for the WisCon Member Assistance Fund should be sent to fund@wiscon.net.

Nominate away! And please, if you have a little money to help other people come to WisCon, donate!