WisCon 39

Help us choose Guests of Honor for WisCon 39!

Want to nominate a Guest of Honor for #WisCon 39? Email gohnoms@wiscon.net the name of the person you want to nominate, as well as a statement about their work and/or activism complementing our Statement of Principles by March 22nd. We really do look at those statements! Please use “WisCon 39 GoH nominations” and the name of the person you’re nominating in the subject line of your email, 😉

Email Newsletter, WisCon 38

eCube: Volume 38, No. 2

You can read the latest edition of eCube here. Snapshot of the information in this issue:

–Learn about our 6th floor room deal. If you sleep on the party floor at the Concourse, you can receive a room discount. This process is first come, first served.
 –You can submit programming ideas at http://account.wiscon.net/idea
 –WisCon needs a video archivist. We have recorded many GOH speeches and Tiptree ceremonies, but currently nothing is done with these recordings. Help preserve & share WisCon history, if you can!
 –Last year was the first attempt at organized gaming at WisCon. We’re seeking more feedback & volunteers for gaming at WisCon 38.

 For more information on any of these topics, please see the eCube.

WisCon 38

Call for Donations and Nominations to WisCon Member Assistance Fund!

The fund formerly known as the Scholarship Fund is now the WisCon Member Assistance Fund.

With us so far? We changed the name to make it clearer that the fund is there to help you, yes you, come to WisCon. You do not have to be an academic–just a person who is enthusiastic about coming to WisCon but needs a little help to do so.

Every year, we try to help as many people as we can come to WisCon. Now is the time of year when we ask you to please consider contributing to the member assistance fund this year. 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 501c3 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 have been 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, 2014. Assistance recipients will be notified by March 15, 2014. 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!

WisCon 38

Genderfloomp Seeks Feedback from GQ/GNC/Trans Community

This entry is cross-posted at the request of the Genderfloomp organizers, and comment streams are available on Dreamwidth and Livejournal.

Hi there. As the organizers of the annual Genderfloomp party at WisCon, we learned of a recent wave of concern that Genderfloomp is uncomfortable/appropriative for gender non-conforming or non-binary people. We’d like to open a discussion about this issue.

To start off, we want to determine if the problems primarily reside in the party’s messaging online, its actual setup/conduct at the con, or simply its existence. We’ve spoken to some GNC/GQ people who really enjoy the party and find it to be an important space, and we would find it helpful to hear what aspects of the party do work as well. Ideally, we can find a way to rework Genderfloomp so that it can serve the entire community, but we also are open to much bigger changes.

We are both queer people who are gender non-conforming in some ways that are important to our identity, but do not pretend that this gives us access to the wide spectrum of GNC, GQ, and trans experiences. Our intentions with Genderfloomp are to embrace the liberatory aspects of “party,” rather than the trivializing connotations, in order to foster a space of gender play and binary destabilization, much in the same way that the Tiptree award celebrates work that “explores and expands” ideas of gender. If our party is hurting GNC/GQ folks, it is failing at its mission, and we apologize for any hurt we have caused.

We know a wide spectrum of Wiscon has insight to share on Genderfloomp, but we ask that this thread be restricted to folks who identify as GNC/GQ/Trans in order to give people room and safety to speak. If commenting here feels uncomfortable or unsafe, we
can also be reached at genderfloomp@gmail.com.

We are here primarily to listen with humility and openness, though we are also happy to answer any questions.

Sincerely,
Meghan McCarron and Liz Gorinsky

WisCon 37, WisCon 38

Feedback Surveys & Programming is open for WisCon 381

If you have thoughts about things that went well at WisCon 37 or things that went not-so-well, we’d love to hear from you. We have a general survey as well as a survey about programming.
Lastly, if you have programming ideas for WisCon 38/SFRA, you can submit them now.

ETA: If you’re coming here in May 2014, this is an outdated post! The post with links to surveys after WisCon 38 are here.