WisCon is pleased to offer a limited number of discounted rooms on the sixth floor of the Concourse Hotel. Because there are so few discounted rooms available — this year we have 5 — we’re offering them via a lottery.
The discount applies to specific rooms (all of them are double rooms with 2 queen beds) on the sixth floor of the Concourse. This is the floor where many parties happen in the evening and also where the safer spaces and the Con Suite are. This means that there’s more noise generated by foot traffic, elevators, and so on. If you are someone who needs a very quiet room with not many people passing by at all hours, then the discounted rooms may not be a good fit for you.
How can you enter the lottery for a room?
We are accepting requests April 6-20 (closing at 11:59pm Central Time). After the request window closes, we will get in touch to let you know if your request is filled.
To request to be entered into the drawing for a discount, send an email to affordability@wiscon.net, with the subject line: ROOM RATE DISCOUNT. Include the following details:
Ah, the humble convention badge. In its most basic form, it says simply, “Please let me into all your sweet programming spaces, for I am a member of this convention (having agreed to your Code of Conduct).” Often, it also says, “The name printed here is my nom de convention. Please use this and no others.”
But at WisCon, our badges say so much more.
The back of the badge
The first line on the back of your badge tells you the name(s) you used during registration — there may be two names listed if you indicated you wanted a specific badge name. This line also lists what type of membership you have (e.g., Adult, Teen, Youth) and how many tickets to the Dessert Salon you purchased (D:0, D:1, D:2, &c.).
On the back of everyone’s badge, we also print the contact information for our Safety team. This includes Safety’s phone number and (new this year!) the URL to use to get to Safety’s online reporting form.
Are you participating in programming this weekend? Your schedule is also printed on the back! This includes the day, time, location, and title of each programming item.
The front of the badge
On the front of your badge we print your name as large as we possibly can so that it’s easy to read from a comfortable distance. Under your name (much smaller) we print you home city, state/province, and country.
And that, in a nutshell, is the stock WisCon badge.
But wait, there’s more!
Pronouns
Pronoun stickers at WisCon 40.
We also provide — available at our Registration Desk whenever you’d like to stop by to take them — pronoun stickers. This year’s stickers include she / he / they / e / xe / ou / ze / zie. As well as “any pronouns” and “singular they is always grammatical”. You can absolutely choose to not wear a sticker. You can choose to wear multiple stickers! You can change your sticker(s) throughout the weekend if you want! And if you don’t see the pronoun you need, please email us and we’ll try to get one custom printed for you: registration@wiscon.net If you’d like to know more about our pronoun stickers, this post from last year does a great job of covering the etiquette and protocol of navigating pronouns.
Interaction indicators
A full set of interaction cards at WisCon 40.
Our interaction indicators are an idea that comes from the autism community, and we are proud to offer them for everyone who feels it’s helpful to give folks some guidance on the best way to approach you in any given moment. The cards are designed to fit into your badge holder right behind your badge, with the top portion sticking out to indicate which interaction you prefer. Here’s a quick guide to how to use the cards.
First, take the whole set! You’ll need all of the cards — red/hexagon, yellow/triangle, green/circle — for the system to work. Each of the cards is marked in three ways: by color, by symbol, and with text that spells out the name of the color.
Red / square*: STOP. Don’t talk to me! (* A change from WisCon 40 when it was a hexagon.)
Yellow / triangle: I only want to talk to people I know in person — not strangers or people I only know from the internet.
Green / circle: I would like to talk to people, but I may have trouble initiating conversation.
Please respect these badges! It’s okay to mess up at first — you’ll soon learn to look for them and follow their cues.
“Ask Me!” buttons
“Ask Me” — now in button format for WisCon 41!
Who are these folks with the teal/turquoise buttons that say “Ask Me”? These are concom members and other long-time WisCon attendees who have volunteered to share their vast wealth of WisCon information. Have a question about WisCon? “Where’s the Con Suite?” “When is the Tiptree Auction?” “Can I register for next year’s WisCon yet?” “Which way to the pool??” Anyone wearing an “Ask Me” button can likely answer any of these questions — and many more! Don’t be afraid to ask!
Return your badge holder before you leave
As much as possible, WisCon reuses its badge holders from year to year. This saves us money and reduces waste, which is important for our commitments to affordability and sustainability.
This also means that we ask you to please not affix stickers to your badge holder. Please stick them directly on your badge!
And we also ask you to please not stick convention ribbons on your badge. We especially ask those of you planning parties or readings, and so forth, to not have badges for your event. Yes, badge ribbons look totally awesome! An amazing technicolor convention coat of sorts! But… then we can’t re-use the badge holder, and we’d really like to.
So please, as much as it’s possible, keep your badge holder in pretty good shape and return it to the Registration area as you leave WisCon this year. If you forget or something unspeakable happens to your badge holder, no harm done. We’ll have one for you next year!
Being able to stay in a room in the Concourse Hotel is one of the pleasures of WisCon — and also one of the biggest financial barriers to attending the convention. As part of our commitment to affordability, each year WisCon is able to provide a limited number of rooms with discounted rates. We hope that offering this discount can help just a few more people get to WisCon by making your stay a bit more affordable.
Though we call it a “discount,” the way it actually works is that WisCon will pick up the tab for the Sunday night of your stay. To be eligible, you must be staying at the Concourse on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights. You may be staying longer, but you must at least be staying on these three nights.
We generally have 5 double rooms (with 2 queen beds) available on the sixth floor, although the number, type, and location of the rooms may vary slightly from year to year depending on what space the convention needs for programming. Because the number of discounted rooms is very limited, we make these rooms available through a lottery system — details below.
Noise caveat
Because the rooms that are marked as “eligible discounted sleeping rooms” are on the sixth floor, that puts them on the same floor where many of the parties are held in the evenings and also where the Con Suite is. This means that there’s more noise generated by foot traffic, elevators, and so on. If you are someone who needs a very quiet room with not many people passing by at all hours, then the discounted rooms may not be a good fit for you.
Room lottery
We do not ask specifics of your need for a room — we assume that if you request a discounted room that you need one. But because we have a limited number of eligible rooms, we offer rooms to members via a lottery. We do track who receives a discounted room and may remove an entry from the lottery drawing if that entrant was awarded a discount the previous year; this caveat is a factor only if we have more requests than rooms available. (If we do not receive more requests than rooms, then you may receive a discounted room two years in a row.)
We are accepting requests through April 25 (closing at 11:59pm Central Time), which is also the deadline for reservations under the WisCon room block. After the request window closes, we will get in touch to let you know if your request is filled.
To enter, please complete the Google Form at the link below. Entries are limited to one per party – that means if you have roommates for the booked room, only one of you should apply. If you received funds from the WMAF, you are still eligible for the room rate discount as well! Please don’t self-reject!
Volunteer Rebates are not available for WisCon 2023.
WisCon is successful thanks to the work of our members — everyone who works six or more hours during the convention, presents a paper, appears on a panel, and/or works on the planning committee in the months before WisCon is a volunteer. Our volunteers come from our community, and we’re all here at WisCon because we love it and we want it to succeed. But as a whole, WisCon and our parent organization SF3, recognize that “free” labor is a burden that not everyone can afford.
In recognition of that fact, and to help make WisCon more affordable, we offer a rebate on the price of convention membership to our volunteers.
To qualify for a WisCon Volunteer Rebate, a volunteer must:
Serve on the WisCon Convention Committee; or
Participate in programming by appearing on a panel or presenting a paper; or
Volunteer for six hours during the convention, with all hours confirmed by the relevant Convention Committee Department Lead.
And:
Opt to receive the rebate using the form provided by WisCon’s Registration desk at the convention.
Rebates are disbursed within four weeks of the end of the convention, usually via PayPal. Disbursement via a mailed check is available upon request. The amount of the rebate varies, but can be up to 40% of the price of the membership it is applied to.
WisCon’s Volunteer Rebates are intended to increase affordability, and funds that are not disbursed go toward our overall efforts to keep costs low and to make the convention inclusive and affordable to all.
I first started hearing about WisCon in 2010, when I became good friends with people living in Madison who volunteered for the con every year. Hearing about all the cool people, interesting discussions, and sheer fun to be found there, I gradually built up longing to go — but, unfortunately, couldn’t build up the money to match my longing. So I sighed from afar, thinking wistfully of the awesome feminists who were talking about robots without me, and resigned myself to never doing more than reading con reports after the fact.
Then, in 2013, one of my Madison friends said, hey, can I nominate you for this assistance fund? And it was like this huge insurmountable barrier had just been poofed out of existence.
Of course, I didn’t say yes right away, because I struggled with the feeling that con assistance funds weren’t for people like me — they were for people more engaged than me, more productive, more active in various communities, with more valuable perspectives. I didn’t see myself as valuable enough to be worth anyone else spending money for me to go. It took a lot of psyching myself up to get past those feelings — especially that horrible capitalist shame that makes me constantly compare myself to others in terms of value, like a commodity — and realize that people genuinely wanted me there and that con assistance funds exist for anybody who needs them to go to the con.
As it turned out, I was the biggest barrier to me using the fund. I was worried that there would be a lot of paperwork and record-keeping and receipt-tallying, but in the end it was simple. I told the folks managing the fund how much money I needed, and for what, and they sent me a cheque. They believed me about what I needed and didn’t place bizarre limitations on the kinds of things that could be covered — so the WisCon assistance fund ended up paying for the rental car, gas, food, and even the bill for boarding my dog for a week. And, because it was all the same to them whether I drove or flew or took a bus, I was able to pack two of my good friends into the car with me, and WisCon gained itself three attendees for the price of one.
I had an amazing time that year. I learned a lot, I made new friends, I talked with people who were excited about the same things I was excited about. The WisCon assistance fund taught me that I love going to WisCon, that it’s a great con for me; without the money to make my first WisCon possible, I might never have learned that. I’m going again this year, with the same people I went with before, because we’re a little better situated financially and now know that the experience will be worth the expense for us.
I hope that, if you’re considering nominating someone or accepting a nomination, you will. It doesn’t matter how valuable you think you are or aren’t: the assistance fund is for you. People want you there. I want you there.
And I hope that, if you’re considering donating to the assistance fund, you’ll give as generously as you’re able to. This program brings new life, new blood, and new perspectives to the con, and makes it possible for people like me to join the discussion. Your donation makes an enormous difference to both the con and to the people who receive it. I couldn’t be more grateful to previous donors for the chance they gave me to be part of the WisCon community.
Donate to the Member Assistance Fund:
Or send a checque payable to SF3 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 year, the WMAF tries to help as many people as we can come to WisCon. We are currently accepting nominations for potential recipients of assistance. Nominate someone else or nominate yourself. Tell us why the potential recipient would benefit from attending 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, CST, February 15, 2016. Assistance recipients will be notified by March 15, 2016. 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 by the way, if you have a little money to help other people come to WisCon, donate! This year the WMAF is running its first-ever dedicated fund-raiser with the goal of raising $5,000 to help send people to WisCon. 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. Or click the handy “Donate” button, below.
WisCon believes in making our convention a space for everyone, including those for whom attending conventions may be financially difficult or impossible. Over the years, WisCon has worked to weave together a variety of policies and practices designed to help lower economic barriers to attending and participating in WisCon, as well as making the convention overall more affordable for all members.
WisCon’s long-standing commitment to our Con Suite — which serves all attendees with healthy, easy to access meals — and to providing low-cost at-con Childcare are spaces at WisCon which contribute to this goal. WisCon also encourages and works to facilitate room and ride sharing among convention attendees, and provides a limited number of discounted room rates.
The WisCon Member Assistance Fund helps members who need a bit of a boost to attend and enjoy Wiscon. The WMAF awards attendees amounts ranging from $50 to $500 to assist with covering travel or hotel expenses. Members can be nominated by other members, or nominate themselves; this effort is generously funded by SF3 and our donating members.
WisCon aims to encourage a conversation that includes a diversity of voices from a wide variety of backgrounds. Class background and socio-economic status are two factors that impact the ways in which we see both our own world and the speculative fiction universes we’ve come to WisCon to discuss. They can act as frames for envisioning possible futures, other worlds, and negotiating the building and growth of our ideals. By lowering the financial barriers to attending WisCon, we open the doors to include more people in this conversation which strengthens and deepens the discussion.
WisCon works in concert on these issues with Friends of Dennis, a grassroots fan project dedicated to fostering discussions of class and classism from within a speculative literature framework. We are working together to find ways to make attending WisCon more affordable, and to make sure that con-goers are aware of the options available to help them meet their budgets.
We welcome your ideas about how we might achieve this goal. Got a good one? Contact us at the email above and let us know!
Do you need financial assistance to make attending WisCon possible? The WisCon Member Assistance Fund may be able to help!
The Fund is a pool of money to which anyone can apply to request funds to put toward attending WisCon — to cover airfare, gas money, hotel costs, childcare, or any other prohibitive cost. Details on our nomination process are below.
One of the aims of the fund is to promote diversity and to give folks a way to join us if they’ve been unable to do so in the past. If you’ve never attended WisCon because the cost kept getting in the way, we strongly encourage you to nominate yourself for the Fund! Whether you’re an established industry professional, a long-time reader, or a brand-new fan, we’d love to have you. Whether you want to be on panels, give readings, or sit quietly in the back of a conference room, we want you at WisCon.
If you have attended WisCon via Member Assistance Fund monies in the past, you can be nominated again. If funding is limited, we will give priority to people who have not previously received assistance. But we do try to help as many nominees as we possibly can, so please don’t pre-deny yourself by not applying!
Funding Amounts
We’re able to award funding in any amount up to $500 — many requests fall into the $100-$300 range, and we’ve awarded funding amounts as low as $50.
Nominating A Fund Recipient
The Fund is open to everyone. You can nominate a friend or an acquaintance, and we absolutely encourage you to nominate yourself! To nominate yourself or someone else, use this form. It will ask you a few questions about the person you’re nominating, their e-mail address, and how much funding is needed.
A good way to look at this is: What dollar amount would make the difference between being able to attend and not being able to attend? If that dollar amount is flexible, please let us know by providing a range. The Fund strives to assist as many nominees as possible, and occasionally we’re able to do that by offering a nominee slightly less than their maximum requested amount, which then makes funding available for another nominee.
Nomination Period
The Fund has a fixed nomination period. The dates that nominations close are listed at the top of this page. Nominations must be received by 11:59pm Central Time on the deadline listed above. There’s no advantage to applying earlier — the decision process will not begin until we know how many nominations we have, and how much money is in the fund.
Our timeline is arranged so that everyone nominated will hear from us in time to sign up for programming, which ends in mid-March.
Donating to the Fund
Money for the Member Assistance Fund comes from donations. If you happen to have a little extra to share with others, we are grateful for your help! Our parent organization, SF3, is a 501(c)3 nonprofit, so your donations will be tax deductible.
There are three ways to donate:
During online registration when you buy your WisCon membership.
Via check. Make the check out to SF3 and put “WisCon Member Assistance Fund” or “WMAF” in the memo line. Then mail it to: SF3 / Attn: WMAFund / P.O. Box 1624 / Madison, WI 53701
WisCon 2023 will be offering on-site daytime babysitting, Saturday through Monday, for children from 6 months to age 6 who are up to date on COVID vaccinations and registered for WisCon childcare in advance. (See the WisCon COVID policy for more information on whether your child is eligible.) This service is subsidized by WisCon and costs $1 per child for the duration of the convention.
Childcare will offer unstructured babysitting during the following hours:
Friday (5/26) – No childcare on Friday
Saturday (5/27) 9:45-11:45 am and 12:45-5:30pm
Sunday (5/28) 9:45-11:45 am and 12:45-5:30pm
Monday (5/29) 9:45-11:30am
You MUST pick up your child by closing time and prior to the lunch break (there is no childcare available between 11:45am and 12:45pm). You will be charged a late fee of $10 per child for each 15 minutes you are late.
The first time you drop off your child, please leave yourself a little extra time to fill out our contact sheet. Parents/guardians must sign their children in and out.
Con Suite: Helping Members Eat for Cheap! The Con Suite offers food and drink to all members as long as they’re wearing a WisCon badge. We are committed to making sure your convention experience is fun, easy, and affordable.
Due to COVID-19, we are not serving full meals in the Con Suite this year. There will be Grab & Go items available in Room 638, as well as coffee, tea, and soda. Please consider eating outside; or, if you’re staying at the Concourse, we ask that you take food back to your room to eat. Rooms 629 and 638 are available as spaces to eat for any members for whom that’s not possible (except when those rooms are used for parties in the late evening).
Grab and Go Hours (Room 627)
Friday: Noon—1am
Saturday: 8am—1am
Sunday: 8am—1am
Monday: 8am—5pm
For members who depend on the Con Suite to help make WisCon affordable, we have created a new voucher program this year. Restaurants listed on the voucher are accepting these as if they were cash: hand one to the cashier when paying, and the restaurant will bill WisCon at the end of the weekend. The cashier may ask to see your WisCon badge. The voucher program is intended to feed the members of WisCon using WisCon’s money, which is part of our mission to keep WisCon accessible – so that’s why you’ll need to show your badge.
Please don’t hesitate to use the vouchers if they would make your con experience less stressful and more affordable! You can order whatever food or non-alcoholic drink you want; we don’t want anyone struggling with affordability to feel less-than. If you’re here with family members or you’re out at a participating restaurant and someone else could use the assistance, multiple people can order on the same voucher.
If the cost of food isn’t a big deal for you, but you’re inviting a group of people to get together, consider going to one of the restaurants listed! That makes it easier for everyone to enjoy a meal together regardless of financial need.
Meal vouchers will be usable until we hit our total budget of $5,000 for the voucher program.
Participating restaurants for this year are:
Ian’s Pizza (State Street location only): vegan and gluten-free options available. Vouchers may be used on dine-in and take-out only (no delivery).
CIRC (the Concourse restaurant) and The Bar (also in the Concourse). Vouchers may be used on dine-in only (not room service).
Vouchers will be available near the Registration and Info Desk and in the Con Suite Grab & Go room. Safety volunteers will also be carrying these vouchers.
This year you’ll notice many changes in the Con Suite but one of the biggest is that it will no longer be open past bar time.
Hours:
Friday 6 p.m. to 11 p.m.
Saturday and Sunday 8 a.m. to 11 p.m.
Monday 8 a.m. to 1 p.m.
As usual, it will be closed during Opening Ceremonies, the Tiptree Auction, and the Dessert Salon.
Stop in to say hi and see how we’ve changed!
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!
