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WisCon 45 in 2022

Volunteer during WisCon!

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WisCon runs on volunteers! Not only are our organizing committee and programming entirely volunteer-based, every department is staffed by volunteers during the convention itself. From helping to make online programming possible as a Production Assistant, to ensuring coffee is fresh in the Con Suite, to helping with the Art Show, you can be part of what makes WisCon possible.

Whether this is your first WisCon or you’ve been attending for years, volunteering during the convention is a great way to get a sense of how things work behind the scenes, and to meet new people. Volunteering during the convention involves signing up for shifts (usually 1-3 hours) with specific departments.

For descriptions of volunteer roles in specific departments, visit wiscon.net/volunteers.

If you are interested in volunteering during WisCon this year, fill out this Google form, and departments will be in touch once their volunteer schedule goes live.Update: Shifts for volunteering during WisCon are now available at program.wiscon.net! To sign up for shifts, log in at program.wiscon.net, select the “Volunteer” tab, and click “Add shifts” on the right. This will bring up a list of all Volunteer shifts, organized by time; you can filter available shifts by role or by day. 

We are particularly recruiting people willing to serve as Production Assistants or Discord Moderators for the virtual con! If we fully staff our virtual panels, we can consider streaming in-person panels to online members. If you are comfortable holding a Zoom call, you have the technical skills to be a Production Assistant!

All volunteers are eligible for a volunteer gift (usually a small item such as a pin or waterbottle with the WisCon logo); gifts will be mailed to any remote volunteers. In the past we have had a rebate program for volunteers (refunding a portion of the cost of membership); this program is currently under review and may not be offered for 2022.

WisCon 45 in 2022

Volunteers Needed

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We are still seeking a number of volunteers for this year’s con; please fill in this form if you can help. Several of these roles can be done fully remotely if you’re planning to attend only the online con.

COVID Safety

3-4 roles
Organize COVID information: Continue to research and organize information related to COVID 19 safety, including event best practices, failures/successes from other cons, and updates from WHO, CDC, and local municipalities.
Contingency planning: Strategize plan to pivot from hybrid to fully online con if conditions dictate (e.g., if Dane County bans large gatherings). If pivot needed, coordinate with hotel, online, and physical location teams.
Convention safety: Take reports of illness at the convention and send them out. Coordinate with other WisCon departments to make sure the convention runs as safely as possible. Plan with Accessibility, Hotel, Panels. Advise departments, make sure enough spacing in rooms, create safe seating charts, etc.

Con Suite Lead

1-2 roles
Logistics: Organize materials, food ordering,
and distributing food.
People: Manage volunteers and assign tasks at con to make con suite happen.

Gathering:

Organize people who want to offer activities at the Gathering, coordinate when/where it will take place, assign tables, and set up (or organize setup of) room.

Readings:

Contact people who want to do readings, check with hotel/panels for space and time blocks, and schedule readings.
Again, if you think you might be able to help with any of these,  please fill in this form.
Email Newsletter, Official Announcements, WisCon 45 in 2022

Let’s Save WisCon!

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This update is written by me, Kit Stubbs (they/them), both in my role as Treasurer for SF3, WisCon’s parent not-for-profit organization, and in my role as WisCon 2022 co-chair. Thanks to Ira Alexandre (WisCon 2022 co-chair, acting Personnel chair) and Aileen Wall (WisCon 2022 co-chair, Hotel) for their help.

First of all: Thank you to everyone who participated in our recent Town Hall, as panelists and attendees! Special thanks to our Board members Arley, for organizing and moderating, and Annalee and Charlie Jane, for organizing and helping with logistics.

WisCon’s roots are grounded in white feminism, and WisCon continues to struggle with racism and with finding ways to center attendees of color who have been harmed. The Town Hall marks a key point in our antiracist work to bring WisCon, particularly as experienced by our attendees and volunteers of color, into better alignment with our values—even if this means that white attendees will have to sit with discomfort.

Working towards a more antiracist con is just one of the major challenges that we face. Unless we, the WisCon community, also take significant action this year in terms of finances and our volunteer pool, within the next few years we will no longer be able to run WisCon.

Why? What’s going on?

Right now, in addition to pushing harder on antiracism, WisCon is facing big challenges on two other fronts: money and labor.

TLDR:

  • We don’t have enough funds to pay for what happens if we don’t fill our contracted block of hotel rooms, and we can’t afford to cancel the hotel contract. We need about $76k in additional income to our general fund by the end of WisCon 2022 to put the con back on solid financial footing.  Thanks to a generous donor, the first $5k we raise will be matched. Donate now to double the power of your donation!
  • We are in a volunteer shortage crisis. It takes a LOT of people to make WisCon happen, and we lack dozens of volunteers in key positions.
  • The Board of SF3 (WisCon’s parent nonprofit) and WisCon organizers are already starting to work on these challenges. There are many things, both large and small, that you can do to help!

What are the financial challenges?

Ideally, when we finish running one WisCon, we should have enough money to cover our expenses for the con that’s happening in two years. Why? Because shortly after each WisCon, typically, is when we sign a contract with the hotel for the con that’s happening in two years. As a ConCom member, I remember hearing “WisCon is very slowly losing money” for several years now. But it didn’t really seem urgent, somehow.

In an ongoing-pandemic world, this has become urgent because of the way our hotel contract works. Right now, we only have a contract signed with our host hotel for May 2022. We have committed to the hotel that WisCon attendees will reserve a certain number of rooms over a certain number of nights. This contract was signed pre-pandemic and assumed normal pre-pandemic WisCon attendance. We pay the hotel some extra rental fees, but most of the hotel space the con uses we get at steeply discounted rates, assuming that we fill those hotel rooms. We’re allowed to reduce our commitment before the deadline by 20% at no penalty, but if we have more unsold rooms than that, WisCon has to pay the hotel for them.

The budget that was approved by the previous Board assumed that we would have fewer in-person attendees this year, but it assumed we would still book our entire block of hotel rooms—the same size hotel block that we would normally book pre-pandemic.

But if we’re expecting fewer in-person attendees, we should also expect fewer hotel rooms to be booked, and that is a cost that WisCon is really not able to absorb.

Couldn’t we just cancel the hotel contract?

We can’t afford the cancellation fee. If we cancelled now, according to our contract, we would owe the hotel $158,000, which we absolutely do not have the resources to cover.

I’ve run some new, conservative budget projections since becoming Treasurer in October. These projections account for online memberships, which our current budget doesn’t (yay!) but also accounts for attrition in hotel rooms, which our current budget also doesn’t (oh no!). I assume that we will take a big hit on hotel rooms in 2022 and that we’ll gradually recover in 2023 and 2024.

If we take no action to change our current trajectory and only book half of our contracted hotel rooms in 2022, SF3 will go broke: We will have spent about $7,000 that the organization does not have.

If we want to get WisCon to a healthy place—meaning we’re at best fiscal practice and have enough money for the con that’s two years out in the bank—we need about $76,000 more in income for 2022 to our general fund. (This $76k doesn’t include funds for any new initiatives, this is just basically keeping the lights on. And this is separate from any WisCon Member Assistance Fund fundraising we do, since WMAF dollars legally can’t be used to pay for anything except grants to members for travel assistance.)

The good news: I’m not saying that we need to suddenly raise $76k in donations alone. This income that we need could come from selling more memberships (online or in-person), booking lots of hotel rooms (so we don’t have to pay the hotel for unused rooms), selling Dessert Salon tickets, grants, or donations. An additional $76k of income to our general fund would help keep us afloat through 2022 and 2023 and help ensure that we would have the funds to run in 2024 and 2025.

If someone were to magically appear and donate $76k to us right now, though, we’d still be in trouble because of our other current challenge: a lack of volunteers.

What’s going on with volunteers?

We’re in a volunteering crisis right now. It takes about 70 pre-con volunteers to make WisCon happen, and we have barely half that.

SF3 is WisCon’s parent not-for-profit organization. WisCon happens because there are a bunch of committees of people within SF3 who do the work, and right now, we have a record number of vacancies.

SF3 has a Board of Directors. Under the Board there are four committees: Personnel (helping to recruit, onboard, and offboard volunteers); Communications (taking care of the newsletter, website, and social media); Strategic Planning (looking at our vision and mission); and the ConCom (the Convention Committee, which handles the logistics of running WisCon). Of those committees, only the ConCom has chairs right now—Personnel, Communications, and Strategic Planning have a few volunteers, but none of these three committees has a leader.

The ConCom itself is made up of the three co-chairs and 28 departments of varying sizes. Currently we have 8 departments that are completely empty and at least 8 that are critically understaffed.

In general, the ConCom has been dwindling for the past several years. We had 71 members in 2017, but only 56 members in 2019. (Here is a graph showing Concom participation by the numbers over the past several years.)

If you’re reading this now, and you’re already a WisCon volunteer: Thank you. I’m not writing this expecting you to suddenly start putting more work on your plate. (If you have the extra capacity, great! But I’m not expecting that of anyone.)

The State of WisCon

We are definitely having a WisCon in 2022. Without more volunteers, we won’t be able to offer nearly as good an experience as we have in the past. Without more financial resources, WisCon 2022 may be the last one.

I believe these challenges are surmountable, but as members of the WisCon community, we have to act quickly to make change.

What are WisCon organizers already working on?

  • The SF3 Board is applying for grants on behalf of WisCon.
  • I (Kit, as Treasurer) am starting to recruit large donors for a matching funds campaign that will help double the power of small donations to WisCon. We already have a match pledged for our first $5k raised!
  • Our Personnel Committee continues to onboard new volunteers as quickly as they can.
  • While the Dessert Salon may work a little differently this year due to health concerns, the ConCom is still organizing a Dessert Salon for 2022! The Dessert Salon is a fundraiser for WisCon in general, and any funds raised through Dessert Salon ticket sales will absolutely help.

What can I do to help?

  • Please sign up for our email newsletter! One of the biggest challenges we have is reaching out to our own community. Sign up and encourage your WisCon-going or potentially-WisCon-going friends to sign up, too.
  • Register as soon as you possibly can when Registration opens this week. The more people who register in advance, the better idea we’ll have of how much additional income we need to bring in. For in-person attendees, consider supporting the con by buying a ticket to our Dessert Salon fundraiser when you register!
  • Book your hotel room as soon as you possibly can. The more hotel rooms we have booked, the less additional funding we’ll need to raise, and the sooner we know how many people will be staying at the hotel, the better.
  • Help spread the word about WisCon. We’re struggling to reach new people, especially younger speculative fiction fans, who might be interested in joining us and who may not know that you don’t need to be an academic or big name to attend WisCon and be on panels!
  • Tell us you’re interested in possibly volunteering, and/or register to attend our Volunteer Info Session on 12/12 at 3pm Central. We’ve previously posted some of our needs from Communications and Personnel and the ConCom. You don’t need to be in Madison to volunteer, and we have many positions open that don’t require you to attend WisCon in person.  If you’ve volunteered for the ConCom in the past and have the time and energy, please consider joining us again. We could really use your expertise!
  • Can you give $5k or more to help save WisCon? Write me (Kit) at treasurer@sf3.org to join our matching funds drive.
  • Have a smaller amount you might be able to contribute? Thanks to a generous donor, the first $5k we raise will be matched. Donate now to double the power of your donation!

Yes, we recognize the pandemic is still going on—if you’re able to book your hotel room and/or register early, great! If you’re able to chip in financially, great! But if not, no worries.

We need to address our issues with money and labor within a larger antiracist framework.  And I think we need to be honest that we’re in a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation: We’re short on money and volunteers to implement new antiracist policies and practices, which we need in order to attract and retain volunteers, especially volunteers of color.

If you’ve made it this far: Thank you. Posting this feels like the scariest thing I have ever done as a WisCon/SF3 organizer, and I really appreciate your time and energy in reading it.

WisCon 45 in 2022

Call for Volunteers: WisCon 2022

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WisCon 2022 planning season is upon us! It’s been a tough couple of years for us all, so we’re hoping we can put together an event in 2022 that is cathartic, engaging, intellectually stimulating, fun — and, above all, safe. To make that happen, we need to start early– and we need your help.

To make a WisCon happen in 2022 that’s in keeping with the SF3 mission and the shared values of our members, we need a fully staffed Convention Committee (ConCom). That means enough members in every department to reasonably and equitably spread the work around so that no one gets burnt out. This is even more important as we move through the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic.

We have to be honest: ConCom participation has been trending downward. The ConCom had 71 members in 2017 and participation had declined to 56 members in 2019. (Here is a graph showing ConCom participation by the numbers over the past several years.) In a year when putting on a successful WisCon will face many challenges, we turn to our smart, talented, resourceful membership to help make it happen. There are going to be some tough calls to make: If we can’t staff a department or event in a viable and sustainable way this year, the chairs may have to cut it entirely. So if you’re passionate about a particular part of WisCon, please do whatever you can to help. If you can’t sign up, then spread the word on social media platforms, or even offline.

This year we are recruiting for the following specific positions. We have listed a brief description of the duties, any required experience, and the expected time commitment in the year before the con and at the con itself. Please note that applying is neither a commitment nor a promise: If you change your mind, please feel free to let us know and bow out of the process; if you apply, you may not be guaranteed a position. But the more people apply, the better chance we have of achieving a sustainable level of staffing for this year. If you’re interested in any of these positions or in pre-con volunteering with any other department, please email personnel@sf3.org.

Thank you so much, and here’s hoping we’ll be back together in May of 2022!

Convention Committee (ConCom) Positions

Anti-Abuse Team Co-Lead (1)
Anti-Abuse Team Member (3)

The Anti-Abuse Team keeps records of Safety incidents and other violations, and participates in vetting all SF3 volunteers. Anti-Abuse Team Members must be able to recognize problematic behavior, hear out cases, and take actions and render judgments that protect the rights of our attendees, including the needs of marginalized and multiply marginalized attendees. The Anti-Abuse Team Co-Leads have the authority to ban people from con spaces or to veto Guests of Honor. The Anti-Abuse Co-Leads need to be reachable during the con to verify incident history and render bans or penalties. The Anti-Abuse Co-Leads interact with the Safety Co-Leads and the ConCom Chairs. Utmost confidentiality is a must.
Pre-Con Commitment: 1 hour a week
At-Con Commitment: Leads should be reachable during the con but in-person attendance not required

Bake Sale Lead

The Bake Sale Lead accepts and documents volunteered baked goods prior to the con and arranges for appropriate allergen signage. At the con, the Bake Sale Lead receives the baked goods and arranges for their display and distribution. The Bake Sale Lead manages the at-con volunteers who handle the sales. At the end of the Bake Sale, the Lead documents and collates the proceedings and passes them to the Otherwise Liaison.
Pre-Con Commitment: 1 hour a week
At-Con Commitment: 5 hours

Dealer’s Room Team Member

Dealer’s Room Team Members assist in going through vendor submissions, vetting potential vendors, and dealing with the physical logistics of the Dealer’s Room at the con. At the con, the Dealer’s Room Team Member will assist the Dealer’s Room Lead in ensuring the Concourse Hotel staff set up the space according to the plan the department has agreed on.
Pre-Con Commitment: 1 hour/week
At-Con Commitment: 1 hour at the start and end of the con for setup and breakdown

Gaming Team Member (preferably open to being trained to be next Lead in 2023)

The Gaming Team Member assists in collecting, vetting, and collating game submissions and scheduling gaming sessions prior to the con. The Gaming Lead will provide a signup binder to be used at the con to sign up for the scheduled games, which the Gaming Team Member may take shifts watching over.
Pre-Con Commitment: 2 hours/week
At-Con Commitment: 3 hours

Guest of Honor Liaisons (4)

A Guest of Honor (GOH) Liaison interfaces with their specific GOH, making sure their travel and accommodations are taken care of and that they are familiar and comfortable with their schedule, as well as addressing or conveying any additional concerns or requests they may have. At the con, GOH liaisons introduce the GOH at the reading on Thursday and make sure the GOH has everything they need while at the con. We would like our GOH liaisons to share as much background as possible with their GOH, or to know them already. Our GOHs for 2022 are Zen Cho, Sheree Renée Thomas, Rebecca Roanhorse, and Yoon Ha Lee.
Pre-Con Commitment: 1 hours/week
At-Con Commitment: 1-3 hours/day

Kids’ Programs Lead

The Kids’ Program Lead oversees program items for children and teens. Teen programming at WisCon is by teens and for teens, but the Kids’ Program Lead will provide spaces and means to schedule, and will be advised by the departing Lead. Must be able to attend at-con in 2022.
Pre-Con Commitment: 1 hour/week
At-Con Commitment: light duty 8 hours a day

Online Con Team Members (5-6)

With the success of WisCONline in 2020 and the uncertain situation looking ahead to May 2022, we need to be prepared to provide a robust online component for the con. Roles in this department will be shaped by our resources and circumstances as the year leading up to WisCon 2022 unfolds. We welcome anyone with experience in running online events or building successfully moderated online spaces, or anyone who has video production expertise to apply to this department. In particular, previous experience with OBS (open broadcast software) and familiarity with Zoom, MS Teams, Jitsi, and/or administrating Discord are most welcome.  As we learn more about what we’ll need in May 2022, we will separately recruit for an appropriate number and type of online moderators.
Pre-Con Commitment: 3 hours/week
At-Con Commitment: dependent on role and evolving needs; in 2020 the entire Online Con traded off panel production duty during the 3-4 hours a day panel programming was run

Panel Programming Team Member

The Panel Programming department collates panel idea submissions, checking for problematic ideas or language and combining panels that are sufficiently similar. This is done with the aid of panel programming software. Once the list of panels has been edited, Panel Programming administers the interest survey where WisCon members vote. Once the votes are in, Panel Programming draws up the actual panel schedule, taking into account expected attendance and accessibility needs. At the con, Panels Programming puts up the ad-hoc programming chart but does not administer anything on it.
Pre-Con Commitment: 3 hours/week
At-Con Commitment: none other than putting up the chart, so we’re happy to have remote volunteers

Registration: At-Con Leads (2)

As part of the Registration department, At-Con Leads coordinate setting up and tearing down the Registration & Information Desk area, manage scheduling and training of Registration volunteers, and are on-call during the convention in case of any escalated membership or payment issues. At-Con Registration Leads also handle cash reporting at the beginning and end of each day, and before the con they coordinate with the Pre-Con Registration Lead about any outstanding payment or membership issues. (Our existing Registration staff are flexible in their roles, so if you would prefer to help out Pre-Con, get in touch to learn more about what that involves!)
Pre-Con Commitment: 3-6 pre-convention (planning)
At-Con Commitment: In addition to opening and closing the registration desk (approx. 30 minutes at start and end of day), the leads trade off being on-call for escalated issues throughout Registration Desk hours, usually cover at least one 1.5-3 hour shift per day, and may need to cover additional unstaffed shifts. 

Safer Spaces: Disability Safer Space Volunteer

We are looking for BIPOC members who would like to volunteer with the Disability Safer Space. Disability Safer Space volunteers participate in preparing the space prior to the con and volunteer inside or at the space during the con. They report any incidents to Safety.
Pre-Con Commitment: 1 hour/week
At-Con Commitment: Shifts inside the Safer Space as possible, healthy, and safe

Safer Spaces: Trans and Genderqueer (TGQ) Safer Space

We are looking for TGQ members who would like to volunteer with the TGQ Safer Space. TGQ Safer Space volunteers participate in preparing the space prior to the con and volunteer inside or at the space during the con. They report any incidents to Safety. Multiply marginalized TGQ members encouraged to apply.
Pre-Con Commitment: 1 hour/week
At-Con Commitment: Shifts inside the Safer Space as possible, healthy, and safe

Safety Co-Leads (2-3)

The Safety Co-Leads are in charge of making sure there are enough Safety volunteers to cover the entire weekend, scheduling shifts, and responding to any incidents. There must be at least one Safety Lead available at all times during the con. Safety Leads often take turns being “on-call” over the weekend to manage at-con and on-the-spot volunteers and to respond to incidents. Often interfaces with Anti-Abuse Team to record incidents and with ConCom Chairs to give updates or request assistance. Experience in de-escalation and crisis management or Safety or ombudsman at other cons a plus.
Pre-Con Commitment: 1 hour a week
At-Con Commitment: At least half a day for every day of the con

If you’re interested in any of these positions or in pre-con volunteering with any other department, please email personnel@sf3.org.
Official Announcements

Vacancies on the Communications & Personnel Teams

We’ve got a variety of exciting roles that we’re looking for help with in our Communications & Personnel Committees. Unlike most of the Convention Committee (ConCom) roles, these tasks are spread over several months or are year-round, but because they are not all ramping up to a convention weekend, they are a LOT more chilled out. 🙂

Communications: Bloggers (up to three volunteers – one spot filled already)

WisCon’s blog is our primary method for communication with our community. It’s the main way that we recruit volunteers, share news that impacts the convention, fundraise, and keep conversations going. Our blog is published on our website, wiscon.net, and is collected into a newsletter format once a month for most of the year, becoming weekly in April & May. We’re looking for at least one and up to three volunteers who would like to help us tell people what’s up! Is that you? We’ll share a draft schedule of blog topics that will include some that we know we need, but you’ll be encouraged to write on any relevant topic — dig into WisCon’s history, to connect with our sibling organizations, and to spotlight our past guests of honor, attendees, and volunteers. You’ll also crosspost blog posts and newsletters to our social media, including Twitter & Facebook, in collaboration with the volunteers managing those accounts.

Commitment: 2-3 hours per month, increasing to 5 hours per month in April & May.

 

Communications: Facebook Wrangler (one volunteer)

Are you on Facebook? This role can be as big or small as you’d like it to be! Our Facebook content has generally been limited to cross-posts from our blog and some advertisements — so at minimum, we’d like you to respond to comments & messages there, as well as helping us run a few advertisements per year. At maximum? The sky’s the limit, as long as you keep it related to our mission & values.

Commitment: 1-2 hours per month.

 

Communications: Ads, Marketing, & Sponsorships (up to three volunteers)

This year, we’ll mainly be looking for sponsorships — businesses and individuals who would be willing to make a gift to support part of WisCon in exchange for our public thanks and a banner in that space. In the past, we’ve had sponsors for the Gathering and for various other events. In the past, this job has included selling advertisements in the Souvenir Program Book as well — we’re not sure what that will look like yet this year. This role is about reaching out to people and organizations that you believe WisCon’s community would love to hear about, and bringing them together!

Commitment: 1-2 hours per month October-May.

 

Personnel: Team Member (up to three volunteers)

You’ll follow a checklist to give new members of our committees or board access to the tools they need to make WisCon and all our other projects happen! You’ll also assist ConCom departments with documenting their roles, collaborate with the Communications Committee to write recruitment blog posts, and orient people to the tools they need (these include Google Docs, Gmail, and Basecamp).

Commitment: 1-3 hours per month.       

Please email personnel@sf3.org to volunteer!

Official Announcements

Organized? Responsible? WE NEED YOU!!

We’re seeking folks to Chair two of the committees that support WisCon!

What does a “Chair” do, though? And what’s all this about “Committees”?

Well, our Committee Chairs are primarily project managers — they make sure that the necessary tasks get done in order to carry out that committee’s purpose. When needed, they make the decision to cancel tasks that can’t be successful due to a lack of time, resources, volunteers, or all three. They are appointed by the board president of SF3, which is the nonprofit that provides oversight for WisCon.

You can think of our committees as workgroups, each of which has a clear purpose and purview.

There are currently three peer committees, and all are necessary for each others’ success:

  • The ConCom (Convention Committee), whose purpose is to carry out WisCon.
  • The Communications Committee, whose purpose is to maintain a flow of information between all of our projects (including WisCon!) and our community.
  • The Personnel Committee, whose purpose is to recruit, equip, and support all of our volunteers.

We need a chair for Communications, and a chair for Personnel. We have some volunteers ready to go to do the work in each of those committees, but we need you to step in! We’re also happy to help you find someone with whom you can co-chair, if you don’t want to go it alone.

Interested? Please contact president@sf3.org to express interest, or with any questions.

(Interested, but not in being a chair? Hold tight, we’ll have a post soon with information on volunteering for communications, for personnel, and for the ConCom! But we need to fill these two spots first, so tell your organized pals to reach out!)

Official Announcements, WisCon 44

WisCONline Update: Platforms + Volunteers

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The excitement is intensifying for WisCon 44 next weekend! We’re looking forward to seeing you all there, whether you’re new to WisCon entirely or just new to WisCONline (as we all are).

The ‘How To’s of WisCONline

We’ve gotten some questions about how you’ll access virtual WisCon 44 programming.

Invitations to the WisCon Discord server will be sent out to the email you gave when you registered, on the evening of Wednesday May 20 (after registration closes at 7PM). If you don’t receive an invitation that evening, please check your spam filter, and then contact registration@wiscon.net and we can send you a new link!

Most of WisCon’s programming will be streamed to YouTube, but available only via direct link (it will not show up on the WisCon channel or via searches). The links to specific program items will be sent out by email each morning, and also posted in the Discord server. (If you do not plan to join the Discord server, it is therefore particularly important that you make sure that you are able to receive emails we send out!)

Some of the WisCon special events—the Otherwise auction, the Vid Party, and the Floomp—may use other platforms. Information on joining these events will be sent out in the same emails as the links for watching streams on YouTube, and will also be posted to Discord.

More information on how the platforms and specific program items will work for WisCon 44 are available on our website; we’ll continue to update and expand what’s posted there between now and the convention.

WisCONline is looking for volunteers!

To make the convention happen every year, WisCon depends on its many volunteers. The virtual convention is no exception, even though the volunteer roles we’re looking to fill are different than they would be in person.

Technical Producers will coordinate the backend of program items, whether for live Panels or for pre-recorded Readings or Academic Programming items. If you’re comfortable with technical tools, and especially if you have experience with YouTube Studio, this is a great way to get involved!

Online Chat Moderators will monitor the conversation for live panels on Discord, and pass comments and questions onto the panelists via the Technical Producer.

Social Media Monitors will keep an eye on other web platforms for any issues arising in the current panel’s hashtag, and will escalate them to Safety if necessary.

And as at in-person conventions, Safety Volunteers will be available during programming hours, as a first point of contact for concerns or issues as they arise.

There’s no volunteer rebate or gift this year, but anyone who signs up for a volunteer shift by 5PM Central on Tuesday will receive an early invitation to the Discord server!

Full descriptions of all these roles can be found on our At-Con Volunteers page, or you can head directly to SignUp.com to sign up for specific shifts. If you have questions, or have any issues using the SignUp interface, you can also email volunteers@wiscon.net.

Official Announcements, WisCon 44

WisCon Needs More Brains! (Ceremonies and Access)

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We still have open roles on the ConCom where we’d love your help! Email personnel@sf3.org to volunteer your brain.

Ceremonies

We’re in need of an MC/organizer for the Sunday night speeches: coordinating with the guests of honor and other speakers beforehand to make sure they’re prepared and have what they need, directing them during the event, and making general announcements from the podium. (Or, if you can organize/stage-manage but don’t like public speaking, the announcements can be covered by a con chair.)

For this role you’ll need to be present at WisCon 44 and available Sunday night, from before the dessert salon through the end of the speeches. The time commitment before the con should be low and mainly involves sending emails in April and May. Our usual MC can’t make it this year, but she’s happy to answer questions and help you through it!

Access

The Access team is still looking for a CART/ASL Liaison.

CART stands for Communication Access Realtime Translation, which is captioning for live events; ASL is American Sign Language. Our CART/ASL Liaison is responsible for communicating with WisCon attendees and keeping track of requests for either type of interpretation at our events and panels.

WisCon has a good ongoing relationship with a CART provider who will build a team that includes ASL interpreters if needed, and the Liaison will work with them to determine their schedule, as well as providing them with a list of WisCon or SFF-specific jargon, names, and other terms so that they are prepared to work effectively during events like the Otherwise Auction and the Guest of Honor Speeches. The CART/ASL Liaison will be coordinating with Access Leads, and may wish to be involved in small grant-writing or fundraising efforts to help fund payments to WisCon’s contracted service providers. Skills involved in this role are primarily written communications via email. We expect this role will take up to an hour per week between now and the end of March, increasing to a couple of hours per week in April & May, and approximately an hour each day during the convention itself.

These roles are part of the WisCon Convention Committee, which means you’ll be automatically eligible to opt for a WisCon membership rebate of 40% of the registration fee. If you stay on the ConCom, you also get to vote during the selection process next fall for WisCon’s future Guests of Honor.

Again, please email personnel@sf3.org to volunteer or if you have questions!

Official Announcements, WisCon 44

HOSTS NEEDED FOR THE TRANS/GQ/GNC SAFER SPACE

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The Trans/GenderQueer/Gender Nonconforming safer space is seeking volunteers from the community for 90 minute shifts in the space.

Volunteers greet and check in with people arriving in the space. Help keep the space tidy and stocked from the con-suite supplies. And escalate issues and problems encountered by trans/gq/gnc people at WisCon to the appropriate teams (Safer Spaces, Safety, Concom.)

Room hosts are welcomed and encouraged to host programs and workshops through the safer space which benefit from an audience limited to people from the trans/gq/gnc community.

Please contact Pode and Emma through the safer space email address, tgqsaferspace@wiscon.net, and we will share a schedule with you.

Official Announcements, WisCon 44

Join The Access Team!

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WisCon’s Access Team is looking for additional people to help us organize our efforts ahead of the convention. We need to fill two roles: a Blue Tape Lead and a CART/ASL Liaison.

Blue Tape here refers to the accessibility markings we create throughout the convention — we use blue tape to reserve spaces for mobility devices, to guide traffic in busy hallways, and to set aside seats for people who need to be at the front of the audience in order to better see or hear panelists and presenters. The Blue Tape Lead will be responsible for updating our Blue Tape Guide, recruiting volunteers for shifts throughout the convention, and managing blue tape volunteers to ensure all tasks are completed. At-con responsibilities vary depending on volunteer recruitment, but one can expect to volunteer a couple of hours or less each day at the con, and to be “on-call” for blue tape touch-ups. The Blue Tape Lead will be coordinating with Access Leads, and may wish to be involved with Signs and/or accessibility assessments during convention set-up on Thursday night and Friday morning. Skills involved in this role are: outreach, written and verbal communication, volunteer management, and attention to detail. Ability to kneel on the ground and move chairs is ideal, but can also be facilitated through volunteers “on the ground” (literally and figuratively). We expect this role will take up to an hour per week between now and the end of March, increasing to a couple of hours per week in April & May.

CART stands for Communication Access Realtime Translation, which is captioning for live events; ASL is American Sign Language. Our CART/ASL Liaison is responsible for communicating with WisCon attendees and keeping track of requests for either type of interpretation at our events and panels. WisCon has a good ongoing relationship with a CART provider who will build a team that includes ASL interpreters if needed, and the Liaison will work with them to determine their schedule, as well as providing them with a list of WisCon or SFF-specific jargon, names, and other terms so that they are prepared to work effectively during events like the Otherwise Auction and the Guest of Honor Speeches. The CART/ASL Liaison will be coordinating with Access Leads, and may wish to be involved in small grant-writing or fundraising efforts to help fund payments to WisCon’s contracted service providers. Skills involved in this role are primarily written communications, and most of that communication is via email. We expect this role will take up to an hour per week between now and the end of March, increasing to a couple of hours per week in April & May, and approximately an hour each day during the convention itself.

Both of these roles are part of the WisCon Convention Committee, which means you’ll be automatically eligible to opt for a WisCon membership rebate of 40% of the registration fee. You also get to vote during the selection process next fall for WisCon’s future Guests of Honor. You do not need to be local to Madison, but you should be planning to attend WisCon in May 2020. We particularly welcome volunteers from traditionally underrepresented or marginalized identities.

Volunteer by emailing personnel@sf3.org. The Access Team leads, Lynnea and Sarahtops, also welcome your questions, and can be reached at access@wiscon.net

Official Announcements, WisCon 44

Help Us Feed WisCon!

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Help Us Feed WisCon!

WisCon’s Con Suite is something special. It’s more than a room stocked with sodas and some open packages of cookies; it’s a place to get coffee or tea, snacks, fresh salads from the local co-op, a tasty hot dinner every evening, fresh local bagels and donuts (or toast, or yogurt, or fruit) for breakfast each morning, a range of fast and easy to eat proteins including cheese and hard-boiled eggs throughout the day, and yes — cookies, chips, granola bars, and sodas as well.

We’re proud of it in part because we’ve created a space where we know the food is safe from contamination and spoilage, where we can confidently share the ingredient lists, where we have plenty of vegetarian, vegan, and gluten-free options, and where — with the exception of some individually wrapped & sealed single-serve items — we maintain a space that is tree nut free and peanut free.

We’re also proud of the fact that last year, everyone working in the Con Suite was also able to enjoy the rest of the convention. That’s a new thing! And it’s something we plan to ensure happens every year going forward. In order to do so, we need at least two additional Con Suite team members.

Con Suite team members are part of the WisCon Convention Committee (ConCom), and that means in the months between now and WisCon, they’ll help plan volunteer schedules, menus, and recipes. Just prior to and during the convention, they may help with our trips to Costco, or pick up our morning bagels from Gotham Bagels a few blocks from the hotel. They might take part in setting up the room we use for preparing food, filling crockpots according to our recipes, portioning prepared foods, brewing giant pots of coffee, and washing the (relatively few) dishes (mostly serving spoons and knives, since we use crockpot liners).

Con Suite team members will spend less than an hour a week on planning from January through the beginning of May. We have an experienced lead, so this will be time spent learning about what we can and can’t accomplish within the limited physical space we have at the con, our relationship with the hotel, and the time we need to safely prepare nourishing, satisfying meals. There’s far more work to do the week of the convention, but our plan is that no one will need to spend more than 4 hours a day in the Con Suite itself once con programming kicks off, unless they really want to. We will be recruiting folks in April and May to help during the convention without joining the ConCom as well, so the Con Suite team is well supported.

WisCon will pay for ServSafe food safety certification for anyone who joins the Con Suite team; ServSafe is an online course that takes a few hours, and the certification lasts for three years and is not WisCon specific.

These roles are part of WisCon’s ConSom, which means you’ll be automatically eligible to opt for a WisCon membership rebate of 40% of the registration fee. You also get to vote during the selection process for WisCon’s future Guests of Honor in autumn 2020. You do not need to be local to Madison or to the midwest; you should be planning to attend WisCon in 2020, and it’s useful if you will be there Thursday afternoon through Monday afternoon, but not a problem if you get there late or leave early.

We’ll cap this recruitment post off with a quote from a member of last year’s Con Suite team: “I was surprised. Once the con started, the Con Suite was actually really fun.” 🙂

Join us by emailing personnel@sf3.org. We also welcome your questions!

Official Announcements, WisCon 44

WisCon Needs BRRRAAAAAAAIIIIIIIINNNNNSSSS!!!

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…to join us in building WisCon 44. Not to eat. Turns out that isn’t actually very healthy for anyone involved.

Hello! How did it get to be nearly the end of 2019 so quickly?

That means one thing: May 2020 is just around the corner, bringing WisCon 44 with it. (It also means a US election year, so we’re looking forward to WisCon as a place to restore our energies, catch our breath, share strategies, and stock up on good feelings as much as possible.)

We need you to help make that happen. We have a great Convention Committee this year, but we have a couple of departments that need you to join them!

WisCon’s Registration desk is the information hub of the convention, greeting folks, selling and handing out name tags and dessert tickets, and answering questions. It’s a great place to contribute time to help WisCon go smoothly, especially if you love knowing things and meeting people.

Registration needs two or three people to join us as At-Con specialists. What does that mean? Well, it means you get the time from now up to the convention to learn the ropes, meet the rest of the Committee, chime in on conversations, offer input on how we’ll set up and run the desk during the convention, and get trained. You can expect to spend an hour or two per month on tasks and email until the four weeks prior to the con, when you’ll have a few more conversations and emails to read. 🙂 At the con itself, you’ll help train volunteers and take some shifts on the desk. After the con things will drop back down to a few hours per month.

Love parties? Don’t want to host them yourself? Join the Party Programs team and help us help parties happen at WisCon! You’ll be part of an established team so you’ll get lots of help learning the ropes. You’ll be able to meet the rest of the ConCom and learn all about what we do behind the scenes with very few tasks up until March, when you’ll be part of scheduling our party suites and working with party hosts to make sure they know what they can do to make their happening the heights of hootenannydom. Or something. Alliteration is challenging, folks. You’ll spend an hour or two per month on email and online conversations between now and the convention; you may need to help troubleshoot during party setup time (7-9pm) Friday, Saturday, and Sunday during the convention, but you’ll have plenty of help if that happens. 🙂

We also have a couple of openings in our Communications Committee! We want you to help us get the word out about WisCon and our fantastic Guests of Honor, programs, and events. You don’t need any experience, but you do need to be self-motivated. There can be a little or a lot to do in both of these roles, and honestly, we’d be happy if you want to join us and only have the time or energy to do the minimum…but we’d be THRILLED if you want to sink your teeth in and make your mark and other exciting take-charge metaphors.

Could you be our Online Content person? (Or people!) You’ll post our blogs, update our web content, and link or re-post our blogs on social media. This can — but doesn’t have to — include writing blog posts, web page content, and social media posts. You tell us what you’re up for, and we’ll make it happen. This is not a technical job — you won’t be responsible for troubleshooting any software. This is a year-round role, but should take no more than two hours a month unless you decide you want to spend more time on it.

We also need one or more people to do Souvenir Program Book Ad Sales. This is a job that is active for 3-4 months each year and takes a total of 15-20 hours; the main task is sending emails to publishers, vendors, podcasts, fans, authors, agents, and local businesses to ask if they are interested in buying an ad in our program book. If you’re a fan of phone calls, you’re welcome to do that instead, but…let’s just say that we know it’s possible to do this entirely via email. We have a solid list of past advertisers, but we’re always looking for more.

All of these roles are part of SF3 & WisCon’s committees, which means you’ll be automatically eligible to opt for a WisCon membership rebate of 40% of the registration fee. You also get to vote during the selection process for WisCon’s future Guests of Honor.

To fill any of these roles you do not need to be local to Madison; for the Registration and Party Program roles you should be planning to attend WisCon in 2020. We particularly welcome volunteers from traditionally underrepresented or marginalized identities.

Join us by emailing personnel@sf3.org. We also welcome your questions!v