All posts by WisCon Communications Team

Gap Year, Volunteering

What Is Possible

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Hey WisCon,

You may have noticed a call going out urgently and repeatedly a couple of weeks ago, for three ConCom Co-Chairs. This call failed, and I believe this can make WisCon stronger. We now have the opportunity to staff for a WisCONline in 2025 (with gratitude to the 2020 leadership for paving the way, including making that delightful portmanteau.) We won’t know for sure unless we get confirmed staff by October 2nd.

We’ve restructured the ConCom into three new Committees, which have been chaired in the last two weeks, but don’t worry! There’s still lots you may be needed for! The roles that are needed as of this posting before we can hold a WisCONline in 2025 are:

Communications:

  • AppDev lead (1-2), limited training
  • Server Migration working group (needs 1 to launch), experience needed, temporary group
Board:
  • SF3 Treasurer, training available
Chairs:
  • Personnel Co-Chair, training available
  • Comms Co-Chair, training available
  • Fundraising (Co-)Chair(s) (new), training being researched
Operations & Hospitality:
  • Access Co-Leads, training available
  • Discord Con Lead, training available
  • Registration Pre-Con Lead, training available
  • GoH Team Lead (new), guidance being assembled
All current open roles are listed here: https://wiscon.net/volunteer/concom/

Let’s discover what kind of WisCon we can build together.

Volunteering

Discord Lead Needed

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Here’s your chance to shine and make order out of Discord! As part of the Online Con team, you’ll set up and manage the WisCon Discord. You’ll coordinate with other departments on programming-specific channels, and help manage Discord volunteers and at-Con moderators to help online attendees connect. If you’re familiar with Discord or similar computer-mediated chat systems and are a skilled project manager, we need you! Contact personnel@sf3.org (subject: Discord Lead) for more information.
Volunteering

Ops & Hospitality Chair

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Do you want to sharpen your coordination, communication, and delegation skills? Or apply these skills to a convention setting? Volunteer to be WisCONline’s Ops & Hospitality Chair, and you will have the joy and challenge of coordinating six teams of fantastic volunteers to help WisCONline run well. We ask for 1-5 hours per week now, increasing to 10-15 hours closer to WisCONline. Duties can be split with a Co-Chair, depending on your energy and time. You’ll need experience behind the scenes at WisCon and/or WisCONline; we’ll provide orientation, mentoring, and documentation.
Contact personnel@sf3.org (subject: Ops & Hospitality Chair) for more information.
Volunteering

At-Large Board Member Needed

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The SF3 Board is seeking an At-Large Board Member. This one-year term will give you an opportunity to become familiar with how the SF3 Board works while executing self-directed projects to help achieve the SF3 mission. You should expect to spend 1-2 hours per week on average, including a monthly one-hour Board meeting and SF3 Annual Membership Meeting. SF3 is the nonprofit that runs WisCon.
Prior non-profit and non-profit board experience, and experience attending WisCon, is helpful. The role will officially start when and if you’re voted in at the 2024 Annual membership Meeting, but you can start as an apprentice now. Contact personnel@sf3.org (subject: at-large Board member) for more information.
Volunteering

Personnel Volunteer Opportunities

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Personnel Co-Chair 

Do you have experience with HR or volunteer coordination and management? You can help SF3 gear up for the next WisCon! This remote role involves checking progress and follow-up with Personnel volunteers for a few hours per week. The Personnel Co-Chair is a member of the SF3 Personnel Committee and reports to the SF3 Vice President. Contact personnel@sf3.org (subject: Personnel Co-Chair) for more information.

Personnel Volunteer Interviewer
Interview prospective volunteers and help them find their best fit with open positions. Also perform exit interviews as needed.  Member Time commitment varies from 1-2 hours per week May-Dec, up to 3-4 hours per week ramping up to WisCon. Contact personnel@sf3.org (subject: Volunteer Interviewer) for more information.
Personnel Volunteer Onboard/Off-boarder
Follow onboarding and offboarding templates to set up new volunteers with appropriate committee membership, shift volunteers to new positions, or release outgoing volunteers.  Member of the SF3 Personnel Committee. Time commitment varies from 1-2 hours per week May-Dec, up to 3-4 hours per week ramping up to WisCon. Contact personnel@sf3.org (subject: Volunteer Onboarder) for more information.
SF3

Time to get your SF3 Membership!

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The 2024 SF3 Annual Meeting is coming up soon on Sunday, Oct 13, 2024, at 2 PM Central. This meeting is entirely virtual! Information on joining will be sent to all current SF3 members a few days before the meeting.
If you’re interested in the future of WisCon and SF3, we encourage you to become an SF3 member and attend the Annual Meeting. Annual membership is $24, or $12 at our student/financial hardship rate, which we encourage anyone to use as needed. Free memberships are available to all BIPOC individuals. To join for free, please email board@sf3.org with the subject line “SF3 Membership for BIPOC”.
We take payment by PayPal (preferred) or check, though if you plan to pay by check we ask that you email treasurer@sf3.org to let us know it’s on the way.  The deadline for joining SF3 in advance of the Annual Meeting is Monday, October 7. Madison no longer has an in-city postal sorting office, so if you are paying by check, please make sure your letter is postmarked no later than Monday, September 30, to ensure we receive it by October 7. Along with your check, please enclose a completed copy of the SF3 Membership form.
Gap Year, SF3

Learn More about SF^3, August 12th, 6:30 p.m. central time

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If you or a friend were ever curious about how SF³ (the organization that runs WisCon) works, this is the event for you! We’ll review the current structure of SF³, base volunteer expectations, where the organization is at in Strategic Planning and volunteer recruitment, and what it will take to hold WisCon in 2025!

This orientation is open to anyone in the WisCon community, or interested in the WisCon community, whether or not they’re on Basecamp, so please invite a friend! There will be a mention of how to volunteer, but no pressure to join now.

The meeting will be held online (using the Fairmeeting tool) on August 12th at 6:30 p.m., central time.

https://fairmeeting.net/SF%5E3Orientation

Gap Year

Volunteers needed!

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We need 3+ volunteers to form a Communications Server Migration Working Group.  Duties include: find a suitable cloud server and work with the current physical server owner to migrate our data and video to the new server. This temporary working group will report to the Gap Planning committee, which meets twice monthly. Prior service migration experience helpful. Contact personnel@sf3.org (subject: Server Migration Working Group) for more information.

 

Gap Year

Disability Audit

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WisCon is conducting a Disability Justice Audit. We would like to know about everyone’s experiences regarding accessibility, disability, and justice at WisCon. If you’ve ever attended WisCon, in any capacity, please fill out this survey by July 31. If you’re short on spoons or time, we ask that you focus on the questions marked with an asterisk (*). Your answers will help us determine the direction of future programming and accommodations at WisCon.

The Disability Justice Audit committee is not requesting any personally identifying information in this survey. We will anonymize info or quotes from survey results if presenting them in our audit conclusions.

The survey is here: https://forms.gle/9XmZbKxRH8DU53KBA

Gap Year

WisCon Gap Year Discord Launched

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Over Memorial Day weekend, we launched our gap year Discord server — a place for all WisCon loving folks to chat, organize and attend virtual events, and make friends. This server will be available all year long, not just for a weekend.

To join, fill out this form and we’ll send you an invite link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScZJJPVPS6FcFGvCUvZn5CFtd9lOJ5o89IvYo-fVbgjpA3Dgg/viewform

If you have any questions, email discord@wiscon.sf3.org. We hope to see you soon! 

SF3

Announcing New Board Members!

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SF3, the parent non-profit which oversees WisCon, is proud to welcome two new members to our Board of Directors: Margaret McGrath is joining us as President, and Gail Leinweber is joining us as an At-Large Board member! Huge thanks to our outgoing President, Jeannette Juricic, for all of her hard work with SF3 and WisCon over the past several years. Thanks also to Margaret, Gail, and everyone else who expressed interest in joining the Board for your support of WisCon and feminist speculative fiction!

Official Announcements

No WisCon in 2024! Read on for more about our Gap Year.

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There will be no WisCon in 2024 as we take a year to rest, plan, and make adjustments that we don’t usually have time for during the rush of putting on this life-giving feminist speculative fiction convention.

Online Connections

Last year’s Discord server is still active. We are in the process of creating a Gap Year Discord Community and if you’d like to know about it once it opens, or to keep up with things generally, sign up for our newsletter.

Volunteering

During our planning year there are several projects we’re working on to make WisCon better. Take a look at what we’re currently working on below. If there’s anything you’d like to help with while spending time with other cool WisCon people, send an email to personnel@sf3.org and they’ll get you connected! And don’t feel limited by what’s here, there’s all sorts of projects that could help WisCon. If you’ve got an idea send an email to the address above and we’ll see if we can connect you with other people who want to work on that project as well.

  • Anti-Racism Audit
    WisCon wants to better live up to its anti-racist values before, during, and after WisCon. If you’ve got ideas or opinions on how to do this, check out this group!
  • Platform Replacement
    Right now we use Basecamp to organize our work behind the scenes. For various reasons, we want to find a different service to organize our work on the convention. If you’ve got ideas or opinions about places we can store documents and communicate, check out this group!
  • Video Call Replacement
    Right now we use an assortment of video call services, none of which really work well for us. If you’ve got ideas or opinions on secure video call services with robust captioning services, check out this group!
  • Disability Audit
    WisCon wants to improve the experience for folks with disabilities before, during, and after WisCon. If you’ve got ideas or opinions on how to do this, check out this group!
  • Website Redesign
    WisCon’s website can be difficult to navigate and is in need of an update. If you’ve got ideas or opinions on how to make our website look nicer and easily provide the information that people need, we would love for you to participate!
  • Documentation
    Volunteering can be difficult if you don’t know what you’re supposed to be doing. For some volunteer roles, we don’t have clear documentation of what a person does in that role. For some roles we have it… somewhere? If you’ve got ideas or opinions on making sure we find and document everything we need for people to do their jobs with minimal effort, check out this group!

  • 2024 Discord Community
    We are planning to foster community online. If you would like to help with this, please let us know.
  • Email Provider & Mailing List Provider Replacement
    We’re looking to change how we email our members and send out our newsletter. If you’ve got ideas or opinions, check out this group!
  • WisCon Gap Year Planning Group
    All or none of the above appeal to you? This is the place to help out more generally, take part in decision making, and/or offer ideas for other working groups to make WisCon better than it is now.

We also have a Strategic Planning Committee that’s looking at the big picture for WisCon to re-center us on our principles and form some long term plans about how to live out those principles. They will be reaching out with surveys to the WisCon community about some of these plans and principles, and following up with focus groups. Be sure to sign up for our mailing list so you can take part in this important process!

To participate in any of these groups, please e-mail personnel@sf3.org to get started.

And regardless of whether you decide to volunteer, we hope you will stay connected via our mailing list, and that we see you in 2025!