• Near west side, lane reductions on University Ave past the hospital https://cityofmadison.com/news/street-reconstruction-university-avenue
• East of the capitol, street closures https://www.cityofmadison.com/engineering/projects/blair-street-south
• The totally demolished lot at W Gorham and N Broom
• UW lane closures on University Ave westbound before N Charter

The WisCon schedule is now live! We have a full weekend of panels, readings, workshops, kids programming, academic papers, parties, gaming, and more: https://program.wiscon.net/PublicSchedule.php

Can’t make it to Madison this year? There’s still time to register for an online membership! Register today at https://reg.wiscon.net/.

For 2022 we have two tracks of online panels, and another of other online programs. Our big events, including the Otherwise Auction and Guest of Honor speeches, will also be streamed. And we’ll have a WisCon Discord server for both online and in-person members.

Want to see our online offerings expand? Once we know we have enough volunteers to staff our all-online panels, we can start to add some in-person panels to our streamed offerings (starting with panels scheduled for “Assembly” in the program). If you are comfortable hosting a Zoom call, sign up via our at-con volunteer interest form to hear about training sessions for this role!

WisCon is a project of the Society for the Furtherance & Study of Fantasy & Science Fiction (SF3 for short).  In an effort to not be strangers to volunteers or to the public, the governing Board of SF3 has decided to release a little summary of what we’ve been up to at each monthly meeting.  Here are our updates for the past few months:

April 2022

• We welcomed De Ana Jones and LaShawn M. Wanak as our co-chairs of the newly founded POC Outreach Committee. We’re thrilled to have them aboard! You can reach them by email to poc-outreach@sf3.org .
• We are continuing our search for con co-chairs for WisCon 2023. If that could be you, please get in touch with the board at board@sf3.org or the current co-chairs at chair@wiscon.net! We are especially looking for people who have past WisCon experience.
• The board unanimously voted to reallocate unneeded funds from our Guest of Honor budget to our COVID-19 supplies.
• WisCon is now offering comped memberships for all BIPOC pre-con volunteers.
• WisCon members can now donate a membership to a BIPOC volunteer through the Registration system.
• Next month is WisCon 2022! See you there!

March 2022

• Our treasurer, Kit, met with our new financial team and confirmed everything is in order (as expected).
• Last month, the Board presented the ConCom with a list of action items generated from the town hall on racism in Nov 2021. The ConCom has responded to us with the ones they can tackle this year.
• We discussed other ongoing business re: getting the POC Outreach Committee founded, updates on budget, and cementing our anti-racist values in messaging that we can replicate across communications as needed.

February 2022

• We discussed hiring for the position of POC Outreach Committee chair.
• We talked about SF3’s financial responsibilities and goals, including updates on tax status and fundraising.
• We discussed meeting with Con Chairs to assign out responsibility for action items generated from the November 2021 Town Hall (centering on combating racism at WisCon).
• We discussed drafting social media guidelines and policies.
• We talked about compensation for sensitivity reading for panel descriptions.

As part of our overall accessibility efforts, WisCon hires professional captioners and/or ASL interpreters during the con. CART will be provided during the Opening Ceremonies, at the Otherwise Auction, and for the Guest of Honor speeches. If you’d like to request captioning and/or ASL interpretation for other programming (specific panels, readings, etc.), please use this Google form. You can request CART/ASL for online sessions, in person sessions, or both!

Questions? Contact Accessibility (access@wiscon.net).

Thank you for joining us for Visioning WisCon!

We have a Google Form where you can ask questions about the ConCom, give feedback on this event (Visioning WisCon), and make suggestions for WisCon in 2022. You can also request to join our email newsletter or request more info about volunteering on the concom (no commitments, just info).

The form will be open through Monday evening (5/31) at 9pm Central time. After that, you’re welcome to contact us or subscribe to the email newsletter through this website!

We have a new Spontaneous Programming item this evening at Visioning WisCon!

Visioning the WisCon ConCom: Do you have ideas for how to carry WisCon forward? Do you have questions about how WisCon is organized that you’d like answered? Start a conversation about #VisioningWisCon with several current ConCom members in Spontaneous 1 on Kumospace, today (Sunday, 5/30) at 6PM Central.

Mark your calendars, Friends! One week left until panel submissions close! We’re excited to see what the community will share at this year’s WisCon, and below are some helpful ideas on how to submit your panel ideas to make sure they get to us!

I’m a little fuzzy on how I should go about submitting a panel idea. Can you help me out?

Of course we can! Here’s the best way to go about it:

If you log into your profile, you will see a list of different options where you can submit your program idea to the right department on the left-hand side of the screen. Please see the screenshot below for an example.

If you want to submit a panel idea, please click on the “Submit Ideas” option.

We ask that you please use the correct option for submitting your program idea. Please do not submit any other type of programming to us. If you want to submit a party, you will need to click on the “Host a party” option. If you want to submit a paper proposal or academic proposal, please click on the “Submit Paper Proposal” option. If you want to submit a workshop proposal, please email workshop@wiscon.net. Information about workshops can be found via this link.

If you submit an event to us that is not a panel, due to the volume of panel requests and the subsequent organization of the panel schedule, we cannot guarantee that your submission will be timely transferred to the correct department.  The deadline to submit a panel idea to Panel Programming is January 21, 2019 at 11:59p.m. CST.

OK, that sounds very easy. I need to make sure I only submit panel ideas to you. So, do I have to log in to submit a panel idea?

You actually don’t have to log in to your profile to submit a panel idea, unless you want to receive a confirmation email to show that your submission has been received. For your benefit, we recommend logging in, especially if you submit multiple panel ideas! It will be easier for you [and us] to keep track.

This is super helpful information. Anything else I should know?

Panel Programming wants to help you get the best WisCon panel programming experience, so after you register, we would like for you to do a couple of things to help us help you.

1.    Update your profile, especially your email address.

All you need to do is log in to your profile, click the “Edit” link on the right side of your name, then click on “Save” once you’re done.

2. Update your availability.

This information is essential to us. The more information you provide us, the better chance you have in getting your top choices of panels at your most desired times. To update your availability, please click on “Tell Us Your Schedule”. After you click on “Tell Us Your Schedule,” you will be brought to the following screen:

In this text, you will be asked for your arrival/departure information, your desired number of panels, as well as your preferred panel times. Once again, the more information you provide us, the better it will be for you. Given that it is still early, you can start off with a ballpark estimate, but please continue to update as needed as we get closer to the availability deadline in March 2019.

As usual, if you have any questions regarding Panels, please email us at panels@wiscon.net.

Update: July 2018.
We would like to apologize for wording in this initial public post that may have mischaracterized the panelist’s background and what happened at the panel. This was not a case of an outright Nazi sympathizer or alt-right infiltrator at WisCon, but rather a case of a conversation going badly awry amid deeply fraught political and emotional territory. There does not seem to have been any intent to promote Nazi ideology. For a fuller explanation, see this statement.

The original blog post has been retained below.

During the Killable Bodies In SFF panel at WisCon this morning (Sunday), a panelist engaged in Nazi and Confederate apologia and also appeared to posit that disabled or injured people sometimes “have to be sacrificed.”
They continued this behavior even after the audience and other panel members expressed the harm this was causing them.

WisCon rejects these ideas. They are in conflict with our Code of Conduct. The panelist in question will be banned and asked to immediately leave convention spaces.

The relevant passage from the Code of Conduct is here:

Harassment includes: Verbal or written comments or displayed images that harmfully reinforce structures of oppression (related to gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, age, religion, geographic origin, or class); deliberate intimidation; stalking; body policing (including gender policing in all bathrooms); unwelcome photography or recording; sustained disruption of talks or other events; inappropriate physical contact; and unwelcome sexual attention. 

Please read the full Code of Conduct here. 

If you or anyone you know are in need of any support following this experience, please contact us. We will be working to find folks who can provide emotional support to you.

ETA: This particular individual has been banned for WisCon 42. The decision as to whether this ban will be extended in the future will be determined by our Anti Abuse Team post-con. They will also make the determination of whether the individual will be named by WisCon/SF3 and what other details are appropriate to share. Should you have information to contribute, you are welcome to email safety@wiscon.net.

This blog post has been updated to clarify details.