• • General Strike! (moderator & panelists who have studied the topic needed) **This panel will be cut if we do not get at least one volunteer**
  • Anarchist Tech (panelists and moderator needed) **This panel will be cut if we do not get at least one volunteer**
  • How Not to Do Copaganda (panelists needed; attendees who have studied the topic with an ACAB focus only)
  • Where Are All the Asexual Voices (moderator needed; Ace-spectrum mod preferred)
  • The Social Media Landscape: It’s Bleak! (panelists needed)
  • Stepladder Speculative Feminism (moderator needed, panelists optional)
  • What SpecFic Says about Resistance and Mutual Aid (panelists needed)
  • You Got That Wrong (your expertise done wrong in fiction) (panelists needed)
  • Premee Mohamed: Queering the Apocalypse (panelist needed)
  • Horror in Color (additional fan panelist of color needed)
  • Fantasy ER (panelists with medical background needed)
  • NEW Intro to Speculative Fiction in Translation (panelists needed)
  • RETURNED Liminal Spaces in Speculative Fiction (moderator needed)
  • NEW GoH Panel: Climate Change & Climate Fiction (moderator needed)

Filled:

• • • Gender Neutrality In Gendered Languages (panelists needed; speakers of languages with grammatical genders only) FILLED!
    • Androids and Cyborgs and Robots, Oh My! (science fiction vs. reality) (panelists needed) FILLED!
    • The Man Wants You to Drink the GenAI Kool-Aid (mod needed, panelists optional) FILLED!
    • Self-Publishing While Avoiding Kindle Unlimited (panelists neeeded) FILLED!
    • Writing and Publishing in a Post-Microsoft World (panelists needed) FILLED!
    • NEW Caremongering (panelists needed)
    • Gender Diversity in D&D (mod needed) FILLED!!
  • Darcie Little Badger: Multicultural Magic (panelists needed) FILLED!!
  • Bug/Insect Tropes in Speculative Fiction (mod needed) FILLED!!
  • Nested Storytelling (especially in GoH works; panelists needed) FILLED!!
  • NEW Our Dreaded TBR Piles (roundtable, mod only)  FILLED!!
  • NEW The Impact of Good Representation (disabled panelists, queer panelists, & panelists of color especially) FILLED!!
  • NEW Modes of Queerness in The Summer Hikaru Died (fan panelists) FILLED!
  • NEW My Favorite Book When I Was Twelve (how did it hold up?) (panelists) FILLED!
  • NEW Heated Rivalry and Other LGBTQI+ Sports Stories (queer fan panelists) FILLED!
  • NEW Wicked From Page to Stage to Screen (fan panelists of any version) FILLED!
  • Stand or Fall Together: Coop Games (can be roundtable, fan panelists optional) FILLED!!
  • Liminal Spaces in Speculative Fiction (compared to myth) (panelists needed) FILLED!
  • NEW Were the Luddites Right? (moderator needed) FILLED!

   

• In Your WisCon Account, you may also sign up to be a general substitute in case others can’t be on panels. Go to Participant View and select Yes from the drop-down menu next to “Do you want to be a panelist and/or moderator?” on the landing page.This list is subject to change as some panelists join and other panelists’ schedules change. 

The treasurer is a member of the SF3 Board of directors and reports to the Board and the SF3 President.

Time Requirements: 1-2 hours per month for Board-member duties plus 3-5 hours per month for Treasurer-specific duties (closer to five hours generally between April and June when a con is running)
Presence at WisCon: Optional: Can designate another person to be at-con representative
Term: Generally 3 years
Role summary: The Treasurer drafts the SF3 annual budget; submits all forms/licenses/permits to keep our organization in compliance; facilitates purchasing; obtains our insurance; and works with our professional bookkeeper.
Main Tasks:
General responsibilities as a member of the SF3 Board:

• Must hold SF3 Membership at the time of appointment and maintain that Membership for the duration of office
• Attend Annual Membership Meeting
• Contribute to all board conversations outside of Annual Membership Meeting in good faith
• Undertake 1-2 hours of work pertaining to Board responsibilities for oversight and direction of the organization
• Conform to Conflict of Interest Policy
• Remain aware of all SF3 project policy; propose and participate in creating policy as appropriate
• Vote on all issues before the Board at monthly one-hour Board meetings
• Review, vote to accept or reject, and sign contracts on behalf of the organization
• Whenever a vacancy occurs on the Board, the treasurer participates in appointing officers (President, Treasurer, Secretary) each year from the current Board, per Wisconsin nonprofit law
• Inform the Board when you will be unable to respond to communications (vacation, illness, life events, work demands, etc.)
• Respond to all WisCon communications as outlined in the volunteer Code of Conduct

Responsibilities specific to the Treasurer position:

• Submit annual SF3 budgets to the Board for approval, including those for all Committees, soliciting input as necessary
• Submit SF3 taxes and other licenses/permits
• Maintain D&O Insurance for SF3 annually and acquire event insurance for all in-person events
• Monitor PO Box; delegate collection of mail to a secondary, local Board member if necessary
• Serve as main admin for Board-specific secure online document storage (Google Drive); set access & permissions appropriately, and conduct general oversight regarding the contents of the account
• Give advice regarding requests for one-time purchases (including durable equipment) made by committees including the ConCom, in terms of SF3’s total financials
• Oversee purchasing and paying invoices, which may include issuing debit cards (physical or virtual) to designated volunteers; reimbursing individuals who have made approved purchases for WisCon or SF3; and sending artists their proceeds from the Art Show
• Before the con, withdraw cash needed during the con, and store at-con cash overnight (can delegate to an at-con representative)
• Liaise with and supervise the work of SF3’s bookkeeper, who maintains financial records and prepares reports (involves monitoring of SF3’s bank and other financial accounts)
• Maintain the roster of individuals who have purchased SF3 memberships for the current fiscal year
• Create new email forwarders as needed (e.g., if a new department is created, you’ll log into our web host to set that department@wiscon.net forwards to department@wiscon.sf3.org)
• Serve as backup for the Secretary’s duties in cases where they are unavailable

Skills & experience (should have):

• Excellent organizational skills.
• Excellent one-on-one communications skills (for communicating with other Board members and Committee/Department members).
• Basic knowledge of Google Sheets, including how to use formulas for arithmetic and how to open and copy data from CSV (comma-separated value) files.
• Time and ability to check email on a frequent basis.

Helpful skills (can be learned):

• Written communications / public relations skills for communicating with volunteers in Basecamp and providing occasional updates to the general WisCon community.
• Exporting CSV reports from PayPal, Stripe, and from the WisCon registration system for communication with the bookkeeper.

Exclusions:

• It is preferred that the Treasurer is not a WisCon Co-Chair.

Training Plan:
SF3 Orientation
Basecamp Orientation
Walkthrough of Treasurer Guidebook and key files in Google Drive

Ongoing:
SF3 Board Meetings
Outgoing Treasurer Kit Stubbs will be available to answer questions

If you are interested in being our SF3 Treasurer or if you have questions about the position, please contact Personnel at personnel@sf3.org! 

Hotel reservation deadline coming up soon on April 25!

If you’re attending WisCon in person this year, there’s not a lot of time left until our discounted room block closes! Please make your reservation by April 25 at the latest so that you can get our special discounted rate and so that your room counts towards our hotel contract. (Cancelled reservations don’t count towards our contract, so please only make a reservation if you plan to use it.) You can make your hotel reservation by visiting the Concourse’s front desk, using the Concourse’s reservations link for WisCon, or calling the Concourse at 1-800-356-8293 and telling them you’re part of WisCon’s room block. If you have a hard time getting a room using the web link, please call! For more information, visit our Hotel page.

6th Floor Room Rate Discount Lottery

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 on the 6th floor.  We hope that offering this discount can help just a few more people get to WisCon by making your stay a bit more affordable. More information on our page about 6th floor discounted rooms.

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 our Room Lottery Google Form. 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!

Looking for a roommate or a ride share?

We have a Google Group that, in the past, members have used to find roommates or ride shares. You can join by going to https://groups.google.com/g/wiscon-talk .

• 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!