tiny con report for WisCon 41
May. 31st, 2017 12:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brainwaneI went to WisCon and had a pretty good time. I am sad that I missed all of the vid party but I am glad that I used that time to catch up on sleep. I went to most of one panel, and didn't serve on any, and went to very few parties, and spent a lot of time in small group conversations with friends. The Guest of Honor speeches were thought-provoking and rhetorically neat as usual -- WisCon GoH speeches set a high bar and most tech industry keynotes do not meet it, in my opinion. I got a couple neat clothes at the Clothing Swap; I regret that I barely looked in the Dealer's Room and I never got to the Art Show.
I believe this year I saw multiple women of South Asian origin whom I did not know already, and by the end of my WisCon weekend I still had not quite met all of them! So exciting as a signal!
I was the auctioneer again this year for the auction benefiting the Tiptree Award. It looks like I will serve as that auctioneer yearly for the foreseeable future. I hear people really enjoyed the Tiptree Auction - the best compliment I got was (close paraphrase as memory permits): "it is weird that we use this capitalist approach to fund this feminist project! But you named that, and made fun of it, and made it so we could all play with it. You made it so we were all performing capitalist drag." People also livetweeted with #tiptreeauction in case you wanna see that.![[twitter.com profile]](https://p.dreamwidth.org/e0caa790ec10/-/twitter.com/favicon.ico)
radhardened made and ran an electronic signboard that displayed the current bid, and that helped me so much to keep track of things! In future years I need to:
* more frequently mention what the Tiptree Award is
* ensure pre-auction advertising of what we will be live-auctioning
* ensure pre- and at-auction advertising of what items are available for direct sale and at the silent auction
* rearrange stage furniture so the audience can see me better for whole-body schtick, and potentially move around the audience more
* remind audience that we take credit cards
* remind audience that they can always simply donate, in person or online
* ensure pre-auction advertising explicitly saying that it is absolutely fine to just come and not bid
* prepare somewhat more "if we get the bid to x then...." group crowd incentives akin to last year's onstage smashing of a "Pilates for Weight Loss" DVD
I rode home in a car with a friend I too rarely get to see, and am glad for the opportunity of long conversation where it's okay to go on twenty-minute tangents because the road and the trees and the topic and the friend will still be there when the tangent's over. Partly based on that conversation I wrote up a blog post on my other blog, about resilience.
I believe this year I saw multiple women of South Asian origin whom I did not know already, and by the end of my WisCon weekend I still had not quite met all of them! So exciting as a signal!
I was the auctioneer again this year for the auction benefiting the Tiptree Award. It looks like I will serve as that auctioneer yearly for the foreseeable future. I hear people really enjoyed the Tiptree Auction - the best compliment I got was (close paraphrase as memory permits): "it is weird that we use this capitalist approach to fund this feminist project! But you named that, and made fun of it, and made it so we could all play with it. You made it so we were all performing capitalist drag." People also livetweeted with #tiptreeauction in case you wanna see that.
* more frequently mention what the Tiptree Award is
* ensure pre-auction advertising of what we will be live-auctioning
* ensure pre- and at-auction advertising of what items are available for direct sale and at the silent auction
* rearrange stage furniture so the audience can see me better for whole-body schtick, and potentially move around the audience more
* remind audience that we take credit cards
* remind audience that they can always simply donate, in person or online
* ensure pre-auction advertising explicitly saying that it is absolutely fine to just come and not bid
* prepare somewhat more "if we get the bid to x then...." group crowd incentives akin to last year's onstage smashing of a "Pilates for Weight Loss" DVD
I rode home in a car with a friend I too rarely get to see, and am glad for the opportunity of long conversation where it's okay to go on twenty-minute tangents because the road and the trees and the topic and the friend will still be there when the tangent's over. Partly based on that conversation I wrote up a blog post on my other blog, about resilience.
(no subject)
Date: 2017-05-31 04:52 pm (UTC)(In other news: you called it. _All Systems Red_ is my jam.)