Con report, Friday of Wiscon 35 (27 May 2011):
I should note up-front that I talked to a lot of cool people during the weekend, and even if I get through to Monday, these posts are in no way complete. (I'm starting this one the Sunday after the con, with some brief notes I made mid-week.) As you know, Bob, Wiscon is a feminist science fiction convention held in Madison, Wisconsin. The con hotel is a block from the state capitol building. This was Wiscon 35, and I've been going almost every year since Wiscon 20.
There is now one non-stop flight a day from LaGuardia airport (in New York) to Madison; it's on a relatively small jet operated by one of the "regional" carriers, but I figured that my choices were to do at least part of the trip on one of those, or take a bus from Milwaukee or Chicago to Madison. Since the riskiest bit of flying is takeoffs and landings, and I had to do one of each on a regional jet anyhow (I don't much like buses), I decided I might as well go with "Comair operating as Delta Connection" all the way instead of just from O'Hare or Minneapolis. It went smoothly except for something that hadn't occurred to me until I got there: there aren't enough jet bridges to go around at the Delta terminal in LaGuardia, so it was go down to the tarmac, shuttle bus to the plane, and then climb some stairs. I asked if there was an elevator down to the tarmac, and they cheerfully got me an "escort" to walk me to it, ride down with me, and walk me to the shuttle bus. So, eight or so little stairs, not a big deal right now: but it would have been a problem a year ago, I didn't even think of it when booking, and the airline didn't warn me. Other than that, everything went smoothly: they gate checked everyone's roll-aboard suitcases, but that's fine with me, there's no charge and no significant risk of my luggage being lost. (There was a jet bridge in Madison: this was specifically a deficit at LaGuardia.)
That flight is a bit later than I would ideally have liked, but I got to Madison in plenty of time to check into the hotel and meet the people from my apa for an earlyish dinner at Chautara. (Early by my standards, at least: it was timed to get us back in time for opening ceremonies, which we did.) Chautara is very nice Nepalese food; I had a skewered lamb dish, with garlic and onion and I think lemon, plus a bit of![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
roadnotes's beef thing and a bit of wild_irises's dose. I didn't get to talk to everyone—there were 13 of us—but had fun talking to them, bestdonya, chiefwirehead, and ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
maryread. On our way back to the hotel I had a little time to talk to Janet, Jim, and Diane, none of whom are on LJ or DW as far as I know. I would have liked to spend more time with wild_irises, but that's a given: she is a cool person who wants to see a lot of people, and there are only so many hours in a Wiscon, and everyone needs to sleep sometime. Mary_read was wearing a Space Babe temporary tattoo: our server asked about it, and after a bit of conversation borrowed someone's pocket program to use as a model for a sketch of Space Babe on the restaurant's chalkboard. Later in the weekend, someone told me that the drawing had been a factor in their decision to have a meal at Chautara. From past experience I knew we'd be upstairs, and mentally budgeted for that, being careful to use the elevators for things within the hotel. As part of that, I took the stairs down from the second floor to the first only once all weekend. And thank you, everyone who could use the stairs comfortably and did: I didn't have any long waits for elevators, all weekend. (The hotel has put in a new system requiring people to insert card keys to go to most floors of the hotel; as the weekend went on, the card readers in the elevators seemed to get flakier. That was an annoyance, and not explained (someone guessed that it had to do with the protests at the capitol earlier in the year, but that's only a guess).
ThinkGalacticon did most of the opening ceremonies, including a quiz show about Wiscon with three volunteer contestants, which was won by the audience. We had an advantage: they asked each contestant in turn, and "what s/he said" or "what they said" was a valid answer, so by going last the audience got points for most things, including one or two that none of the contestants did. This seemed quite fitting. Amy Thomson introduced everything with a few rounds of "Tell me what feminist science fiction looks like" (Audience: )"This is what feminist science fiction looks like," echoing the demonstrations in the capitol earlier in the spring, where the slogan is "Tell me what democracy looks like: THIS is what democracy looks like.") The Feminist SF version of that is on the front pocket program this year, which is fitting and means we didn't get another, ever-longer variation of "best friend of the sister-in-law of the daughter of the mother of all pocket programs."
I went to about half of the panel on Steampunk etiquette (#43): the description had sounded as though it was going to be more on both modern etiquette, and "how, when conversing with racists and sexists, can you use politeness to make your arguments more effective," than it turned out to be. It's not unreasonably that they spent a bunch of time talking about steampunk and what it is and isn't, and then ways of dealing with (for example) someone being offended or put off by aspects of a steampunk costume that strongly suggest Victorian colonialism. (Basically, the panelists advise that the costume-wearer apologize, take the pith helmet off, and probably be careful about wearing such costumes around people they don't know or haven't talked about such things with. But it wasn't what I was expecting from something whose title was "Of course you invite her wife and her boyfriend." (For some reason, I keep misreading/misremembering that as "your wife and her boyfriend," which is a somewhat different question.) [I posted yesterday about a Saturday morning panel and said it was "the first panel I went to," which it clearly wasn't.)
Then I spent some time talking to people at parties and in the con suite, and went to bed around 11:30, possibly later than I should have: I'd woken up ridiculously early the day before, and thus started the con short on sleep, and never really made up for it. (I think I am now caught up, at the end of the following weekend: having been behind on sleep is at least part of why I haven't posted more about Wiscon sooner, as well as why I skipped some possible/planned social stuff this weekend.)
I should note up-front that I talked to a lot of cool people during the weekend, and even if I get through to Monday, these posts are in no way complete. (I'm starting this one the Sunday after the con, with some brief notes I made mid-week.) As you know, Bob, Wiscon is a feminist science fiction convention held in Madison, Wisconsin. The con hotel is a block from the state capitol building. This was Wiscon 35, and I've been going almost every year since Wiscon 20.
There is now one non-stop flight a day from LaGuardia airport (in New York) to Madison; it's on a relatively small jet operated by one of the "regional" carriers, but I figured that my choices were to do at least part of the trip on one of those, or take a bus from Milwaukee or Chicago to Madison. Since the riskiest bit of flying is takeoffs and landings, and I had to do one of each on a regional jet anyhow (I don't much like buses), I decided I might as well go with "Comair operating as Delta Connection" all the way instead of just from O'Hare or Minneapolis. It went smoothly except for something that hadn't occurred to me until I got there: there aren't enough jet bridges to go around at the Delta terminal in LaGuardia, so it was go down to the tarmac, shuttle bus to the plane, and then climb some stairs. I asked if there was an elevator down to the tarmac, and they cheerfully got me an "escort" to walk me to it, ride down with me, and walk me to the shuttle bus. So, eight or so little stairs, not a big deal right now: but it would have been a problem a year ago, I didn't even think of it when booking, and the airline didn't warn me. Other than that, everything went smoothly: they gate checked everyone's roll-aboard suitcases, but that's fine with me, there's no charge and no significant risk of my luggage being lost. (There was a jet bridge in Madison: this was specifically a deficit at LaGuardia.)
That flight is a bit later than I would ideally have liked, but I got to Madison in plenty of time to check into the hotel and meet the people from my apa for an earlyish dinner at Chautara. (Early by my standards, at least: it was timed to get us back in time for opening ceremonies, which we did.) Chautara is very nice Nepalese food; I had a skewered lamb dish, with garlic and onion and I think lemon, plus a bit of
roadnotes's beef thing and a bit of wild_irises's dose. I didn't get to talk to everyone—there were 13 of us—but had fun talking to them, bestdonya, chiefwirehead, and maryread. On our way back to the hotel I had a little time to talk to Janet, Jim, and Diane, none of whom are on LJ or DW as far as I know. I would have liked to spend more time with wild_irises, but that's a given: she is a cool person who wants to see a lot of people, and there are only so many hours in a Wiscon, and everyone needs to sleep sometime. Mary_read was wearing a Space Babe temporary tattoo: our server asked about it, and after a bit of conversation borrowed someone's pocket program to use as a model for a sketch of Space Babe on the restaurant's chalkboard. Later in the weekend, someone told me that the drawing had been a factor in their decision to have a meal at Chautara. From past experience I knew we'd be upstairs, and mentally budgeted for that, being careful to use the elevators for things within the hotel. As part of that, I took the stairs down from the second floor to the first only once all weekend. And thank you, everyone who could use the stairs comfortably and did: I didn't have any long waits for elevators, all weekend. (The hotel has put in a new system requiring people to insert card keys to go to most floors of the hotel; as the weekend went on, the card readers in the elevators seemed to get flakier. That was an annoyance, and not explained (someone guessed that it had to do with the protests at the capitol earlier in the year, but that's only a guess). ThinkGalacticon did most of the opening ceremonies, including a quiz show about Wiscon with three volunteer contestants, which was won by the audience. We had an advantage: they asked each contestant in turn, and "what s/he said" or "what they said" was a valid answer, so by going last the audience got points for most things, including one or two that none of the contestants did. This seemed quite fitting. Amy Thomson introduced everything with a few rounds of "Tell me what feminist science fiction looks like" (Audience: )"This is what feminist science fiction looks like," echoing the demonstrations in the capitol earlier in the spring, where the slogan is "Tell me what democracy looks like: THIS is what democracy looks like.") The Feminist SF version of that is on the front pocket program this year, which is fitting and means we didn't get another, ever-longer variation of "best friend of the sister-in-law of the daughter of the mother of all pocket programs."
I went to about half of the panel on Steampunk etiquette (#43): the description had sounded as though it was going to be more on both modern etiquette, and "how, when conversing with racists and sexists, can you use politeness to make your arguments more effective," than it turned out to be. It's not unreasonably that they spent a bunch of time talking about steampunk and what it is and isn't, and then ways of dealing with (for example) someone being offended or put off by aspects of a steampunk costume that strongly suggest Victorian colonialism. (Basically, the panelists advise that the costume-wearer apologize, take the pith helmet off, and probably be careful about wearing such costumes around people they don't know or haven't talked about such things with. But it wasn't what I was expecting from something whose title was "Of course you invite her wife and her boyfriend." (For some reason, I keep misreading/misremembering that as "your wife and her boyfriend," which is a somewhat different question.) [I posted yesterday about a Saturday morning panel and said it was "the first panel I went to," which it clearly wasn't.)
Then I spent some time talking to people at parties and in the con suite, and went to bed around 11:30, possibly later than I should have: I'd woken up ridiculously early the day before, and thus started the con short on sleep, and never really made up for it. (I think I am now caught up, at the end of the following weekend: having been behind on sleep is at least part of why I haven't posted more about Wiscon sooner, as well as why I skipped some possible/planned social stuff this weekend.)
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