BiCon 2004 retrospective

[memevector]

Good things about this year's BiCon, from my perspective:

• All buildings non-smoking. Very much appreciated.


• All rooms wheelchair accessible - not that I use a wheelchair myself, but I feel a lot happier knowing that people who do are properly included.


• Workshops providing excellent food for thought: my faves were one by ippola and plumsbitch exploring the idea of safe space, one by werenerd on BDSM aftercare and one by voodoopussy on self harm. They were all well run with interesting questions, and having been to quite a few BiCons now, I always like it when the topics aren't the "same old same old".


• Various unplanned chats with wandra, snagglepat, ippola, plumsbitch, and others not on LJ, although I would have liked to hang out more with all of them and with artremis.


• Introducing baby Anna to lots of people.


• In-house entertainment at our flat from the exuberant offspring of cujosmurf.


• Someone thanking me for writing my thing about planning workshops and saying it had helped them to run their first ever BiCon workshop. Cool!


• Excellent venue site in general - nowhere too far to walk, but ents noise well away from sleeping areas. (Evidently I missed experiencing the workshop room(s?) which some people weren't happy with.)


• Chilled out, approachable organising team who (despite their jests) seemed to have things more or less under control. That ease during BiCon speaks of excellent planning beforehand.


• The way we agreed at the plenary to lend djm4 the float money to run BiFest (or whatever it's going to be called this time). I think the mutual trust, and mutual awareness of skills, expressed in that process & decision is a huge asset of the bi community.

Big thanks to the organising team, especially barakta who I think did an outstanding job on access.

Thanks also to everyone who contributed to the workshops I was in (namechecked here or otherwise) and especially to the "Stitch & Bitch" participants and artremis for organising it - an opportunity to rant a bit was just what I wanted at that moment (though not about BiCon organisation, I hasten to add :-) )

Things I would have liked to be different, and why:

• I'd prefer it if the decision-making plenary weren't the final one, when a substantial minority have already left and the rest of us mostly want to socialise and celebrate. I don't think I've heard any arguments against that idea so far, and I think we should consider sticking it into the BiCon guidelines. Or if not, it should at least be heavily recommended in the proposed "How to run BiCon" resource.


• I think there's an argument for the photo being on one of the middle days as well, again because of people leaving before the end. (I wouldn't put that in the guidelines though, 'cause I don't really think of the photo as crucial to BiCon.)


• I was pretty happy with the accommodation (especially the bath, which was capable of delivering oodles of hot water in a very short time), but the standard was let down by (a) the lack of a bedside lamp, and (b) the cold, and the central heating being off. Seems a bit cheapskate of the venue to me.


• There seem to have been an unusual number of problems in the runup this year with lack of communication to people who'd offered to run workshops. I'm aware (via LJ or in-person chat) of at least six different workshop leaders who were affected by that, and the printed timetable omitted some things which were planned and confirmed beforehand. I wasn't running anything this year, so it didn't affect me directly, but I remember being in a similar position in a previous year (offering to contribute and then waiting ages to find out what was happening) and how intensely frustrating it was. I think it's an important area to manage, because it's about taking care of volunteers, which is crucial for things that basically run on volunteer energy.


• I think the process of amending the BiCon guidelines could be fine-tuned some more.
  
  It definitely works to have the proposals come from a workshop beforehand, and it's good that the proposals get stuck on the wall before the decision-making plenary so people know what they're going to be asked to vote on.
  
  In an ideal world, pretty much all the debate would happen among interested parties at the workshop, so that what happens at the plenary is highly succinct. However, this time I gather that only a few people went to the workshop, and it seems to me that was reflected in the amount of "remaining" debate at the plenary. (Plus I suspect that quite a lot of people hadn't read the notice, though that'll probably always happen to some degree.)
  
  I think if I were managing that in future, I'd get first suggested drafts of all the proposals read out at an earlier plenary, or at least stuck on the wall in good time before the workshop. The ideas might then change a lot before being formally proposed, but it'd be a heads-up so that people with strong feelings about that particular area, and/or counter-proposals, can be attracted into the workshop and get most of the arguing done then.
  
  (There ought really to be an officially impartial chair to manage the plenary discussion, as well - rather than leaving it to the proposers to call upon people wanting to comment. In practice I think that worked OK this time, thanks to the integrity and common sense of ciphergoth and djm4 who were making the formal proposals, but I think there are good reasons for the usual convention of having a separate chairperson.)

To muse further on the whole BiCon thing from a slightly different angle...

I was reading an LJ thread today about reasons for coming back to BiCon year after year, after the first amazement has worn off. I first came to BiCon in 1995, and I think that's an interesting question.

I do have a bi community at home (mainly-bi household, and bi-identified friends I see regularly, besides the virtual bi environment I can access via the net), which I didn't have to that degree when I first came out. But there's still something unique and really good about the BiCon atmosphere. And of course it's an opportunity to see friends (although not necessarily a very good opportunity sometimes, because often the friends are busy being with their other friends and/or lovers that they hardly ever see, and then I actually get to talk to them less at BiCon than if I just rang up at any old time :-) ).

On the other hand, last year and this year I was beginning to question what I was there for and whether I could be arsed to go next time. Like, just being in the environment isn't "enough" any more and it is beginning to be a challenge to me to make sure I'm not bored. Workshops which would have been fascinating to me in 1995 or 1996 aren't now, either because I've talked about that stuff as much as I need to, or because the level I want to talk about them now is beyond what the workshop will cover and is better served by a conversation with a friend. Sometimes there's a new topic, or a new angle on an old topic, and then I can get interested (as mentioned above), but looking down a typical BiCon workshop timetable, it shows up in my world as much more skinny than it used to.

So for me, the direction I seem to be going in is that the only way to make BiCon interesting enough is to invent and contribute stuff - like the "fitting and misfitting" workshop a couple of years ago. The year I did that, as I recall it was by far the most interesting bit of BiCon for me, even more so than playing the gig. It's a venture into uncharted worlds, where I get to experiment and test my skills and see what happens.

But then I run into the question of energy expended and what cooperation is necessary from the rest of the world to set up these interesting things, versus what value I get myself from doing them. Partly it goes back to the thing I was talking about last year about leverage & frustration. I haven't given up on BiCon as a source of interesting-to-me opportunities, but I can easily imagine a situation where I'd want to put my energy elsewhere. I feel like I'm on the brink of that, although I may well stay on that brink for some years yet and still manage to generate enough interest to keep coming back.

Not that it's a bad thing to change direction, if & when I do - yay diversity.

Comments

[memevector.livejournal.com]

if the main thing people want is dressing up, chatting up and partying.

Oh I think people do want workshops. It's just that the workshops they want aren't necessarily the ones I would want nowadays. E.g. there are people every year who want an intro to polyamory or a beginners' BDSM workshop, or one on coming out as bi or discussing biphobia. And for me it's not that those aren't interesting subjects, it's more that there are basic things that have to be covered for the beginners every time, and those don't change much. I have wanted, and been to, workshops like that in past years, and nowadays I can pretty much guess what would be covered in them and I don't feel the need to cover that ground again. But lots of people at BiCon are in the relatively early stages of exploring bisexuality/bdsm/poly, and lots of them don't have a strong bi community at home and so BiCon is their big chance in the year to ever talk about that kind of thing.

Also I don't think the politics has disappeared, though obviously I wasn't around to experience in comparison the earlier time of which you speak. I did go to an explicitly political workshop as well this year actually - it was on bi activism in unions and political parties. And last year I went to one on the possibility of setting up a new bi phone line (although it didn't lead to the phone line actually starting - see my article at the time (http://www.material.demon.co.uk/2004/biphonelinethoughts.htm)).

Mind you in a way I would say the experiential-discussion workshops are political in themselves - I mean that creating the space to talk about those things is a political act. But I know what you mean, they're not directly activist in the same way.

I'm curious - if you did see a timetable that was juicy enough to attract you back, what would have to be in it?

[mistdog.livejournal.com]

If I knew exactly what workshops I wanted to go to, I'd offer to run one of them - I want to see workshops that surprise and challenge me. Stuff about the bi communities, what we want and how to achieve it, perhaps. Gender politics and feminism for men. How to be a thirtysomething bisexual without being invisible. Sexuality in the workplace; activism in trade unions; bisexuality and the law. How to avoid BiCon being organised by cliques time after time. Bisexuality and race (the UK bi communities are overwhelmingly white). Bisexual networking (academics are good at this, perhaps there's scope for skills transfer). Bisexuality in history and around the world. Whether queer politics has had its heyday and if so what we can do about it.

[mankylarry.livejournal.com]

I know what you mean, however there seems to have been a partial resurgence over the last two years, Last years BiCon had sessions on the Law, which was quite interesting, as well as the seeds of three wishes which started the activist gatherings the third will take place this November, also I ran the session "W(h)ither Bisexuality", a theoretical look at the UK Bi community, and it's political history, ebbs and flows, and potential future directions for activism. Also last year was the kick start of the BI-BLIO academic group which is tarting to flourish, we are in the process of organising a day school, and had a successful double session this year at BiCon. Also there were sessions on Bisexuals and Trade Unions this year as well as other semi academic type sessions on notions of safe spaces, as well as the start of the BI Archive and history project, so all in all I think things are slowly looking up for those of us who are into these type of things. If you want a copy of the W(h)ither Bisexuality notes, or want more info about the acativist weekend and where it's discussed, and also BI-BLIO and the Archive group email me at LaurenceBrewer - at - hotmail - dot - com

Laurence