WisCon Friday: Making Con

[bcholmes]

The con slowly emerged on Friday. I was up surprisingly early and had my badge before even heading out for breakfast. But things were still pretty lethargic in the morning for those of us who weren't doing con set-up activities.

I bopped out for lunch with porcinea, boxofdelights, badgerbag and Green Lantern; we had wonderful Nepali food and discussed books and cool things from the previous con.

After lunch, I hooked up with kalikanzara and some of her friends, and went to "The Gathering" -- a loose event organized a bit like a fair. There were event areas, and BPAL sniffing and make your own curry spice. Mostly, I watched the "Show us your tats" session. Several people got up and tugged clothing aside to reveal their tattoos. Me, I didn't show off either of my tattoos.

But at 4:00, I went to my first panel of the con: "It's Not About Identity". The blurb says:

In the wake of the demise of "woman" as a unified category, many second-wave feminists felt undermined, saying that there could be no feminism unless there were some absolute, essential definition of the category woman. Other feminists (both second- and third-wave) have argued, though, that this attitude rests on a misunderstanding of the relation between political theory and practice of politics. This panel will explore some suggestions for new ways of thinking about feminism and its future

Me, I loved the panel. I found the ideas flowing about a mile a minute. It was a pretty theory-oriented panel (discussions about topics like postmodernism, erasure and stuff like that). One speaker, Andrea Hairston, was made of win every time she spoke. At one point, she illustrated her point using polyrhythmic drumming and speaking at the same time. This, she said, was what the subject position of "woman" was like: different beats, never becoming the same. (Edit: Badgerbag has a good capsule review of this panel).

I'd like to write a longer blurb about this panel, but not right now. But it was an epic win panel, and a great first panel for the con.

After the panel, I had dinner with kalikanzara, jiawen, nadyalec and merovingian. This was my first real socializing with the last three of those people, and it was a great opportunity to get to meet really cool peeps. merovingian is tremendously cool, and nadyalec has this amazing enthusiasm. jaiwen and I geeked about RPGs and talked a bit about Haiti. It was a great meal.

After dinner, we went to opening ceremonies. By that point, we'd become quite the cluster of people. Ian H., porcinea, Phoenix, and others.

After opening ceremonies, we wandered around a bit. I'd originally intended to catch the panel about LiveJournal, but hung out in a hallway, instead, and talked with kalmn, wild_irises, and lcohen. Lisa assembled volunteers for reputation ruining, and was generally funny and prone to bursting into song. I suppose this is what living in musical theatre feels like.

I did make it to "The Joy of Fat Sex", which had cool people like annaoj and pantryslut on it. A mostly good panel (with an amazing description). And then, I hung out with epi_lj, okoshun and Ian H. in the hotel bar, before blurry-eyed tiredness got the better of me.

Sleepy sleep sleep after that.