The fight for diverse and conscious voices

https://www.classy.org/team/208301

I'm walking as part of Arisia's team this year for BARCC's fundraising walk. The walk itself is in just under a month and I'd love to have your support for our team.

BARCC does a ton of work for individuals, and for non-profits like Arisia, all of it free. The way it's kept free is because BARCC raises money through grants and donor events like the annual Walk. If your situation doesn't permit you to donate money that's fine - I can use moral support, walk/training partners, and general encouragement.

For Arisia 2020 I am co-divhead of the (newly renamed) Team Arisia Services and we're working to get staff more involved in activities that benefit the community. This is the first and I hope to have more to share in the coming 9 months.

(If you missed the antecedent to all this, it's at https://drwex.dreamwidth.org/1009674.html - Reading it isn't strictly necessary to understanding this entry, but it'll help with context.)

The original questioner clarified that one of their concerns was:

"it didn't seem fair for somebody to be held accountable by Arisia for ideas communicated on a non-Arisia forum."

I want to write about this, because I think this is a very hard problem, to which we don't have a good answer. So we (and I mean all of us, not just Arisia) are going on a case-by-case basis, and I think that's the right thing to do, even though I like systems that are predictable and not warty.
( This is going to get long; you've been warned )
I wish there was a neat answer, an ending or moral I could put here to wrap all this up nicely. There isn't one. This is a big hard problem and Arisia's instance of it is only a microcosm of the serious challenges our society is wrestling with. But it's my microcosm and a thing I continue to care about, deeply. For myself, I have a lot more reading and thinking to do. In about three weeks we're going to have a convention and after that convention there will be a stack of IRs that get handed to the Eboard and we're going to have to figure out how to apply our principles ... on a case by case basis.

Wish me luck.

Arisia Programming just sent out the notification that schedules are updated. (Nothing is final until it happens because humans are human.) I told them they are rock stars because they are. Pulling off the complete reorganization of the panels (and workshops, etc.) schedule in this short an amount of time with all the changes is its own kind of miracle.

Friday, 7 PM - Adults, Couples, and Coworkers on the Spectrum

Saturday, 1PM - Polyamory Meet-up

Saturday, 5:30 PM - Gaming and Consent

Sunday, 10 AM - Arisia Corporate meeting

Sunday, 2:30 PM - Geeky Parenting

Sunday, 7 PM - Open Policy Workshop

Monday, 11:30 - State of Arisia Community

The "Spectrum" panel is a reality I live every day. I'm looking forward to hearing others' experiences and hoping we'll have some success strategies to share.

"Gaming and Consent" looks like a good group - the moderator has already started discussion - and has a mix of LARP and tabletop people. Working out content warnings for this will be an extra challenge. We'll be talking about deliberate consent-violating or -challenging scenarios and we'd like not to freak out unsuspecting audience members.

The Corp meeting is going to be much more lively than the usual, I expect. We should have a great turn-out and I'm hoping to get a vote on my own minor Bylaws amendment. I've become much more of a policy wonk than ever I expected (see below) and if we're ever going to make things better these are the levers we can pull to accomplish that.

"Geeky Parenting" is another reality I live and love. My kids are wonderful geeks and it's been ever-more interesting these last couple years exploring the more-adult overlaps of their fandoms and mine. I spend a fair bit of time reflecting on how different their geek upbringing has been than my own was.

The Open Policy Workshop is my pet and I hope it draws well. We have a new Open Policy Committee at Arisia, Inc (Chaired by yours truly) that is intended to help people get their desired changes enacted. It's one thing to give feedback and ask for change - a needed and valuable thing - and another level to say "I want to make this change happen". The workshop is designed to show people how it's possible to get to that next level.

The "State of Arisia" is designed to be a chance for people to vent and speak to those of us who are supposed to be in charge(*). Earlier in the Con there will be things like a town hall, a safety discussion and other events that I'm not part of but that are designed to engage people in these processes. Monday should be when we learn how well this has all worked.

I hope to see many of you there. Sadly, due to multiple conflicts there will not be the usual Saturday night at 8 drinks. I do plan to check out the hotel bar, probably later Saturday night, but I can't organize a time. Maybe 10 PM? If anyone would like to meet up and test out the cocktail selection I'd like that. Leave a comment or ping me in email.

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(*) I keep wanting people to remember that the Eboard serves the Corporation, not the other way around. Anything we do can be overturned by the membership.

A long time ago I learned that not making a choice is itself a choice. I do not think I properly taught this to my elder child and I hope she finds it out in some non-destructive way. I live in the city of Decision Fatigue these days, because there are so many things I must decide on. Even if I don't participate in the arguments, I often have to have an opinion at the end. Sometimes we even vote.

I am generally treating corp@ like That List, from which I unsubscribed when I had to focus on getting my dissertation done, and have never looked back. I can't actually unsubscribe from corp@, but I am skimming and trying to gather the gist instead of going down into the weeds as often as I did a couple weeks ago. And I rarely respond.

Part of this is that I no longer have a private voice on matters concerning Arisia. No matter how much I disclaim that something is my personal opinion (turns out I still have a lot of those) words I utter turn out to have been uttered by the Vice President of Arisia, Inc. and at a minimum they raise the question of what Arisia's official opinion might be on something about which I have a personal opinion. Often, I can't speak that, either.

We have spent an incredible amount of time the last ten days writing things. Statements that appear in public as just a few paragraphs go from multi-page drafts through intense workshopping processes. The Board itself works on most of them, often with one or two people taking lead, and we have external input both from connected resources (e.g. senior staff of the Arisia Convention) and from connected people. Several of us are lucky to have partners whose knowledge, expertise, and input can be brought to bear on these things. We use Google Docs a lot; I can't imaging how much harder this was back in the days before shared co-editable documents.

As a result, most of my words are captured. I have some words for work (I have to) and for family but I am remarkably talked out. To some degree I hoard my words for things I am passionate about. I'm hoping tonight will turn out a certain way (we have a call with a full agenda) and I plan to use a lot of my words there.

I thought about all the above partly in response to the last 10 days, partly because of comments in other journals, and partly because the usual pre-Thanksgiving advice is drifting around about not needing to argue with every loud, ill-informed relative. In more ordinary times I would be very much about "f**k that" - I do not (as a dear friend reminded me) suffer fools gladly. And particularly in 2018 I feel it's important not to let racist, privileged, and hateful remarks go unchallenged.

Holidays are always fraught, and for some people they're downright toxic. It makes sense (as Pygment wrote in her own journal not long ago) to confine one's responses, particularly confrontational or intervention, to situations in which one feels safe. How terrible to admit that a family gathering would be unsafe, but that's reality for a lot of people, particularly people from marginalized groups.

This, too, touches back on Arisia because so much of what has happened has revolved around safety, or the lack thereof. Pygment reminded me the other night that she's never regarded Arisia as "safe space" and tried to teach that to the kids. It's wise, if regrettable. No gathering that large is ever going to be "safe" and using that language only serves to mislead. We should not speak of "safe", but instead speak of "safer" and "prioritizing safety".

I am, I admit, influenced by in-the-past days of working on what became known as safer sex education - largely promoting condom use. "Safe" is an absolute word I prefer not to speak. But I can speak about priorities and what I see as part of the mandate of the new Board: to prioritize safety over other concerns that people (right or wrong, see there's that bit where I can't speak) perceive as having been de-prioritized in favor of other things. We used to say 'safe sex" and found that misled people. Now we say "safer sex" and by analogy when I choose to speak about this, I say "safer" Arisia.

That's quite a lot of words from someone who claims to have fewer of them, isn't it?

I'm having a hard time keeping track of what is and is not public about the Arisia situation so excuse me if I go light on details. It has been all-consuming, like living in an emotional tornado. Shit keeps getting picked up and flung crashing into other things. People are doing amazing things, while outside there are the disgruntled and unhappy howling for blood. My worry is that those howls are drowning out the voices of people who should have been heard in the past and were not, who are taking the time and risk to speak now.
( This got long; why am I surprised )
So that's been my week - how was yours?

If you're able to, please vote. If you're in MA please vote Yes on 3; my kids are depending on it.

To be clear, I get a bunch of ribbons at most Arisias. Some of them are functional, like "Program Participant" or "Division Head" (ADH get those, too). Some of them are purposeful statements, like a pronoun ribbon (I use he/him generally but am OK with they/them), or a Backup Project ribbon. Some are whimsical - this year I had ribbons proclaiming both that I was "Rebel Scum" and also part of "Team Greykell." I very much want to have ribbons made for "Team Oxford Comma" and "Team Enthusiastic Consent" but I didn't get that done this year.

And sometimes ribbons are a gift. This year, I got a "Hero" ribbon. These are things that Arisia senior staff give out generally to junior staff for ... well, doing heroic things in service of the con. Emily, who ran Hotel this year, got one for not actually melting down when the hotel-move situation got sprung on us. Me? I... headed a team that built a Web site. I ran the blog and edited/published the Progress Reports. I oversaw publications that had a whole lot of errors in them.

It's easy to see all these mistakes and the things un-done. Self-evaluations are hard and I'd rate myself a B+ this year. I know what I can do and I can do better than this. But that's OK, it gives me room to improve.

I was both stunned and honored to get this gift. I've never gotten one before, and I've worked for a lot of Arisias. It never occurred to me that people would think what I was doing was heroic in some way.

Tomorrow, probably, I'll post some details about my con. But today I just want to say, "I got a ribbon".

https://www.facebook.com/arisiainc/posts/10154910402771580

I'm only on one Arisia panel this year, but I'll be turning in timesheets for pre-con work exceeding 750 hours. And that's really only a ballpark. I can't even begin to reconstruct it.

A lot of that went into the Web site (https://www.arisia.org now with SSL everywhere) and I'll have more to say about that after Con. But lately it's been publications, for which I am titular Assistant Division Head and effectively acting Divhead.

I had a very ambitious plan going into this, which largely consisted of "get people to work on these jobs, in part by splitting them up so they're more sane for one person to do." Like a lot of my plans, it didn't exactly work out. On the other hand:
- we had a new person doing Souvenir Book this time and I think she did a brilliant job. She enjoyed it enough that she might do it again.
- we had a new person doing Pocket Program for the first time in modern Arisia history (*)
- we managed to deprecate a bunch of old, clunky, hard-to-navigate static HTML schedule information in favor of a ... well, clunky, hard-to-navigate but at least real-time queryable online schedule tool.
- we got a new Restaurant Guide written, which hopefully will cut down on the complaints about outdated info we got last year. In the age of Yelp and such you'd think the Guide didn't see as much use but apparently people use it at least as a starter.
- we got a new person to do Family Friendly Guide. I suspect she won't be back, but she did a good job this time. (The FFG wasn't the job she came to do - she just threw herself on the live grenade like so many people in this organization do.)

Communications touches a lot of other things at the con. I've been involved in several projects, peripherally, that have made me prouder of this community than I thought I'd be. The response to The Westin renovation showed people will step up when it's needed. The rollout of the Safer Space for Arisians of Color shows we're making progress living up to our diversity ideals. This year we'll also have the first Black-identified fan publication covering the con in our history. Sometimes people are why we get to have nice things.

I have plans for what to do next, and they don't involve doing this job again next year. I need to put in fewer hours and more focus on a couple specific things that Absolutely Need To Get Fixed. I think there are people in my division who can move up and take on this gig, if they're willing. If all goes well I'll be back doing something different for 2020 and, yes, I have plans past that, too. Stay tuned, it's going to be a hell of a fun ride.

(*) Arisia turns 30 next year. Sit a while and feel old with me.

I'm on two this year:

Navigating Non-Monogamy (Fri 10PM)

The World is Our Playground: Geo Games (Sun 4PM)

Unlike last year I indicated interest in more panels, gave more options for non-conflicting times, and wrote more extensive paragraphs on why I wanted to do the panels I'd picked. Still ended up with two - they did offer me a late option on a third but I'd already scheduled a conflict I couldn't back out of, so had to decline.

Being somewhat farther inside the factory this year I got a more detailed idea of how the program is put together than I've had in the past. I'm hesitant to say a lot because I don't know what's public knowledge, but it is a complex a multi-step dance that almost always involves disappointing a whole lot of people. Here are some things that happen:

- People have more ideas than there are room for panels
- Panels that seem like good ideas don't catch on, and without panelists they can't run
- Hotel spaces change; we only have X spaces that will hold Y people in Z timeslots so things that don't fit can't be run even if there is interest
- Guests of Honor will or will not do certain things or there is a desire to have certain things done. These tend to take precedence and can cause ripple disruptions in the whole schedule, not least because the GOH often have fixed items on their schedules already that cannot be adjusted.
- People back out and cancel at the last minute. If gaps can't be filled, panels don't run.
- People who want to do a given panel may not have the right temperament, personalities, or expertise for the panel. People who do not want to be on panels with certain other people cannot be scheduled for the same panels as those people, which might mean leaving off one or both. Or maybe the whole thing doesn't happen because without those people you don't have a good enough panel.
- Sometimes you have to choose between "good" and "great" and both are only semi-scientific guesses. If you need a particular panelist to make a panel great maybe you do that and sacrifice a good panel because until we get real-time cloning we still only have people in one place at a time.
- People have constraints on their schedules that make sense for them, but may not make it possible to put them onto their desired panels. They also have priorities and maybe you sac a panel that lots of people rated as "5" in order to get a couple people their #1 or #2 choices.

This entire process would be a fascinating grad-school-level constraint programming task; writing a small expert system that could generate possible schedules meeting all known constraints would be non-trivial but I think it's computationally solvable.

This is the only Arisia I can recall in my 25 years of going that I went with a major illness or disability. For those whom I haven't told - my back seized up a week ago Tuesday. Guess I'll put that in a separate post. Suffice it to say that I am in a lot of pain, have trouble with some lifting and some motions, and it interferes a lot with my sleeping. So, yeah.

I was also working again this year - as Press Liaison. That had its own problems about which I need to write a post-mortem for Arisia, but the major effect on my con was that I missed part of one panel I wanted to see and most of the IgNobels.

I was on four panels this year, moderating three of them.
( panels )
( Parties, et alors on dance )
( Other entertainment )
Overall this Arisia was about a 6 to 7 for me. If I had not been hampered by physical issues and dealing with family things it probably would've been a solid 7. I was sad that my panels Saturday meant I didn't get to see and photograph the belly dance show, usually one of my yearly shooting highlights. I also missed out on snuggle time with loved ones - between scheduling and working and body issues it was a lot harder to get to places and do what I wanted to do.

I had a good Arisia 2014. It was the 25th Arisia and I've been to 24 of them (started with #2).
( Con ramble )