conferences

Kelsey and I traveled up to Seattle last weekend for two days of geekery at the first-ever Geek Girl Con! We went to panels on women in video games, race and gender in geekdom, women in horror fans, and way more. We were also honored to be on the panel "Media Literacy, Criticism and Production" along with some other really rad women. For this episode of Bitch Radio, here's a good chunk of our panel for you to listen to. Along with me and Kelsey, you'll hear from Kristy Guevara-Flanagan, director of the forthcoming The History of the World as Told by Wonder Woman (we saw clips, it's gonna be amazing!), Anita Sarkeesian, the woman behind Feminist Frequency (you may know her from Mad World and Tropes vs. Women), Leah Wilson, editor of Smart Pop Books, and moderated by Maile Martinez, programming director at Seattle's venerable Reel Grrls! Thanks to everyone who came out to hear us, you were a wonderful audience! Oh, and here's the link to that Strong Female Characters post by s.e. smith I mentioned!

Heads-up that the dates for the sixth annual Sexy Spring conference have been announced. Mark your calendars for June 5th to June 7th and make your way to Minneapolis for this radical, sex/body positive, sex education skill-share and conference.

Ready to put women back in the story? If you care about amplifying progressive women's voices in the media, WAM! is for you, whether you're a media producer or a PR strategist, a journalist, an activist, an academic, a community organizer, a feminist, a funder or philanthropist, a "citizen" media watchdog, a media policy advocate, an alternative-network-builder, a blogger, writer, teacher, artist, technology trainer, cartoonist, deejay, or anything else.

I finally unpacked from last weekend's NCMR, and unloaded the special NCMR tote bag. I've learned from the past couple conferences I've attended that tote bags are apparently a necessary part of every conference. Am I being an ungracious a**hole when I say I find this ridiculous? Sure, tote bags are helpful in organizing all the conference materials and other items handed out at workshops, but don't people bring their own bags?

This weekend, June 13th to June 15th is Sexy Spring, Minneapolis's radical, sex/body positive, sex education skill-share and conference.

The event is focused on exploring the ways sex, sexuality, relationships, our bodies, and our choices affect our lives. It's a weekend full of workshops, discussions, play, demonstrations, crafting, art shows, communal meals, telling stories, and sex/body performances and dancing.

I was back in Minneapolis this weekend for the National Conference for Media Reform, an annual event organized by the folks at Free Press, a nonpartisan group focused on media reform and policy.

So last week I tried to buy my plane tickets to the ever-awesome Allied Media Conference in Detroit, June 20-21. I was really looking forward to being in the presence of so many radical media folks, building coalitions, hearing about the work other people are doing, and just hangin' out. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a ticket under $600, so it's not going to happen for me this year. A lot of people are surely in the same situation, so I figured I'd spend some of what I budgeted for travel on helping other folks get there; if you can, please do the same (and consider donating to Bitch, too, to help with our very own Debbie Rasmussen's costs).

In other not-entirely-unrelated news (I can't say I'm unhappy about the high fuel prices driving up the cost of flying and driving and making people reconsider their destructive habits), on Wednesday morning Jen Angel (one of the founders of the late lamented Clamor and the aforementioned AMC) convinced me to go with her out to Chevron's corporate headquarters in San Ramon, California, to take part in a protest at their annual shareholders' meeting.

If your idea of a media conference includes a focus on social justice, community building, and creative, participatory media, I strongly encourage you to attend the Allied Media Conference. June 20-June 22nd, in the incredible city of Detroit.

A lot of discussion about WAM! is going on. Some of it's in public blogs, like here, and here, here, here, and here. (I know, that's a lazy way of linking, but I'm tired....) Also here. (OK, I promise I'll stop that.)

A lot of the discussion is also happening over email, and so it's not public.  I've participated in some of this email discussion, but in the interest of being open about my perceptions, I'd like to mention some of the things I've written about in emails…

This was my first WAM! experience, so I have no direct points of comparison. In all honesty, I've outright avoided WAM! up until this year. Here's why...

In the frenzy of preparing for my first Women, Action, and the Media (WAM!) conference, I'd arranged a flight that arrived in Boston a day before the conference actually began. Not cool since my hotel room share wasn't starting until tomorrow.

I wasn't too worried because I had a layover in Minneapolis and I managed to convince myself that surely the fine folks at Northwest would let me bump my flight to tomorrow and let me spend a day with my mom.