Very belated Femmeconne report

[sqbr]

This is a report about femmeconne, a women's con held last.. September?

I started writing this after I got back, but it was a VERY stressful time for me, especially with regards my health, so I never finished it. And now I've forgotten what I was going to say. So the first part is the original draft, the second my 8-month-old vague recollections.

Original Draft
Since I was incredibly curious before I went, and other people also seem to be, a synopsis of my time there. Note that I got sick for the Sunday, and was a bit woozy on the Saturday, and in general YMMV.

So, overall I had a fantastic time. It was a lovely location, everyone was friendly and I had lots of really interesting conversations. Overall it was like a cross between Terracon and Swancon, only with a small attendance all of whom happened to be women :)

Location: Bickley Brook, an "outdoor activity" campsite in Maddington (not too far to drive from the metro area if you already live north-eastish), nestled in a tree-filled valley up against a great big pretty hill. We had the campsite to ourselves which is always great for this sort of thing (no worries about scaring the 'danes and vice-versa) There's two sets of twin dorms with a shared set of showers between them (ours was called "The Grafenburg Spot" since noone could find it last year), each dorm is a narrow hallway with 5ish small open "rooms" coming off it, each containing two bunkbeds. There were enough beds that most "rooms" only contained one person and the top-bunk mattresses were snaffled for sitting on in the main hall.
There's a main hall-with-kitchen which acted as the central location for meals, panels, and socialising, and another hall with a tv. Also a creek and dam which you're not allowed to play in but are pretty to walk along, plus some outdoors equipment (ropes course etc)

The main hall also had the library, where people put books for others to borrow for the duration of the weekend (a mix of all kinds of things, but there was a moderate amount of feministy books/magazines), a craft library, and a pile of stuff for the clothes swap (a lot of people were paranoid these would all get mixed up but afaict they didn't) There was also tea and coffee, again people put (some of) their supply there for everyone to use.

Format: I get the feeling this changes every year, but here is the program: a series of panels/activities, each running for an hour with a half hour in between, in one to three streams. Meals were fairly serve-yourself and ran for a long time with people popping in and out of the kitchen to grab seconds and chat etc (people ate in the adjoining hall). I didn't see anyone getting roped into helping set-up/clean-up (apparently it does happen :)) but people certainly helped out voluntarily with washing the dishes etc.

Vague recollections now

So..what did I miss?

Panels: These were very informal-workshop-y, sitting in a circle etc. Very low key but interesting and rewarding. There were also other activities like art etc which were fun.

Food: callistra organised this and went to great trouble to fit everyone's food requirements. Unfortunately there's only so much you can do with a limited range of foods and a large group of people with incompatible weird food issues, and even before she announced that this year people will organise their own food I'd decided I'd do that anyway (also I like my routine, even if I CAN eat porridge for breakfast I want my Vita Brits :D).

Also: I got Very Sick on Sunday and Cam had to pick me up, and despite the No Men rule everyone seemed cool with him being there and chatted to him cheerfully while I organised my stuff. Of course he HAD to arrive in the middle of the clothes swap while everyone was in the room with my bags being semi-naked but it ended up ok :)

Will I go again? I haven't decided yet. But I'm certainly considering it.