Uncharted Worlds » Bisexuality

Access at BBFD: update, clarification, apologies, thoughts

Jennifer — Sat, 15 May 2010 12:03:51 +0000

A follow-up to my previous post about Big Bi Fun Day.

A month or so ago, I posted about Big Bi Fun Day. Then I realised that in my enthusiasm, I’d clicked “publish” before discovering some access info, and hastily “edited to add”.

Two days later, Ian suggested in email I might remove that line, giving various reasons for why it was the wrong thing to say.

Well, I’m not a big fan of removing controversial words off blogs after some people have already seen them; i.m.e. it tends to leave later readers trying to piece together what happened. I suggested he make his criticism public & I’d respond to that instead. He wrote a comment similar to his email; see post linked above.

Since then, the access situation has actually changed anyway (in a good direction), so I wanted to make an update as well as some apologies.

This has taken a lot of thought to write, hence the delay in posting. I’m happy for people to argue back if they think I’ve got something wrong or missed something; and even if no-one does, I might have some other ideas later. But, at any rate, here’s a snapshot of some of my thoughts at the moment.

Update on access

BBFD is divided into four “zones”. When the event was first publicised, two of the zones were allocated to the upstairs space and two to the downstairs space.

It’s now changed. The “craft” zone has now moved downstairs, meaning that three zones are now downstairs and only one, the chatting zone, is upstairs.

I think, although I’ve not seen this spelt out, that the upgrade was the result of Sanji successfully negotiating some extra downstairs space with the venue; but in any case, yay for the improvement, and thanks to Sanji.

Of course ideally all the space would be wheelchair-accessible, but if one does have some inaccessible space along for the ride, then i.m.o. the least compromising use for it is as “overflow” of some kind.

In this case, anyone who can’t get upstairs would still be missing (as the description currently puts it) “interesting materials around the room”, as well as whatever unique vibe is created in the space. But at least chatting-in-general and cake are both pretty easily movable to where people are. So to me that’s noticeably better than having an inaccessible craft zone, with (if things go to plan) resources in it that people have brought.

It follows, I think, that my approximation “half” was arguably wrong. I meant two of four zones, which was numerically accurate - but looking at it again now, the chatting zone was somewhat less of a concern to me than the other. It may not have been “half” in terms of square footage, either. (I’ve not seen the building myself.) Sorry if I misled anyone.

The web page also spells out now that one of the toilets is a “proper” wheelchair-accessible one, which I hadn’t been sure of from the initial description.

Choice factors

The next morning after I posted, I’d also sent private email to the organisers’ address, asking was there still any chance of finding a more physically-accessible venue - in particular, wondering why they weren’t using the Leicester LGBT centre (which is). Sanji replied with a thoughtful and gracious email, explaining the factors which had gone into choosing this one.

Having seen the reasoning, I could get how it makes sense, given what kind of event it is. For myself, I’d have happily sacrificed the garden, but another reason not to use the LGBT centre was the fact that not everyone’s ready to be that “out”, and I recognise that as very important.

I offered to copy the full explanation here, but Sanji said it was headed for the public domain elsewhere and she’d rather I didn’t. (I’m happy to link to it if & when it becomes linkable.)

Lack of good venues

As it happens, I entirely agree that finding and booking an accessible venue in the UK in 2010 is a lot more difficult than it might appear to someone who hasn’t tried to do it.

Yes, there’s been some helpful legislation in recent years, ensuring that new building work meets certain standards; but that’s not at all the same thing as demanding that everywhere be immediately retrofitted. So it’s still the case that only a tiny percentage of non-enormous venues have proper wheelchair-accessible toilets. And those few generally have other limitations (e.g. lack of convenient public transport, or simply not having the size or number of rooms you need).

So it’s not necessarily the case that any particular town contains any venue whatsoever which meets all the criteria for a particular kind of event. Plus the acceptable places are often booked up months ahead for the “good” days.

The reality is that people usually have to compromise on one criterion or another, and the available wiggle room is in how the compromise is chosen and communicated.

So I understand why people may be sensitive to what could be interpreted as criticism of their inescapable compromise.

Clarification of my words

Regarding “The edge has gone off my joy”:

Despite how it evidently landed for some people, I wasn’t aiming that comment at the organiser(s), and it wasn’t intended to hold some kind of subtextual judgement of them. (As I’ve said above, I did ask in email whether it might be possible to use another venue; but that conversation was not this public statement. At the point of writing that line, it hadn’t even occurred to me that there might conceivably be a possibility of the venue changing.)

I meant it at face value: (a) there were some access limitations, and (b) I personally was therefore less unequivocally joyful about the event.

I have a vivid memory of a conversation a few years ago with someone who needs to use a wheelchair, and them explaining how they feel about only-partially-accessible events. Regardless of the reasons for compromising, it simply wasn’t and couldn’t be an emotionally neutral thing for them. It was a downer every time.

So when I read the details* and realised my error of omission, I was like: “Aaaah bugger. I’ve just done a public and unqualifiedly enthusiastic promotion of one of those same events that to at least one person I know would be a kick in the guts. That can’t be allowed to stand.”

* When I posted first, I’d only read the announcement email, not the event’s home page. I.e. one of my mistakes was the always-risky move of publicising, and linking to, a page I hadn’t yet read. That’s something I’d never normally do, and shall be doubly cautious of in future.

And even though I don’t know for sure that anyone in that situation is currently reading my blog, I certainly can’t assume that they’re not and never will.

Discovering the access limitations also called into question whether I‘d be OK with going to the event - this event which I’d just been getting so happy about. Over the last few years (since the conversation I mention above, and connected with some other thoughts about intersectionality and solidarity), I’ve become fairly reluctant to put energy into things that don’t have wheelchair access; and nor would I usually go to an event like this without making some kind of fairly substantial contribution to it. That’s half the fun!

So when I got the info, it was a bit like how I imagine it must be for someone vegan-on-principle to be told that their favourite chocolate bar now contains milk!

I didn’t want my post to cause that up-&-down for anyone else; I wanted the limitations to be up front with the good news.

If there was a subtext, it was something like “An event without full wheelchair access is not at all the same thing as one with“.

I’m not sure now where I’d have ended up with the “milk in my chocolate” dilemma had the situation not changed. I’m not saying now either that I’ll definitely come to the event.

But in any case, if I choose not to attend an event, it doesn’t necessarily mean I think it shouldn’t be happening. There are almost infinitely many places I could put my activism energy; prioritising some of them by my own criteria isn’t an insult to the others.

What I would like to do differently in future

In retrospect I see some ways I could have handled this episode better, and I’m sorry for any bad consequences which arose from my mistakes.

The root of it is this: I should never have assumed, without explicitly checking, that the event was fully wheelchair-accessible.

If I’d just managed to notice that gap in my knowledge before I posted, then I could have held off posting till I knew all the background facts. And then I could have written a more measured and balanced summary, less prone to interpretation as “advice” and less likely to result in anyone going “Aagh!”. Or I could simply have not bothered posting at all (as is the case for most events I hear of, however great they look like being).

I’m sorry too that I didn’t consider the organisers’ feelings (and possible interpretations) when I hastily wrote my “edited to add”.

I’m not saying that should have taken precedence over my responsibility to the people using wheelchairs. And I want it noted that what I actually wrote was neither “advice” to the organisers nor a “Yr doin it wrong”, but (a) a fact* about the event, and (b) a description of my own feelings, neither exaggerated nor disrespectfully put.

* Give or take the approximation “half”, as noted above.

But in an ideal world I’d have managed to write something that took everyone into account.

The hinterland

Without abdicating responsibility for what I said, I want to mention as well some of the territory into which my words arrived, which I suspect may have influenced some non-literal readings of them.

Part of this territory is of course the physical world and its lack of good venues. (That section above could have fitted equally well into this part of my article.) I’m also thinking here of the social territory and its rules and norms.

One of the dynamics I perceive in Ian’s warning to me is a protectiveness of anyone doing anything practical, connected with a fear that not enough people are interested in activism to sustain the community. (Quote, “it risks putting off there being such events at all”.)

I can see how, in that particular context, one might be tempted to assess every public statement about an event primarily or entirely on the basis of how it may affect the morale of current event organisers. (Ian’s comment does seem to me an example of this framing.) And in that context, it makes sense to construe publicly-expressed disappointment - or publicly-expressed anything-other-than-100%-gratitude - as mistaken or unacceptable.

I understand the underlying concern about activism energy supplies, though I wouldn’t have enacted it in the same way.

This all links up with some other UK-bi-activist-community norms around criticism and gratitude. I already knew I was at odds with some of those in some ways, though I hadn’t foreseen encountering them quite like this. I may return to that subject some time.

Thanks

Finally, thanks again to Ian for the heads-up about how my words landed in some quarters. As I hope is evident here, I’m not endorsing all your analysis of what’s most important and what I’m supposed to have meant; but I’m very glad you put it to me directly rather than grumbling behind my back. Feel free to dispute further :-)

Here, have an index…
Access at BBFD: update, clarification, apologies & thoughts
Update on access
Choice factors
Lack of good venues
Clarification of my words
What I would like to do differently in future
The hinterland
Thanks

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Bi community afternoon in Leicester

Jennifer — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 20:54:15 +0000

Just a few minutes ago I checked my email and I found out a thing just got announced! and I am happy about it!

It’s called “Big Bi Fun Day”.

It is a bi event suitable for families! and not even that far from me geographically!

Hurrah!

and thank you very much to the people organising this.

Edited to add: The edge has gone off my joy as on further scrutiny I realise that half the event is up stairs and there’s no proper lift, only a chair lift.

Other feedback welcome via that form too.

International Celebrate Bisexuality Day

Jennifer — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 21:29:26 +0000

I’m reminded by reading my friends’ blogs that 23 September is International Celebrate Bisexuality Day!

Lots of my writing energy has gone elsewhere lately, and I haven’t written anything specially for it. But here is a thing I did a while ago - a presentation with illustrations:

Bi identity: obstacles and paths

Happy reading :-)

Other feedback welcome via that form too.

Information as activist resource

Jennifer — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 11:27:55 +0000

More thoughts about remembering or losing information, this time from an activism angle.

I talked before about the idea that key team members for an event could each have apprentices, and the pros and cons of that.

In comments, Martin raised the question of whether the people volunteering to be key team members would be (a) willing and (b) able to work effectively with an apprentice. This got me thinking more about the purpose of the idea.

Part of my attraction to the idea of apprentices is that it brings future organisers up to speed, kind of “in real time and ready to go”.

But as I thought about the whole thing some more, I realised there was another issue I hadn’t consciously articulated at the time, perhaps actually more important. What’s behind the “apprentices” idea for me is at least partly the desire not to lose hard-won experience and information.

(This line of thought is actually what prompted me to write my earlier post about the art of remembering, but I thought I’d keep my general ponderings separate from this more activism-specific one.)

The written word

As I pondered Martin’s comment, I found myself thinking: connecting people “in real time” is only one way of transmitting skills and history (albeit sometimes a very effective one). What about the role of writing stuff down? I’m a fan of that too.

In a sense, writing things down is even more reliable than the apprentice idea. It means that even if the chain of handing-on is broken from person to person, someone can still retrieve an earlier “link” of the chain, from a written account.

On the other hand, it’s very easy to accidentally leave something out from a written account, or to describe something in such a way that it’s later misunderstood. So both methods have advantages, and perhaps ideally we’d always have elements of both.

BiCon-specific resources

In terms of “How to run a BiCon”, there’s a useful list of guides on bi.org. Tip of the hat to everyone who’s put work into that documentation, and I’d like to encourage people to add to it. (One v cool thing to add, if anyone can be bothered, would be an “index by role” - so that someone taking on a particular role could go straight to the bits relevant to them.)

I’m pretty sure that there’s some older UK bi-activist history which is not well known by most people. As far as BiCon’s concerned, there’s hardly anyone still around from the earliest days, and even ten years ago I don’t think people always wrote post-event reports. (Or at least, if they did, then some of those haven’t made it onto the web.)

There’s also the biconorganisers group. That’s a great example of “people as a resource”, although it’s only a minority of all people who’ve ever worked on a BiCon.

Passing it on

One possible theoretical scenario is that someone’s already documented everything you need to know to do some particular role, and the latest person just copies that method, learns nothing and adds nothing. In that case, there’s nothing new to pass on.

But where someone does learn something from experience or develop something not done before, then ideally that would be transmitted. Otherwise it’s a bit like a software branch where a cool new feature gets developed but then the branch never gets merged back into the main trunk.

Most people could probably think of something they learnt while doing some task or craft, which if a friend said “Any tips?”, they’d immediately want to pass on. Blogs are full of that kind of conversation! And yet in many situations, by the time the new person’s asking the question, the person who could give the best tips from experience isn’t there to give their answers. (I’m thinking of e.g. DIY-ing in a new house, and you have to make a hole in the plasterwork just to see what kind of beam was put in.)

I imagine many people could also think of their own example of some innovation that’s only happened once so far, but would be just as useful/good (or better) on a subsequent outing.

Why do people reinvent the wheel?

I should acknowledge somewhere here that “reinventing the wheel” has more than one cause.

Sometimes it’s a pragmatic solution to re-start more-or-less from scratch, despite having some degree of access to the “previous wheel”. And sometimes people feel a compelling desire to be creative, and little or no desire to learn from what’s already known, in which case they’ll ignore the “previous wheel” on principle.

But sometimes it is some kind of break or weakness in the chain of passing-on.

Maybe someone doesn’t realise that the wheel has been invented before. Or they know (or assume vaguely) that it probably was - but they don’t have enough details to make the information of practical use.

Or sometimes, the information is all there - but written down in such a way that it would take hours to trawl through for the few nuggets of relevance, rather than offering a “This is what you‘ll want to know” in relatively accessible form.

Transmission skills and habits

Handing things on is partly a matter of skill - e.g. how good someone is at explaining, &/or how good someone else is at eliciting information. (I.m.e. the biconorganisers list shows its value most when someone asks a specific question of the group.)

It’s also a matter of attitude, habits and preferences.

Some people are much more prone than others to hang on to the job that they’re doing and not delegate and not tell anyone else what’s going on. Then, even after the event is all over, no-one else really knows how they did it. It’s a kind of “black box effect”. No-one else knows what went on inside the black box to produce the result!

And when a project’s over, some people enjoy writing up how it went and what they learned, whereas others (once they’ve had a rest) are much keener just to get on with the next thing.

Thinking ahead

Aside from those factors, there’s also a kind of possible thinking-ahead at the design stage to the constraints of future transmission, which may influence even what you choose to develop in the first place.

I’m thinking of my attempt to set down the format of the Fitting & Misfitting workshops for other people to use. Handing it over was much harder than I thought at first it might be. I ended up concluding that perhaps I needed to actually invent simpler things if I wanted them ever to be used later by other people.

Investment, payback, time and energy

I’m not saying there isn’t a place for glorious one-offs. Even ephemeral phenomena do lay foundations for the future if they nurture people. Food is an obvious example!

But I’m also interested in what you might call the payback-timescale spectrum. To what degree does our work have a longer life and longer value than the one event coming up next, and whatever people take away from that?

E.g. on the one hand I’m thinking of various one-off workshop sessions I’ve run at BiCon. I’m not saying they weren’t valuable at the time, and most likely there are still echoes of those experiences for some people into today.

On the other hand I’m thinking of the BiCon 2005 info booklet, another thing I worked on. That’s had a much more tangible afterlife (so far), in that other subsequent BiCons have reused parts of the text.

It reminds me a bit of planting a tree. You do the work once and the tree persists over time (well, if it’s a tree, it doesn’t just persist, it usually grows).

In the long run, everything is interim and we’re all dead. But some things hang around a lot more than other things.

Given that activism energy isn’t unlimited, I wonder if it might sometimes even be a luxury or a mistake to bother developing stuff which can’t be passed on, because the long-term payback is so much less.

Of course not every kind of work is amenable to becoming a metaphorical tree. Some is more like food or cleaning. But I feel protective of people’s energy - everyone’s, not just mine - and very averse to wasting it. So I don’t want to miss the opportunities to conserve and concentrate value, where they do exist.

Criteria for matching people to jobs

Returning briefly to Martin’s comment, and what I think about that now:

If there’s only one person who wants to do a job, and they don’t want to help anyone else learn it for the future, then so be it. It’s better to have that than to not have anyone who wants to do the job.

But if there’s a choice, then one valid criterion for “best person for the job” is what investment they’d be willing and able to make “as they go”, towards building for the long term. And helping to hand on a legacy of skills and memories is one aspect of that.

Team archivist

Writing this, it occurs to me that event teams might consider offering a role of “team archivist”. That person could take the lead on writing the event report, encourage other people to write up their experiences of different roles, and maybe even interview team members who didn’t like (or didn’t have time for) writing things up themselves.

I don’t mean like they should document everything - but even a short “What did you learn that you’d want to tell the next person?” could be incredibly useful sometimes.

That would be one simple way of “fixing” more of the recently-acquired value so that it doesn’t melt away again (like the ratchet metaphor).

It reminds me a bit of what Jen often does already in editing Bi Community News - “Any chance of a write-up?” (of an interesting-sounding event that someone’s going to or involved with.) It would differ in that BCN isn’t embedded within a particular team, and isn’t especially focused on eliciting the “how to do this specific cool &/or useful thing again” genre of information.

I don’t suppose that’s such a new idea that it’s never been done before, but I’ve not seen it made an official team role on any team I’ve been part of. Anyone done anything else similar? and if so, how did it work out?

Here, have an index…
Information as activist resource
The written word
BiCon-specific resources
Passing it on
Why do people reinvent the wheel?
Transmission skills and habits
Thinking ahead
Investment, payback, time and energy
Criteria for matching people to jobs
Team archivist

Other feedback welcome via that form too.

Not everyone is bisexual

Jennifer — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 21:55:06 +0000

I hereby launch my latest badge design - “Not everyone is bisexual”.

I’m quite entertained by the different angles of meaning on this one, so I thought I’d write an article about it and explain what I was thinking.

In principle

There’s a classic situation in which this tends to come up:

Person A: I’m bisexual!

Person B: Oh - I think everyone’s bisexual really.

To person B, this presumably seems like quite an accepting and bi-friendly thing to say - and to some of the people in the role of A, it feels that way too.

But on the other hand, I’ve heard a few possible objections to it.

Some people in the role of A have said that it feels like a trivialisation of the importance of what they’ve just said. It’s as if B replied “So what, big deal - isn’t everyone?”.

I must say I don’t remember it ever “landing that way” for me personally. Even if, in fact, B is mistaken that “everyone’s bisexual” (in whatever way they mean), it stands to reason that in order to hold that view, they must have been including themself. So in a sense they’ve just reciprocally come out, which tends in my experience to lead on to some quite entertaining conversations :-)

But I can understand some people’s exasperation with B’s response, too. If, to you as A, bisexuality is a major factor in your life experience so far, whereas you have a pretty good sense (because you know them) that B only means “I once slightly fancied a boy/girl, from a distance”, then there’s still a kind of miscommunication going on. Because then what you really mean isn’t just “I’m bi” or “I identify as bi” - it’s “This is important to me”. And B’s response, while acknowledging “oh so you’re bi then, OK”, falls short of “I understand it’s important to you”.

Another objection is about respecting the identity and experience of people who don’t think they’re bi.

OK, it’s possible that all humans may have been born with some notional bisexual potential, but not all adults experience themselves as being in any meaningful sense bisexual. There are people who have given a fair trial to either cross-gender or same-gender emotional/sexual connection (as the case may be), and found it “does nothing for them”. So in what sense are those people bi? Only, I would suggest, in a sense so theoretical as to be irrelevant in ordinary life.

There are also people who have deliberately chosen a non-bi identity and shaped their lives accordingly.

Those are the two political arguments I’ve heard made against “everyone is bisexual”: that it erases the experience of the people who don’t identify as bi, and that it erases the importance of it for those who do. I think these are valid objections.

So one meaning of the badge is a disagreement in principle with the assertion “Everyone is bisexual”.

In mostly-bi environments

The second context I had in mind was a relatively straightforward practical social use.

Sometimes there are “bi events”, such as BiCon or BiFest, which welcome non-biphobic non-bi people.

Although bi people are usually in the majority there, that’s no justification for assuming that everyone there is bi. But sometimes someone forgets that, and a non-bi-identified person is misread as bi, or ignored in some statement of “we bi people… blah blah blah”.

In a sense, the bi-majority environment mutates the mainstream default whereby queer people are usually the ones who have to “come out”. But that’s not quite right, because the aim and ideal of those spaces is not for people to assume bi as the default: it’s for everyone to keep in mind that they don’t know other people’s identity unless they’ve been told.

So one possible use for the badge is as a reminder in majority-bi space. It could be worn by a non-bi person - who may well feel a self-interest in making the reminder - but it could be worn by anyone else too.

No label

An interesting attribute of the saying in badge form is that it doesn’t directly “out” the person wearing it. It makes a statement, but the statement isn’t a label of the wearer.

In a majority-bi environment, there’s no mystery why someone would wear it (whether bi or not): it’s useful in maintaining a space comfortable for everyone. But out in the rest of the world, its full ambiguity kicks in.

In a way, I think it invites the reader to question the relationship of the wearer to the badge. Are they or aren’t they? If they are, why don’t they just wear a badge saying “Bi person”? If they aren’t, why are they wearing the badge at all?

Perhaps the implicit statement could be simply “I invite you to consider bisexuality”.

Biphobia?

It occurred to me to consider whether someone biphobic might seize on this badge as a way of saying “Me? Bi? No way!!” I don’t like the idea of that.

But on further reflection I began to doubt that it would really work. Even if they meant it that way, they still couldn’t prevent other thoughts going through people’s minds sometimes, and raising people’s awareness of bisexuality in the process.

It could equally well be read as a form of solidarity - “Not everyone is bisexual… but I’m not saying I’m not”.

Out in the world

My favourite thing about this badge, though, is what kind of world it implies, especially when worn outside of spaces officially declared bi-friendly.

There’s a reading of it which implicitly calls into existence a world where, OK, not everyone is bi - but so many people are, you need to make a point of remembering that it isn’t everyone! Somehow I find that oblique reversal of normal default assumptions immensely amusing.

Beside being funny (to some), it’s probably more true than it might at first appear. I’m thinking here partly of the number of people I’ve come out to who’ve responded with some version of “oh I’m a bit bi too”. There’s a lot of it about - it’s just that most people don’t make anything of it, or they think they don’t qualify as a “real” bi person because their attractions aren’t exactly 50/50 split between men and women.

Thought-provoking ambiguity

So all in all, I think this might be quite a thought-provoking, conversation-starting and generally entertaining badge to go around wearing, especially out in the world in general. If you try it, feel free to send me anecdotes :-)

Linky index…
Top of article
In principle
In mostly-bi environments
No label
Biphobia?
Out in the world
Thought-provoking ambiguity

Other feedback welcome via that form too.

Not herding cats: job design for teams

Jennifer — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 22:35:39 +0000

This is by way of a sequel (as promised) to my last post, getting into more detail about my thoughts on constructing a workable team of lots of people, with particular reference to BiCon.

I’ve been thinking about this since last year when I first ran into the “Children at BiCon” question, and I wrote much of this article back in May… but it seems like an especially timely subject at the moment, because of the number of people thinking and talking about aspects of volunteering for bi community stuff.

E.g. at the little bit of BiCon 2008 I was there for, and in the blog comments since, there’s been a striking amount of talk about how “BiCon is made of people”, and celebration of how many people had contributed. BiCon 2008 had the most encouraging page for volunteering at BiCon I’ve ever seen. And I’ve already talked over some of the stuff in this article (a few months ago) with Martin who’s head of the 2009 team (who should get some credit for encouraging me to post this, though no blame for any ideas which fall with a dull thud :-) ).

That’s not to imply that 2009 will be following these suggestions, but it did seem about time to stick my blueprints and thought-experiments out there for general debate and grabbing if wanted.

Basically I’m going to talk about some ideas for event organisation, which I think would make event teams a more nurturing environment for new talent (and indeed for everyone).

I don’t mean to say that they’re all my own ideas - some of them have been discussed numerous times in the past in connection with BiCon, and some have already been done. But there are some new ones, as well as some which haven’t yet been fully implemented. And even if they were all old ideas, it can still be useful sometimes to sketch out how lots of different things could potentially go together.

Background

For the non-BiCon-goers, I should explain that BiCon is run by a different team every year. Twenty years ago, the teams were usually drawn from within or near the same town that the event would be held in, but nowadays that’s not necessarily the case. And, more likely than not, nowadays, the nucleus of a BiCon team will include some people who have been on a BiCon team before - though still not always.

Team size and structure

A major factor in the workability of a team is the structure set up for managing remits and lines of communication. By that, I mean both the theoretical model and the software support. I agree that if we just suddenly had a 30-person team and tried to manage it via one LiveJournal plus email, no-one would ever want to do it again :-)

But I don’t necessarily agree (with what seems to be a common view around BiCon over recent years) that having more than 6 to 12 people on a team is inevitably going to resemble the proverbial “herding cats”.

What I want to try to describe is a model whereby i.m.o. a team could have 20 to 40+ members and not resemble “herding cats”.

I can imagine some people reading the description of it and saying things like “That’ll never work - it’s much too complicated”. But its (relative) complexity only needs to be evident to the person or people setting up the structure, and to a lesser degree managing it. The people claiming a role have a different experience. If it’s done right, their experience is of walking into a clearly defined space and being able to play within it. They don’t have to worry about how that was accomplished or is being maintained.

With regard to that initial setup, there’s an element of “it’s easy for me to say”, me being a process geek and happy with complexity :-) But I’m sure I’m not the only person around with these skills and tendencies. And, as I say, they’re not needed from everyone on the team.

So, having said that, here are some thoughts I have about how I would operate if I had the necessary influence over a (BiCon or similar) team of volunteers.

Jigsaw

One of the metaphors I’m thinking of is of creating a kind of slightly unconventional jigsaw puzzle.

All the pieces fit together to make a whole, without anyone having a jigsaw piece that’s uncongenial to them or bigger than they want. There’s no presupposition that all the pieces must be the same size. The divisions between pieces might or might not follow past tradition.

There would be a place in this team for almost anyone who wanted to play, using a partly-hierarchical structure to divide the jigsaw into different areas of responsibility and different degrees of importance.

All the main roles would have apprentice roles alongside, to help develop the “next generation” of activists.

If I were constructing a BiCon team, I wouldn’t take on other ongoing roles such as venue-hunting or setting prices. I would choose team-mates in the first place whom I could trust to do a good job on those. My role would be something like “People and process manager”.

Initially, my intention would be on matching roles to people, including a degree of designing roles to suit particular people more exactly.

As the team got going, my attention would be on whether everyone was fulfilled and happy and had what they needed in terms of resources and cooperation in order to keep up with their timeline.

Not reinventing the wheel

Part of the jigsaw would be to develop as much as possible the idea (which has already been discussed a few times) of multi-year ongoing role allocations, i.e. those which continue from one event to the next.

I gather that one of the most-debated-in-the-past ongoing plans is now about to go ahead - a legal entity to hold BiCon money from year to year. I’ll leave that idea to one side here, although it is related.

Some other areas which could well be owned by an ongoing team or teams include:

Web site content management system.
Web site back end database for bookings, and front end interface.
Financial spreadsheets which could be emptied and re-used for the following year, designed to be either integrated with the bookings system or as compatible as possible with it.
Web site back end database for workshop session offers, interface (possibly similar to this), and mail-merge-esque ability to extract and print out workshop info in different formats (such as David M did for BiCon 2003 - also described briefly on that link).
Database for publicity avenues (I say database rather than just “list” for mail-merge ease).
Web site back end database for offers of help with publicity, and front end interface.
Communication software of some kind for the team - more on this below.

The people taking ownership of these areas would ideally commit to some years of that role, and would pace themselves (taking small enough chunks of commitment) not to burn out before that time was up.

This structure would not only save significant time and energy for incoming teams, but would increase the chances of learning from anything that didn’t work one year and building in improvements before the next.

Some BiCon teams might want to do things differently, and there wouldn’t be a rule that they had to take advantage of the available resources - but over time, if most teams did use and develop the passed-on software, info and expertise, I’d expect the inherited software collection gradually to reach a level of usefulness hard to equal “off the shelf”.

As yet, I haven’t noticed any disadvantages of this idea, and in fact there have been some rather more concrete discussions about some of the angles over this past year, so I get the impression it is beginning to happen.

I suspect that the main reason it hasn’t been developed more for BiCon already is “not being in the habit” from the days before the Net - when BiCon teams were much more likely to be based on geography and were much more isolated from the rest of the community during the year.

It does require some investment of time up front, as well, though. Let’s face it, the “quick and dirty” solution is often to “reinvent the wheel”, using whichever bit of software is most familiar and most handy at the time.

Categories of people and their roles

On the one-event team, my team-mates would not be limited to my friends or even to people I know, but there would be a sort of sliding scale of task importance matched to people’s experience and track record.

(There would also be a requirement to have internet access for the main roles.)

I’ll talk here about the categories I have in mind.

Primary team / key accountable people

First we have what I’ll call the primary team, or key accountable people.

(The term “core team” would also have made literal sense, but that’s already in use around BiCon, meaning something like “People who get to see behind the scenes on the team’s online journal etc”. That isn’t the meaning I intend here.)

These are people with past experience of the event and demonstrable competence, who will take on key roles.

It’s likely that most of the people in this category would be on the team by invitation.

My rule-of-thumb definition of the primary team is that if everyone else dropped out, this subset could in theory run a decent event by themselves.

(Of course, that would be a waste of the opportunity for other people to work alongside them and learn from them, so I would have no intention of it ever happening.)

Apprentices

Ideally, each primary team person would have an apprentice working alongside them. In order to be given the job, the apprentice would likely have past experience demonstrating reliability and some kind of competence. (Plus, in the special case of roles that involve handling money, we’d want them to have been around the community for a while and have “something to lose” here if they used it to go to the Bahamas.) But they probably wouldn’t ever have done this particular job around this particular event before.

An important part of the job of the primary team person would be to develop as far as possible the degree to which the apprentice knows the territory.

For some roles (such as BiCon’s bookings manager or session coordinator), where there’s quite a lot of routine work, a rule of thumb would be that the apprentice handles all the routine aspects of the role, while the accountable person deals with problems and tricky cases. (I’m using the term “accountable person” for someone responsible for the outcome of a particular area.)

For other roles, there are significant parts of the job which would be hard to share (e.g. liaising with the venue, if the venue people prefer to have only one contact), and the apprentice would be more likely simply to shadow the accountable person closely. E.g. they would go to the same meetings (if any), be copied in to emails, and (if not using conference calling) be sent notes of what was agreed on phone calls.

All the apprentices would take part in the online discussion area for the main team.

In the theoretical best case, the apprentice structure would mean that every year, a complete new set of people emerged ready to do the key jobs. In practice, that wouldn’t happen - e.g. some apprentices would probably decide afterwards that they didn’t fancy repeating the job, or didn’t fancy taking on the responsibility of being the accountable person. But even just a small percentage of apprentices emerging ready to do the accountable job in future would make a big difference year on year.

Aside from the benefits in building capacity, this structure would also mean that if an accountable person needed to drop out - e.g. through illness - someone else would already know most of what had gone on so far. (I wouldn’t necessarily assume that the apprentice would step up to take control in that case. That would depend on various factors, starting with whether they actually wanted to at all. But at least they could help the new person to get up to speed.)

There might be cases in which two equally experienced people preferred to job-share - either with equal responsibility, or one the accountable person and the other a deputy. But I’d still aim to have an apprentice as well, to maximise the handing-on of knowledge.

Advisors

Thirdly we have advisors.

These would be people invited onto the team because of knowledge they have, but who aren’t accountable for particular things being done. E.g.

someone with a disability not already represented on the team
a single parent
people from diverse cultural/ethnic backgrounds
someone over 60, or over 70.

Again, these people would be included in the core team’s online discussions. Their only job would be to keep an eye on the rest of us and head us off from bloopers made through obliviousness.

(For BiCon, we would also call at times upon the biconorganisers group, i.e. past BiCon organisers, another group with particular experience and wisdom.)

Special mission people

Then we have what I might call “special mission people“.

The beauty of this category is that it allows for some of the most experienced people to contribute small amounts of time.

What most of the “missions” would have in common would be to develop things which don’t exist yet.

For instance, I might invite someone to develop one particular piece of writing or artwork, or to get in touch with one particular organisation to build links with them. Anyone who came along with a new idea like “I was thinking this year I might… ?” could go into this category too (if their idea didn’t already fit into existing structures - e.g. as a workshop session).

Everyone with this kind of remit would count as “accountable people”, but they wouldn’t be part of the primary team (inasmuch as the event could still survive without their work), and they might choose not to have an apprentice either (especially if their job had a creative, make-it-up-as-you-go-along nature).

Depending on what their special mission was, they might or might not need to be closely networked in to the rest of the team. But the team would at least know of their existence and their mission.

Contributors

Contributors form the category most expandable as more people come along. They needn’t be part of the team’s main communication structure; their main relationships would be with the accountable person and apprentice for the area in which they were contributing.

One existing example of the “contributors” model in use at BiCon is workshop sessions. Someone who offers to run a session doesn’t need to keep track of other developments; they just need to be in touch with the sessions coordinator (and/or apprentice).

Another example is the reception team and “gophers” during the event. Those jobs are among the ones easiest to manage when the contributors don’t have internet access.

Almost infinite numbers of people could make a tiny contribution in terms of distributing flyers, with the coordinator of that area keeping track of who’s covering what, and hence minimising duplication of effort.

Sub-leaders

We can introduce other layers of hierarchical/delegation structure if we like, for areas which seem to warrant it.

Some conferences have had separate organisers for different themes/strands of their workshop programme; I wouldn’t be averse to that idea. The key accountable person would then manage each of the strand coordinators. There might be a “miscellaneous themes” organiser too, to be the equivalent of “strand organiser” for offers not fitting a particular strand. Or the key accountable person could choose to delegate just one or two strands while keeping the rest themself.

Another example would be to divide up the entertainments remit so that the ents coordinator (who’s a key accountable person and part of the primary team) delegates to three or four different accountable people the three or four different nights of BiCon.

This has the happy effect that during BiCon, the person with most to manage on each night’s ents has the other nights off.

The ents coordinator’s job would be to ensure that the different nights were varied and compatible, and to organise obtaining shared resources such as a PA system.

The ents coordinator would certainly have an apprentice (shadowing, and e.g. perhaps taking on liaison with the PA hire company); the one-night organisers could well also each have an apprentice or second-in-command.

A similar kind of structure could be mapped onto publicity. There’s room for a huge number of people to take on a small share of that work.

The first delegation-split could be e.g. to a radio outreach person, one or more printed-media outreach people, a postering/flyers coordinator and an interviews coordinator. Then the interviews coordinator would manage a team of willing interviewees available for either radio or magazines, and the postering/flyers coordinator would coordinate the distribution of our publicity materials all over the country.

But where would we get all these people?

I’ve named a lot of roles there, so I can imagine people reading this and thinking “But where would we get all these people?”

If you’re thinking that, you’re missing one of my main points - arguably the main point. The point of creating this more complex structure is to make available smaller roles, which are more accessible to people who don’t have the time / energy / inclination for BiCon to eat their life. The idea is to bring enough new people into action for the “energy shortage” concern to disappear.

For example, you don’t have to have different people doing each night of the ents, and an apprentice talking to the PA company. You can have one person doing all of it if you like.

But is it going to be easier to find one person who can afford to give that much time, or the four or five who could give a smaller amount?

My thesis is the latter will be easier to find. If I’m wrong about that, well then, “as you were” :-)

(My list of suggested roles for the BiCon children strand should be seen in this light too. I did say that it was possible for one person to do them all, but some people seem to have missed that point, hence comments about “doubling team size”. Obviously, under this model I don’t think it would be a bad thing to double the team size! But the children strand would still only be a small proportion of the overall workload. How many people it’s divided among is a matter of team organising style.)

People not to have on the team

The only people I’d turn down completely and not have on the team would be those who were unwilling or unable to align with the organisation of the team.

E.g. obviously I don’t want someone who’s so oblivious to the general consensus that they’d go shopping on the event’s behalf and buy a load of stuff which no-one else had agreed. (Not that I could stop people doing that by not having them on the team, actually. But at least it would be a bit clearer to them that it was un-called-for.)

Including people of no track record

People with no track record wouldn’t be picked for the main roles, but I’d be unlikely to turn them away either. There’s plenty of room for them all within the “contributors” category.

Flyering in one’s local area is one place where we can safely offer a job to more or less anyone. There’s always more room for work on spreading the word; and as we shan’t manage to cover everywhere anyway, there will be venues where it’s arguably not that significant if someone doesn’t do what they said they would.

In the case of BiCon, there are also jobs which can be scheduled far enough in advance that if one person doesn’t deliver, there’s time to take the job back and give it to someone else - a low-risk gamble. One example would be the early creation of new artwork.

Necessary skills: Creative slicing

One of the key skills in creating a jigsaw like this is deciding where to cut around the pieces (or, to put it another way, working out which tasks can reasonably be stuck together to create one person’s role).

This is partly about discerning the logical divisions and connections among tasks.

For instance, the people doing the budget are connected to the ents coordinator - but only in that they need to agree an overall budget for ents. Otherwise, those are readily separable jobs.

Before even beginning to look for people to be on the team, I would put time into developing a catalogue of ingredients, identifying all the job components which have previously been done by anyone in any role, and how they interlink. I wouldn’t attempt to do this alone, but would run it past people who’d actually done various BiCon roles in the past, asking them “Tell me everything you actually did”, and then “Was there anything more you would have done if you’d had time?”

Another underlying skill is of eliciting from people what they really enjoy doing. This would probably be quite easy if so many of us hadn’t been socialised to think it was our duty to “take the rough with the smooth” in these matters. “You mean I could have a job consisting only of the bits I enjoy? Surely some mistake?”

All these tiny job components would be described by outcome, time commitment and relevant skills, and people would be invited to express interest in them.

I could imagine a workshop at a BiCon, where all the jobs would be on paper stuck round the room, and people could go round putting their names on any they’d be up for doing, with a star for any they specially wanted.

This would be reviewed after BiCon with the key accountable people, to customise their own roles and to share out the rest of the jobs. It would remain as a directory of people who were interested in contributing to that BiCon.

A similar list could appear on the web site during the year or more running up to BiCon, along with forms for expressing interest.

The final ingredient is to set up communications between people in connected roles.

Intra-team communication software

For the team’s internal communications, the software I’m imagining is a bulletin board/forum such as vBulletin or the forum component of Drupal. I haven’t gone into detail on which specific package would be best, but ideally, this - like the main BiCon site - would fall within the remit of a multi-year not-reinventing-the-wheel team. So we’d want to pick a package with a long term future, ideally fairly widely used.

The forum would be set up beforehand so that each subteam had its own area. This would facilitate keeping the different conversations separate, and not swamping people with things they don’t really need to know about. People could look in areas they weren’t directly concerned with, but they needn’t; and in general it wouldn’t be considered “the done thing” to stick in one’s 2p on other subteams’ threads.

Compared to a blog format such as LiveJournal, a forum/bulletin layout is more suitable both for the separation of subteams and because (unlike blog articles), forum conversations slide away down the main viewing page only when they’ve stopped.

Compared to email, it’s better for later reference, and also takes care of threading (which not everyone’s email software does well). Some forum software also supports sending email copies of messages under certain circumstances.

If the package included calendar facilities (which e.g. vB and Drupal do), we might take advantage of those to display the timelines.

For some people, using it would mean a new learning curve. But that kind of software is pretty common across the Net, so there would be a reasonable number of people reasonably familiar with the idea of it to start with.

Timelines and reporting back

Each key accountable person would customise their own job description and draft a proposed timeline for the run-up to the event.

The timelines would be visible at least to other team members, and we’d probably specially invite the biconorganisers group to cast an eye over them too.

These timelines wouldn’t be set in stone, but would be used as a framework by which to check how we were doing and flag up areas which needed attention.

I’m imagining that every now and again we would have a round of “how’s it going” reports on the online team space.

The deputy or apprentice “People and process manager” would have the job of noticing anyone who seemed to have disappeared, or anything missing from the conversation (such as a forgotten milestone from the timeline).

The process manager (me in my imagination, or whoever else was in that role) would then actively find out what was happening - whether that person needed more help or more resources, or whether in fact they needed to be replaced and gently given the boot, to prevent unnecessary martyrdom :-)

In the cases where a key accountable person was managing a sub-team, they and their deputy or apprentice would also have the job of checking in with their sub-team people about progress. Again, it would probably be the deputy’s job to look out for people “disappearing” or obviously having trouble.

In between “reporting rounds”, it would also be part of my job to provide a listening ear for anyone who was having problems. I.e. they needn’t wait till report time to get in touch individually and say “Here’s a problem I’m having”. And I wouldn’t necessarily wait till report time to check in with people and say “Give me some stories - how are things with you? Is there anything we could invent to make things easier or more enjoyable for you? Is there anything going on at the moment that you’re finding annoying?”

I would probably try to have that kind of conversation at least once with everyone working on the event, or at least with everyone except some of the “contributors”.

Necessary skills: a keen eye for process

The second “necessary skill” that I’d name for the process & people manager is (not surprisingly) a keen eye for process, in particular for communication. You need someone who will take a proactive role in shaping the communications of the team, in particular watching over which people need to be in which conversations and which don’t. Otherwise, the number of people on the online team area could potentially make conversations too slow and/or prone to going off-topic.

It might be necessary sometimes to say something like “OK, we know that not everyone agrees on this, but in order to move on, we’re going to proceed in such-a-way”. I would envisage that most times the accountable person for a particular area would have final say about how things are done.

Similarly, it might be necessary sometimes to rein people in back to their own areas of responsibility, or back on topic.

Necessary skills: compassionate ruthlessness

Part of taking the risk of having less-experienced, less-well-known people on the team is that it probably increases the chances of at some point having to boot someone off. Whoever’s in charge needs to accept that responsibility.

On the other hand, some booting-off is made necessary by people over-extending themselves, and I suspect this is possibly less likely when the jigsaw pieces have been well set up in the first place, and there’s an abundance of people queueing up to be on the team. So maybe it all works out about even in the long run.

A similar kind of ruthlessness may be needed sometimes in managing the process of communication (as described above).

Investment and risks

I’m not denying that in the initial setup, and in many ways during the process too, it would be more work to manage a team in this way than to stick with the smaller team of BiCon tradition. But I also think the added work would be well worthwhile. It would be an investment, and i.m.o. not even a very risky one.

You start with a team that could run the event anyway. So the event isn’t at risk.

Each key accountable person trades off {some time spent explaining} against {some time not having to do routine jobs}. Unless we’ve picked the wrong person to be apprentice, that trade should come out at least even in terms of time and energy.

Picking the wrong person as apprentice is a genuine risk, but the downside is probably only some trouble for the key accountable person. (Compare that to the downside if we’d given that “wrong person” their first chance as key accountable person for the area.) And the upside is potentially substantial.

Having more people potentially makes the conversations harder to manage, but also builds in spare capacity to cushion against unforeseen events and the (predictable) high-demand times just before the event and as it starts.

But in any case, there’s a sense in which it isn’t just about “which way is easier for that particular event”. It’s about each team deciding: is their intention purely to run an event, or is their intention to run the event and nurture the skills and experience which will be needed for future similar events? And if the latter, what are the most effective/efficient ways of accomplishing that aim?

Questions

In terms of responses to this article, what I’m most interested in is

Why would this not work, according to you?
Why would you not want to do it even if it did work?
Related suggestions - what else might go along with all this, &/or complement it, &/or be an even better idea?

Agreement and appreciation are also very welcome of course :-)

Here, have an index:
Not herding cats: big team job design
Background
Team size and structure
Jigsaw
Not reinventing the wheel
Categories of people and their roles
Primary team / key accountable people
Apprentices
Advisors
Special mission people
Contributors
Sub-leaders
But where would we get all these people?
People not to have on the team
Including people of no track record
Necessary skills: Creative slicing
Intra-team communication software
Timelines and reporting back
Necessary skills: a keen eye for process
Necessary skills: compassionate ruthlessness
Investment and risks
Questions

Other feedback welcome via that form too.

Activism energy supplies

Jennifer — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 22:20:09 +0000

Some thoughts on the need to nurture the “next generation” of activists, influenced by Starhawk’s i.m.o. excellent book “Truth or Dare“.

This is another article angled towards the UK out-bi community, but which may also be of interest to other people.

Thanks to everyone who commented on my post about children at BiCon, or to the related thread on LiveJournal.

In this post, I want to pick up on a related theme which was evident in some of the responses, which might be summarised as: “But we can barely manage to run BiCon as it is!”

Anyone with this kind of scarcity concern is going to be rightfully cautious of any suggestion that might increase the organising team’s workload. So I want to talk now about the subject of activism energy supplies, especially the question of where new activists come from and how. (I know I’m not the only one who’s been thinking about this recently, and I look forward to hearing what comes back from BiCon 2008 on the subject.)

Limiting factors

One limitation to the number of “active activists” around any event is caused by people feeling that the event itself isn’t for them.

I’m sure there’s an element of this at play around BiCon, BiFest etc. But I think it would be overly hasty to lay any apparent organiser shortage entirely at that door. Even within the categories of people that those events currently serve well, there are some obstacles to organiser recruitment. For instance:

some people who would happily join in don’t realise that their help might be needed;
some people who would happily join in don’t have the impression that they’re qualified to contribute; and
some people who would like to do a small amount are getting offered a large amount or nothing.

These are at least partly matters of awareness, public perception, structures and management skills.

D.I.Y. vs the professional look

softfruit recently raised a question about perceptions of the BiCon organiser role:

It has me reflecting on the way we try to professionalise the image of bicon to people who’ve never been, as along with BCN it’s one of the few faces the community has. But under the gloss, it’s more like a bunch of mates clubbing together to hire a really big holiday cottage for a weekend away together than like a Pride event.

One thing that struck me about that comment is that I could think of two different meanings which might come under the heading of “Being professional”.

Firstly, I think there’s a kind of competence which is about people being well taken care of. One hopes that people will be at that reliable level in their professional capacities (though in reality they aren’t always), but of course it isn’t necessarily linked with being paid.

Secondly, “Professional” often also implies a separation of roles. The idea is that you leave the “personal you” at home when you go to work. That might be expressed via “work clothes”, and will almost certainly involve “things you don’t talk about with certain people”. And in terms of a company or organisation, there will be a “party line” about how the organisation presents itself to the world. Behind the scenes, it might not look like that.

As an activist I do aspire to be competent and to take care of people, and I’d be surprised if any of my peers didn’t share that aim.

It’s the necessity to present a façade which I think is more up for question. If we do need a façade, I think it’s only at certain times and places. If it goes so far that “ordinary people” can’t imagine themselves as co-organisers with us, then clearly it’s not serving the community well.

(This also connects up with the question of the expectations laid on organisers, and how much or little they get appreciated, as recently pointed out by Sanjibabes and others - see especially ajva’s comment and the responses to it.)

It’s whom you know

Not long ago, someone I consider to be a pretty experienced activist in other fields, and who’s been to BiCon a couple of times, said to me something like: “I’ve never really understood how you get to be on a BiCon organisers’ team. Is it just about ‘who you know’?”

I didn’t reply at the time (the conversation moved on in other directions). But afterwards, I thought about it a lot. And I’d have to concede that at the moment, i.m.e. the answer is basically “yes”.

Contrary data points would be very interesting, inasmuch as presumably they would indicate other “routes in”.

I’m reminded of an anecdote which Starhawk tells in ‘Truth or dare’:

When the Reclaiming Collective began, we were influenced by the style of organizing we had learned in civil disobedience groups. We envisioned a large collective, open to anyone, composed of smaller work groups that we jokingly called cells.

After a couple of years, however, we noticed that nobody seemed to be joining the collective. When we questioned likely prospects, we found out that they didn’t know how to join. Although we imagined ourselves to be open, in reality we had become a tight group of friends that newcomers found intimidating. Because, in theory, no one belonged or didn’t belong to the collective, no one could figure out how to get into it.

(I found it quite striking that almost every commenter on the Children at BiCon LJ thread was someone I’ve known for at least a few years - even though it was on the BiCon LJ, which must include a lot of readers who first went to BiCon in 2006 or 2007 and whom I’ve never met. I don’t mean I know all the commenters in the “close-knit group of friends” sense, but certainly no less than “We’ve been in workshop sessions together” or “I’ve heard you speak”, if not “We’ve chatted in 3d”.

Most were of relatively mature BiCon-going vintage - several easily 10 years or more - and there was no-one I’d think of as a “newcomer”.

To me, this tends to bear out the idea that in the present climate, the average new BiCon-goer isn’t quick to form a view of themself as an owner or equal leader of the event.)

Skills as obstacles

Of course, whether people do or don’t hear about activism opportunities is partly just down to the kind of chat that happens naturally among friends. If your friends are running BiCon, you’re going to hear about it.

But I think with the bigger events, there’s also quite a bit of deliberately only inviting people one knows well; and there’s a logic to that caution, with teams as they’re currently structured. With most BiCon teams of recent history, especially the smaller ones, there are few or no roles available which could be taken by an inexperienced person. And you can’t afford to have someone on your team who’s going to take on an important role and do it wrong.

The following story, also from “Truth or Dare”, touches on that as well as on perceptions:

… as a group matures it becomes harder for new people to enter. Like a climax forest, in which dense shade prevents new seedlings from taking root, the skills, experience, and sense of community in an established group may intimidate newcomers.

As an example, in doing nonviolent civil disobedience, we found that as a core of experienced blockaders developed, newcomers experienced less of an immediate sense of empowerment from the actions. During the Diablo blockade of ‘81, few people had blockaded before. Consensus, solidarity, meeting facilitation, all called forth new skills and generated a great sense of experimentation. The group’s ideology - that we were all equal, that everyone should rotate responsibility for aspects of the group’s functioning such as facilitating meetings or talking to the media - had a basis in reality, for the gaps in our levels of skill were not very great.

Four years later, I participated in a much smaller action at Livermore. Half the people were new, half experienced. Some had been through dozens of actions at that same place. The tone and feeling of the action were very different. For any problems that came up, we could draw on a backing of previous experience. When specific skills were needed, such as that of facilitating large groups, some of us were there who had practiced them hundreds of times. Newcomers felt a little like outsiders.

At Diablo, power-with, influence developed freely and spontaneously out of the group. If someone turned out to be great at facilitating meetings, we all felt empowered because that person represented the possibility that anyone could do the same. Four years later, when the same person was much more highly skilled, newcomers felt disempowered: “I couldn’t do that - it requires lots of practice - I’d better let the expert do it”. And, of course, their attitude reflected a new reality, for reaching a level of skill and experience equal to that of someone who’d been facilitating meetings for the past four years would, in fact, take time and practice. The group had more to lose by letting someone new attempt facilitation, because now the gap in skills was much greater.

…

We most successfully planned for succession by setting up trainings in skills we had learned and teaching strategies we had developed. Also helpful was having a variety of levels upon which people could practice. A new facilitator might start out in an affinity group meeting of ten people, later attempt to facilitate a cluster (a group of affinity groups) of thirty, and finally feel confident to try facilitating a spokescouncil of a hundred or so.

A group is an entity, a being in and of itself. A group that stays together over time develops a culture of its own, a shared history, a style of relating, unspoken rules, in-jokes. That culture can be very powerful, but from the outside can be hard to penetrate. It becomes a de facto boundary - often one that is invisible to those inside.

To be sustainable, a group must understand, anticipate, and plan for its own needs to change over time.

In drawing a parallel with that anecdote, I don’t mean to imply that someone necessarily has to have gained their relevant skills from running that same event before. Yes, there is expertise specific to any event which has a history (e.g. awareness of past traditions which influence people’s expectations); but there’s also lots that all similar events have in common, so that people may have gained relevant skills through paid work or other activism.

What I mean is more that for any job where specific skills are needed, whoever’s putting the team together needs to know and trust that you have those skills. So that constraint still tends to favour people in their existing friendship/co-activism network.

Job design

What I’m thinking about too is the art of how jobs are designed as a project’s being set up. Each possible job needs to be matched with its person in terms of both skill level and time commitment, as well as preference.

Allowing people to develop their skills via similar tasks at different scales, as Starhawk said, is an aspect of this.

I think it might also imply subdividing jobs sometimes. It may seem easier to have only one person doing all of a job (or even several jobs all at once), but in the long run it means (a) they’re probably somewhat more likely to get bored or exhausted, and (b) no-one else gets to know how to do it. So that has a down side too.

I do have more detailed ideas about this, but I think they’ll have to wait for a sequel.

Underlying philosophy

Meanwhile, I want to say something about my beliefs about activism and about people.

People want to do cool stuff

It’s pretty much axiomatic with me that people enjoy doing cool stuff. People get satisfaction from seeing something happen in the world as a result of their actions, and from exercising their creativity. And even very dull tasks can become enjoyable when done cooperatively in friendly company.

E.g. some people actively enjoy cooking; I prefer creative results that last longer than a meal or two, but I’ll happily potter about loading or unloading the dishwasher, chatting or listening to something on my MP3 player. Some people will happily stuff envelopes but don’t want the responsibility of deciding what’s going in them; for others, it’s the other way around. (I don’t object to either of those jobs, as long as I’ve got people to talk to during the envelope-stuffing.)

In my experience, for pretty much any task in a project such as BiCon, there’s someone who’ll actually enjoy it. (In the world as a whole, this is not true; there’s lots of work which is horrible to do, whose only redeeming feature is that it pays some amount of money. But I don’t think any of those jobs is part of organising the typical UK bi event.)

It follows that any time I see someone martyring themselves by taking on stuff that they’re not really enjoying, I think “Wasted opportunity!”

Starhawk again:

Martyrdom is no model for an ecological society. Sustainability teaches us to cultivate an ecological laziness - getting the most results for the least energy expended, not by depleting scarce resources but by intelligently observing and joining with the larger patterns around us.

Yes, there are occasionally times when the chips are down and whoever’s available ends up mucking in to make the situation work, out of a commitment to producing the result, whether they enjoy the process or not. But that to me is a last resort, and I always want to know what was missed in the earlier stages such that it came to that.

(And if, ultimately, we’ve managed to create activism roles that no-one in the whole world wants to do, then I’d have to wonder why we don’t just stop doing it that way and create something else instead. There’s so much that needs doing in the world, why not pick something we can enjoy?)

Not everyone, not all the time

Of course I don’t mean that everyone, all the time, has spare activism energy. Some people are “fully booked” with what they’ve already taken on. And some people need all their available energy just to get through the day (though I think a taste of activism enhances any life, if you can possibly fit it in, even in tiny amounts).

But (at least here in the UK in 2008), there are also plenty of people searching for something worthwhile to fill some spare time, or for an interesting new challenge. It’s just a question of casting the net wide enough to find them.

What people don’t want

Here are some things that people don’t want:

To take on a job of apparent size x, only to find that it was really a job of size 2x, 4x or 10x and proceeds to eat their life.
To be drawn to a job which they would find enjoyable, but discover that in order to get the enjoyable part, they also have to take on a significant amount of other stuff which is of no interest to them.
To have either less support/cooperation from others than they need, or more overlooking/interference than they want.
To feel unappreciated.

People who have either too much of a load or too little satisfaction are the ones who get burnt out.

The next generation

Even when people are thoroughly enjoying themselves and teams are basically functioning well, lives change and people move on. So the time to nurture the next generation is before they’re needed to step up and take the lead.

In a BCN some time last year (can’t lay my hands on it right now), Paul Crowley quotes Pat Califia as saying something along the lines of “Every activist’s first job is to replace themself”.

I’m not saying we aren’t already doing that at all. If you’re reading this about to go to BiCon 2008 (or indeed at BiCon), and you recognise yourself in some of the above description of not quite knowing how to get stuck in or whether your help would be welcome, then I commend unto you the session on “Volunteering in the bi community”.

(And if I look at my own history, then in retrospect I think my account of the first Fitting & Misfitting workshop partly served that purpose, though it’s not exactly how I was thinking of it at the time. Writing that up for other people seemed the natural thing to do, but that’s partly because I just have naturally low thresholds for both wastefulness and boredom :-) )

What I’m thinking is more that to whatever degree we’ve been doing it up till now, we could do more of it if we paid more attention to it.

Activism energy supplies
Limiting factors
D.I.Y. vs the professional look
It’s whom you know
Skills as obstacles
Directory
Job design
Underlying philosophy
People want to do cool stuff
Not everyone, not all the time
What people don’t want
The next generation

Other feedback welcome via that form too.

Me and BiCon

Jennifer — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 23:52:18 +0000

This is a kind of “where I’m coming from now myself” with regard to BiCon, to fill in some missing context around my recent (and possible future) writings about it and related subjects.

I’m feeling the need to give a kind of public update on my activist state of play.

I’m aware that by writing my previous post, I may have given the impression of an ongoing commitment to BiCon. (Or - from another angle - the impression that I was going to stick around banging on and on about children at BiCon until I got my way :-) )

This is in fact not the case.

[Update: On re-reading the previous post again, I see that I probably didn't give quite that message - there was a certain amount of "if" and "maybe" even then. Ambiguity here is due to (a) me having struggled with how to describe something which felt very unlikely but not entirely impossible, and (b) the ground still shifting under my feet somewhat over the last few months, about the various ways I might somehow still contribute to BiCon albeit less than my previous involvement.]

Sorry if anyone feels led up the garden path by my choice to save the personal stuff for later. Keeping these two conversations separate was deliberate. [update: insofar as I did.] I think the ideas in the other post stand on their merits as written, and I wanted to allow that discussion to unfold without getting mixed up in this one.

(I did originally want to post about this rather sooner after the last instalment, though - I had in mind a couple of weeks’ gap. It feels somewhat belated now, and this post describes a transition which mostly happened even longer ago than that. But it wasn’t an easy one to write, and it just wasn’t ready back in April or May - by which I mean in a sense that I wasn’t ready.) [update: and evidently I still wasn't quite ready when I clicked the "publish" button first, a bit ago!]

Anyway…

Not my home

Over the last year or so, the way I relate to BiCon has changed.

If you’d asked me a couple of years ago how I felt about it, I’d probably have said something along the lines of “It’s like a kind of home town for me”.

Metaphorically, I could sum up the change by saying: It’s not my home any more.

Various factors wove into the revolution: a wish to play more to my own strengths, and a greater awareness of what those are; a reassessment of BiCon’s politics, and mine; and not least, a compelling visceral/intuitive feeling of not belonging any more. (I may write more another time about aspects of all that.)

The realisation was a big event for me emotionally, and I realised I was grieving for the loss - the loss of my metaphorical home. BiCon was a landmark in my calendar for twelve years, and the playground for lots of my experiments in activism. “It’s February - hmm, time to start thinking about what I’m going to run at BiCon this summer.” 2005 was a particularly fertile and satisfying year, because, being on the team, I had even more scope for devising new things.

Thanks to the people who made those experiences possible for me - going right the way back to 1984 when the first ever bi conference was invented (not that I knew it then).

We broke up

In the middle of the emotional rollercoaster, it amused me to realise how similar it was to splitting up with a partner.

“Me and BiCon broke up. We’ve been together a while, and had some good times… but we talked about it and we realised we don’t want the same things any more, so it was time to call it a day”.

And when I didn’t go to PolyDay, I told my friends it was “Too soon…” :-)

I’m not saying I will never ever come to BiCon ever again. That would be foolish - who knows? I might still visit. But if so, on a different basis - not unlike the difference between a committed relationship and seeing someone around as a friend.

Unloading

Rather than an expression of ongoing commitment, there’s a sense in which the Children at BiCon post was part of my process of leaving. It was a kind of completion of unfinished business. (at least insofar as the ideas in that were specific to BiCon. Of course, some of the things I said would be relevant in other places too.)

What I mean is: I’ve been around BiCon a while, I know pretty well how it works, and I’ve got a lot of ideas about it. And I don’t just want to walk away taking those ideas with me. I want to unload what I’ve got here, in case some of it is useful to the people I’m leaving behind. I don’t want my ideas to be wasted if someone else could use them.

One metaphor is it’s like when you’ve been making a patchwork quilt for a while and put a lot of time into it, but then you realise you’re not going to finish it off because you’ve moved on to doing other things. Well, you’re not just going to put it in the bin, are you. More likely, you’ll offer it to a friend, or put it on FreeCycle for some other quilter to take over.

Or it’s like if you’ve been living in a particular house for a while and then you’re moving on, then (if you’re reasonably public-spirited) you make sure that before you leave, you’ve set aside the matching tiles and the matching wallpaper to stay there, rather than accidentally taking them with you. And you write down the insider knowledge of how to make the dodgy tap work when it seizes up.

Metaphorically, I wrote that post standing in the doorway, on my way out the door, stopping for a moment to pass back some possibly-useful things to the people who remain. No-one’s obliged to do anything with the spare wallpaper - the inhabitants can just put it in the loft if they like - but it’ll be there if someone comes along later and thinks “Actually we could use that now”.

Or put another way… I just seem to have this kind of irrepressible resilient optimism which says it’s better to communicate than not, and maybe it’ll make a useful difference somehow, one way or another. I think maybe even if some people think I’m out of order for making suggestions and not volunteering to carry them out, other people will think “this is feedback we need” or “these ideas could be useful”.

(As an aside for now, bookmark of a topic: “Thou shalt not describe a problem, idea or possibility unless simultaneously walking forward to implement the work yourself”. I have some things to say about that… but later.)

2008 in Leicester

All that being the case, I’m not sure yet whether I’ll put in an appearance at BiCon 2008 in Leicester. I definitely shan’t be there for the whole weekend, but I might do a day trip and say hello. Depends what happens between now and then, and how I feel as the time approaches.

Among other things, I’ll be checking the website for any info on other children going or “We will if you will”. (I imagine there may be other parents thinking along similar lines about the Family Fun Day, if they haven’t already decided against on the grounds of day-trip distance or child-free-ness preference.) But if I didn’t bring the offspring, it wouldn’t necessarily mean I wouldn’t show up by myself.

Not disappearing

But either way, it’s not like I’m disappearing. If anyone’s now thinking “Oh but I wanted to see you” or “Oh but I wanted to tell you this idea I’ve got” - well, here I am :-)

Subsections index:
Top of article
Not my home
We broke up
Unloading
2008 in Leicester
Not disappearing

Other feedback welcome via that form too.

Children at BiCon

Jennifer — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 23:13:56 +0000

BiCon, the annual UK bisexuality conference/convention, theoretically welcomes parents and has child care facilities. But in recent years, very few children have gone, and then usually only as a last resort for the parent. I wanted to set out some thoughts on a possible direction for this area, and the context around it.

In some ways this is a “niche market post”, mainly for people who go or might go to BiCon. But I think it could be of interest also to people who are doing other kinds of activism.

I want to describe a BiCon which may never happen.

Imaginary BiCon

The BiCon I’m imagining would include children as participants. It would be a place that families come to partly for the fact that the children enjoy it. (Of course, some parents would still choose not to bring their children.)

It would include all-ages sessions like crafts, painting, storytelling, dance, drumming, singing and so on.

In every time slot for workshop sessions, at least one session of the batch would be a place where children were welcome and could participate as equals alongside the older people.

Either in the same room as the all-ages sessions, or nearby, there would be a full-time “arts & crafts corner” and a “playthings corner”, also open to all ages. These would include comfy chairs for adults to sit and chat while keeping an eye on the children in their charge.

There would be optional trips out, organised by parents, to playgrounds, swimming pools or other nearby cool stuff (by analogy with, for instance, BiCon 2000’s trip to Manchester Pride).

It wouldn’t be surprising if there were also a few sessions for adults on parenting themes - more so than currently.

(I’m not saying much in this post about under-age teens who might come to BiCon because they themselves are bi. That’s equally important, but it’s not my focus here.)

Daytime practicalities

A crèche or at least a playworker would still be needed for at least a few children for at least a few sessions, because there would still be some single parents coming with small children, and this would be needed to give those parents access to any of the adult programme.

But given a BiCon of that nature, you could expect to see significantly more parents coming in total, many of whom would be happy to contribute to the all-ages strand. So there would be plenty of activities that didn’t cost money to schedule. Besides, we’ve already had drumming, belly dancing, singing, knitting and (more than once) a bouncy castle, at 99%-adult BiCons - the appeal of these isn’t limited to children or their parents.

If the crèche did have a separate space, I’d aim to have the all-ages strand scheduled mostly in whichever session room was nearest it, for convenience of moving around. Ideally, you’d have a session room big enough for dancing, near a crèche room with a wipable floor and a sink - but there are always compromises.

It would be good if this area were near toilets, and (for the benefit of child-free adults) ideally quite far from the bar and from any “quiet room”.

If the “arts corner” and “playthings corner” were in the same room as the all-ages sessions, they could still be used simultaneously with most of the sessions, since the kinds of all-age themes I’m imagining mostly wouldn’t require confidentiality or complete silence.

Responsibilities

I wouldn’t envisage expanding BiCon’s “in loco parentis” role. That would still be limited to the provision of paid and qualified crèche workers, and a crèche space if needed.

What would expand would be the number of children taking part in non-crèche activities alongside one of their parents, or alongside family friends including an adult who takes temporary responsibility for them.

Parents would remain responsible at all times for knowing where their child was and with whom - a line of demarcation which isn’t unusual at mixed-age festival-type events. It would follow that BiCon would not be responsible for policing informal arrangements made by parents.

BiCon organisers would have a written policy addressing child safety, spelling out simple procedures for circumstances such as “Lost child”, “Child in distress or ill”, and “Parent incapacitated” - e.g. “If you find a lost child, ideally two people stay with them and one of you ring site security”. This would be made known to all BiCon-goers, e.g. as an adjunct to the Code of Conduct.

(This wouldn’t be a bad idea now, either - and there are situations with adults, e.g. in regard to illness, which could be briefly documented too.

The one-off work to develop procedures needn’t be hard, as there are plenty of other events - e.g. Prides or music festivals - where the same questions have already been answered. And it needn’t necessarily be taken on by someone from a current team, although obviously a team would need to approve the policy before using it.)

Evenings

One of the practical/social issues for parents at BiCon is what happens in the evenings.

Obviously, if your prime reason for being at BiCon is for the evening partying, then you’d probably do your best to leave the children elsewhere anyway. Even if you could somehow share the babysitting in the evening, there’s the next morning to consider.

But for the people who don’t have any “leave the offspring at home” option - as well as the ones who actively prefer to do BiCon as a family - I still wouldn’t imagine a lonely night in with only a sleeping child for company. There are good reasons to put families near to each other in the accommodation anyway, and this is another: socialising in the evening with other parents (as well as with any other friends who came by). Food, wine, chocolate, ice cream and so on can of course be included in the plan for those who want them :-)

Even in my pre-parenting days, some of my best times at BiCon have been back at the flat, swopping stories about life.

My one caveat about this aspect is that to make it work, you really want the accommodation arranged as flats. You want somewhere the internal doors can be left open to listen for awakenings, while the flat’s front door is locked. If all the rooms open onto a main corridor, then it’s more difficult to organise. (Baby monitors, and go into another bedroom? Have your party in the corridor? Either way, not really the same thing.)

For children who don’t need an early bedtime, the all-ages room would still be open too, with crafts and an evening workshop session (e.g. perhaps drumming or dancing.)

Comparisons

BiCon itself in an earlier incarnation is one comparison. Liz W recently described it thus (quoted by permission):

I haven’t been to Bicon for many years, but when I did still go, it was very child-friendly. I thought that was one of its greatest strengths at the time. There was a fantastic sort of tribal atmosphere. The last one I attended [1993] had kids from six months to about twelve. There was a professionally-run creche, without which I probably wouldn’t have gone.

We could also learn from the history of Queer Pagan Camp, which has a more recent tradition of children’s activities running alongside the adults’ ones. (Currently, they pay a playworker, and other camp-goers also contribute to the children’s activities.) It hasn’t always been easy to organise; but QPC has strong roots in a brand of traditional feminism where it would be unusual (and certainly criticised) to put on any event without some kind of childcare alongside.

We could borrow a model from the BETT show (an ICT/education event) and the Special Needs Fringe which runs alongside it: two parallel conferences with the possibility of switching between them. Some people come mainly for BETT and dip into the Fringe; for others, it’s the other way around. Similarly, some parents might get most of their BiCon value from informal chats while their children are occupied or asleep, with only an occasional dip into the main timetable; some multi-parent families might take turns; and some people would remain more or less oblivious to the all-ages strand, not even dipping into it.

By way of parallels, I’m also thinking of the numerous music days/weekends/weeks which I went to as a child with my family. There was always some officially-organised music for the children to play. But the main attraction for me, and I think for most of us, was getting to hang out with my/our friends and peers, the other children from musical families.

Expenses

With the abundance of other activities, I don’t think it would be unreasonable to ration crèche sessions somewhat, probably prioritising single parents. I think it’s likely that even without rationing, many parents would actively choose to spend at least one or two sessions per day in a joint activity with their child(ren), rather than wanting to use the crèche for every session.

So although there might be a greater number of different children using it in total, the crèche need not necessarily be more expensive than it ever has been.

Having said that, it’s still potentially true that hiring more playworkers would increase the flexibility.

The main additional expense I’d foresee would be if children’s accommodation were to be subsidised - either under a special “children” category, or from the Helping Hand fund.

Here is the main advantage which something like Queer Pagan Camp has over BiCon - tents!

If the ratio of adults to children made the accommodation costs unsustainable from the combined resources of BiCon and the parents, the main ways forward I’d suggest would be:

Having BiCon in a venue which has family rooms, ideally priced by the room rather than by the number of people occupying it. (Anywhere which had double beds would be a great improvement for all the adults who came with partners, too.)
Or, not so good, alternative off-site accommodation suitable for families - but organised/coordinated by BiCon, and hence becoming a kind of secondary social centre.
Other kinds of flexibility in the usual kinds of accommodation - e.g. small children sharing parents’ rooms, siblings being allowed to share rooms with each other.
Applying for grants. Time-consuming but potentially a good solution.
Or, rather more of a compromise, but worth considering as a small-scale trial: Designating a specific day as “Children at BiCon day”, to encourage day trippers on that day, who would not stay over in the BiCon accommodation.(I gather that the BiCon 2008 team are considering something along these lines for this summer’s BiCon. If that goes ahead, it remains to be seen whether that would form a stepping stone towards the BiCon I’m imagining, or not.)

Infrastructure

The front page of the upcoming BiCon’s web site would include a link called something like “Children at BiCon” or just “Children” or “Families”, leading to all the relevant information for that year.

In the run-up to BiCon, the site would show a running total of how many children had booked, and their ages. This would reassure later-booking families on the “children having someone to play with” front.

There would be an emailing list for people interested in this strand, so that parents who hadn’t decided yet could make a more informed judgement about whether to go and whether to bring children, based on what was planned and who else would be there.

A list like that would also provide a place for discussing and planning outings, activities and resources. For instance, someone might research the local swimming pools and post opening times and prices. People might coordinate the bringing of toys to share - “We’ll bring some Lego which we’re happy to leave out”, “We’re bringing three drums and some percussion instruments for the drumming session”… etc.

(This would mean that the “playthings area” could be a collaborative project, with someone from the BiCon team taking a role in coordinating it, but not solely responsible for setting it up.)

The flavour of change

Because I’ve gone into some detail here, it might be beginning to sound as though this would require so many changes as to turn BiCon into a children’s holiday camp. Obviously I’m focusing in on the family stuff, because that’s what this article is about.

I find it hard to guess how much change would be imposed upon people who weren’t interested in the all-ages side, because of the “multi-conference model” aspect - the way that strands can run in parallel. If you’re going to adult sessions or no sessions, and your BiCon main event is the evening party, and you never venture into the area where the all-ages stuff is mostly scheduled… then you’re still going to be child-free much of the time. You might overlap in the public spaces, e.g. outdoors in fine weather, or in a café if the venue had one.

The people for whom it would make the biggest difference are the ones who otherwise would not have come at all.

I do think BiCon would get bigger - and i.m.o. that’s desirable in general, since it’s clearly serving only a small proportion of the people who would love it. I realise that that in itself would probably upset some people who don’t want it ever to change in any way.

Activism roles

I imagine BiCon team roles and responsibilities perhaps as follows:

Strand co-ordinator for the all-ages sessions. A very important role, but needn’t necessarily be on the core team, I think.
Booking the crèche or playworker(s).
Liaison person from core team to parents, keeping in touch with parents, keeping track of the state of play, and keeping a global overview of what information was “out there” so far. E.g.
- making sure that the web site information is clear;
- making sure that the printed information is clear;
- hanging out on the parents’ emailing list;
- answering individual questions privately;
- helping and encouraging people to put in claims to the Helping Hand fund if they needed to.
The person doing this would need a good understanding of the principles of access.
“Weather eye overview / watching brief” person, on core team as advisor. Overlaps with the liaison role, but the main focus in this case would be staying aware of what all the other BiCon team members were doing (e.g. site choice, areas/times licensed for alcohol, room allocations, ents) and flagging up to the team any implications for the family angle.
Grant application person - not necessarily limited to this strand.

None of those roles would necessarily need to be done by a parent, and i.m.o. it would be problematic to require that, given the time and energy limitations characteristic of parenting. The “watching brief” one would be the one I’d most like to see done by a parent, though.

If I were running it, I would aim to have one person on each of these remits, with (as I’ve said) at least the “Weather eye” person and liaison person on the core team. That’s in line with my general view that activism roles should ideally be subdivided as far as makes logistical sense, so as to spread the work.

But people who prefer more condensed and harder-working teams could potentially

combine all these responsibilities into one role, or
put them all together except the session strand management, which would be subsumed into the main workshop coordinator’s role, or
combine some of them in some other way.

Critical mass

Now, even if everyone agreed - which is very far from being the case - that a BiCon along those lines would be good, I wouldn’t expect to jump straight there from where we are now. It would take more building of the critical mass, because most people won’t want to be the “first few parents who take the risk of there not being many other children”. Right now, I don’t think most people would bring their children to BiCon if they could possibly avoid it, and my advice to other parents in the current circumstances would have to be “no guarantees - welcoming families to BiCon has been an afterthought in recent years, it may well not be very good”.

But in the medium term - say within 3 to 5 years - I think it could be done if people wanted it.

Why not?

So, why am I doubting that this will happen?

Not because it couldn’t work.

Because it would be counter-cultural in a way that BiCon is currently not.
Because the people who stick around any organisation and become its organisers tend to be the ones who are well served by it as it is.
Because single parents, and parents of young children, rarely have much time available to put into activism.
Because (i.m.o.) there is no consensus for BiCon currently being anything other than (a) a rare manifestation of bi-visibility, and (b) a great party and networking space for a privileged subset of people.

(Bi ReCon looks like pulling BiCon’s centre of gravity in a more explicitly political direction than has been seen in recent years. Yay, and I hope something of that nature continues.)

Reasons to write about it

So why am I bothering to write about this imaginary BiCon at all, if I don’t think it will happen?

Even if it doesn’t happen in its entirety, some of the components might be put in to BiCon, or might be adapted for a similar different event.
I know there are a lot of people who have been to BiCon in the past, and don’t go currently, and currently have young children. There may be more enthusiasm for a family-friendly BiCon than is generally realised.
Even if the result is just that some compelling arguments are brought forward for why BiCon ought not to change, I would like to see those arguments being made in public.
Or, to come at it from another angle: Imagining and writing is part of my activism, and it seemed to me that a detailed and practical description of some possibilities might be a useful step in itself.

Advantages over what we have now

I want to say a bit more about the advantages of moving in this direction.

Children being welcome, and onsite childcare, are access issues for some parents: not all parents, but the ones who for whatever reason can’t currently leave their children elsewhere during their BiCon visit. (I suspect that the most common factor is lack of alternative carers; another possible one is a current breastfeeding relationship.)

In recent years, the main way of addressing this - if at all - has been to provide a crèche (albeit sometimes accompanied by agonising about the amount of money it costs for only a few children).

There are some improvements that could be made to that model without moving away from it (mainly around advance information). But in my experience, the main problem with it - however well done - is the lack of critical mass.

If only a few children are expected, then it takes very little variation for the crèche to suddenly become unfeasible, due to either (a) an arguably ridiculous expense for one child, or (b) the sheer lack of anyone to play with.

I think numbers and hence stability would naturally be increased just by the kinds of communication I’m recommending, because at least the later-come parents would be able to be sure “We shan’t be the only ones”. But it’s never going to be as resilient to random variation as is the model I’m describing.

It’s also never going to be as scalable.

The beauty of making BiCon actively child-friendly is that as you get more children, you also get more multi-parent families, some of whom will have spare capacity to contribute to the events. So it gets easier and easier to schedule the all-ages strand and to invent additional cool stuff such as outings.

On the other hand, if you present the children’s provision (overtly or by implication) as the last resort for people who can’t possibly send their children elsewhere, then the people who use it are going to include a much higher ratio of single parents, and a much lower ratio of “parents with their partners or friends, with a bit of spare capacity to run something”.

Of course, I’m not suggesting that only parents could run a singing workshop or a drumming workshop. But parents with children there would have a high stake in the success of the all-ages strand, and would be among the people most likely to want to go to things in it.

In other words: I have this suspicion that in every respect except finances, trying to keep children’s provision to the “minimum you can get away with” actually makes it harder to run successfully.

But bisexuality has the word “sex” in it!

There’s one more area which I think needs some attention here.

It’s a subject in itself, so I was tempted to leave it for a follow-up post, and keep this one shorter. But then I thought it would be sort of murmuring and stirring along underneath everything I said anyway, the more so for not being mentioned yet, and better to get it on the table from the start. So here it is:

Some people are uneasy about the idea that BiCon, as a fairly sex-positive environment, could ever truly welcome children without some kind of awkwardness.

On one level, this is kind of silly, since it’s already been done - see quote above about BiCons past. That worked, so why wouldn’t it again?

But, having said that, it seems to be generally agreed that over the last 10 to 15 years, BiCon has got rather more party-oriented, and I think that makes a difference in this area.

In this context, my impression is there’s relatively little concern about “babes in arms”. The issue is primarily about mid-age children, say around 2 to 13. They have enough social awareness to wonder about the adults around them; but they aren’t old enough for general cultural agreement that it’s OK for them to know about sex. Teens of 14 to 17 also feature in people’s concerns.

(Again, I’m not primarily addressing here the question of teens who come to BiCon as bi people.)

So I’d like to get specific about a few angles on this.

Cramping our style?

One is to what degree it might cause adults to “cramp their style” if children are around.

My initial response to that would be that there is plenty of BiCon to go round: we can have times and places which are more child-friendly, and times and places which are more X-rated. I think it shouldn’t be beyond the wit of humankind to come up with sensible boundaries.

Age limits can obviously be applied to workshop sessions; here, for example, is what we said for 2005.

“Children welcome” will indicate sessions welcoming accompanied under-13s.

Teens aged 13-16 are welcome at sessions in general. Parents are responsible for knowing where their child is, and giving or
withholding their permission as they consider appropriate.

Sessions with other age limits, such as over-16s or over-18s, will be
indicated in the programme and/or on the door of the session room.

Babes in arms are welcome at all sessions unless otherwise stated.

The idea was that session leaders would set the age limit for their own sessions, bearing in mind the subject matter and their own skills and intentions, perhaps sometimes after discussion with the BiCon workshops coordinator. I could imagine creating some documentation to guide people through the thinking process on that choice.

When the above quote was written, there was no recent history of teens at BiCon - it was more a case of “trying to be prepared”. So these limits might well change in the light of experience or further discussion. But the rationale of having the default as 13+ was that a thoughtful teenager would be able to contribute to - and benefit from - most discussions.

(For the non-BiCon-goer readers, I should point out that most BiCon workshop themes are non-sexually-explicit: many primarily social/political such as “How to run a bi group” or “Being an ally to bi people if you’re not bi”, and some not directly related to bisexuality at all, e.g. “British Sign Language for Beginners”.)

I think it’s also valid to say that for some workshop sessions (e.g. if the theme were abuse, or self-harm), then a workshop with young teenagers might have a somewhat different flavour from one for adults only, because of adults’ caution about what’s appropriate to say in front of young people. It’s not that teens couldn’t have a place in those discussions; but the session leader would have to decide which participants they were optimising for, and either choice would be valid. (Supposing you had sufficient numbers and sufficient space/time, you could logically even have two workshops on the same theme with different participant profiles, though I suspect in practice that wouldn’t happen often.)

However, in some cases, the workshop design is based around splitting into smaller groups anyway, in which case it would be easy enough to arrange for some adults to segregate themselves within the room if they preferred.

I imagine there would be an argument for an 18 limit for the evening partying - mainly for simplicity, although it might be slightly unfair on 16- and 17-year-olds. The bar will have its own legal limits anyway.

Meanwhile, the all-ages session room would remain a child-friendly space.

Bear in mind too that not all adults are equally comfortable in the presence of sexual behaviour or sexy costumes. (I don’t mean actual having sex, which is clearly covered by the Code of Conduct statement that “Consent includes any audience”.) What’s joyful self-expression for one subset of people may be disconcerting or alienating enough to another subset to put them off ever coming back.

(I’d actually say this issue deserves a post of its own, but it has to come up here too because it’s relevant.)

What I’m suggesting here is that the various spaces and times of BiCon are already “contested territory” when it comes to what’s appropriate dress and behaviour. I’m saying that even banning children entirely wouldn’t make that issue go away.

(And a lot of it is quite subtle stuff, which could well do with some more exploration, I think. For instance, I recall a discussion about when a primarily social - rather than sexual - expression of a dominant/submissive relationship would count as something that requires consent from the “audience”. Not a no-brainer by any means.)

So, yeah: boundaries, and the thoughtful creation of them, and a willingness to negotiate and renegotiate them. If there are answers to this kind of concern, that’s where I’d go looking for them.

What shall we tell them?

Secondly, there’s the “What shall we tell the children?” aspect, which I think is a challenge more for individual parents than for BiCon as a whole. If a child can read, what if ze reads the programme and asks what something means? Or, what if ze wants to know “why that man is dressed as a lady”, or why those people are wearing those funny clothes?

Personally, I am not too fazed by this. I figure that children make different sense of things at different times, and I’m happy to give an explanation appropriate for the offspring’s level of understanding.

By that, I don’t necessarily mean “giving chapter and verse”. For a 3 year old, it might be enough to say “well, you see, she is a lady - ladies can look a lot of different ways”, or “those are their favourite clothes that they like to wear”. Meanwhile, a 12 year old might benefit from a conversation about difference and the pressure to be or appear “normal”. I.m.o. children are usually paying attention as much to whether you’re OK about something as to the explanation you give, anyway.

But basically, I figure that many of the phenomena at BiCon will be encountered by any child in some form at some point, and I’d just as soon I had the opportunity to give the offspring my explanation of it, before ze hears the tabloid version or a less well-informed explanation from other children.

However, I’m not suggesting that all parents will be in the same place with it as I am. I think this is one for each parent to make their own judgement call on. You know yourself and you know your child. If you don’t feel ready to have those kinds of conversations, or don’t think that BiCon is the right kind of catalyst for them, and/or you’d rather not be out to your child about your own bisexuality, or for whatever reason you “don’t want to go there” - then clearly those are good reasons not to bring children old enough to be curious about these things.

Tabloid danger?

Thirdly, there’s the danger of being targeted by unprincipled journalists who are more interested in scandal than in facts. Child in same room as weirdos shocker! Child sees someone in peculiar costume shocker! Etc. I.e. all the usual fear-of-difference stuff, multiplied by “A Child Was Present”.

Yes, something like that could happen, if we were unlucky enough. But I’d rather not solve the problem by agreeing with those people about what “oughtn’t to be allowed!”. That feels a bit too close to buying into the erroneous and entirely unacceptable “queer = child-molester” equation.

So I can’t help thinking that if the tabloids did make a scandal out of BiCon, it would be a load of homophobic/biphobic rubbish. And although there are levels of “inviting trouble” which would be stupid, there’s also a limit to how much I think it’s wise to live my life based on the fear of that.

BiCon for adults only

There’s another way this could go. We could stop presenting BiCon as a place where parents-with-children are theoretically welcome, and designate it an adults-only event.

But wouldn’t that be excluding people?

Yes, of course it would. But let’s not kid ourselves that we’re not excluding many of those people already. Imagine a single parent with one lively and extrovert child around 8, and no other parents applying for crèche places. A crèche place for that one 8-year-old by themself is so last-resort as to be practically useless.

And if the message is “BiCon is not really for children, but we’ll tolerate them if we have to - but it’s expensive, and it’s therefore rather selfish to bring them if you could possibly have managed without that help”… well, some people with very thick skins might come anyway, but it’s hardly welcoming.

I think an adults-only BiCon, AND the recognition of its limits, AND a commitment to address those limits via complementary events from the same financial and activist pool, might arguably be preferable to the current unpredictable and unreliable situation.

It’s not the way I’d choose to go, mind you. BiCon is not just any old party and networking event; it’s currently the core event of the UK out-bi community.

Children as part of the community

For me, it’s always seemed like our children are part of the community - at least in a sense, and unless they choose for themselves to opt out of it. Growing up in a queer family is a certain kind of rich inheritance.

I don’t think you have to believe this to think that a family-friendly BiCon would be a good idea, though. Even if you think of children purely as greater or lesser obstacles to their parents’ participation, a family-friendly BiCon would clearly be far more accessible and welcoming to some adults than is the present model.

Where I’m at

But I’m not saying “This is how it has to be”. That would be silly - BiCon isn’t mine or anyone’s to make that kind of pronouncement on their own.

I am saying this is one of the angles which will determine whether BiCon is something I personally want to put any more energy into in future.

The “self-interest” aspect of this is that I currently have a strong desire to spend my time in places where the offspring is welcome as a person, as well as a desire to share with em this community which is important to me. There will come a time when it would be practically feasible for me to leave em behind and go to BiCon by myself; but the BiCon I want to be at is one where (if ze so chooses) ze can hang out with me and with other children of bi parents. I’m far more privileged already than lots of the parents who would most benefit from BiCon, in that I already have a social life full of lovely bi/queer people :-) I’d miss BiCon as a place to invent cool stuff and meet new people, but there are other places to do those things.

The “activism” aspect of this is part of a wider and longer-brewing dissatisfaction with how BiCon and its surrounding community deals with difference and inclusiveness (a trail which I’ve been on for a while). I don’t think the parents/families/children angle is suddenly the most important part of that now I’m a parent; it just happens to be one on which I currently have some clear and specific ideas to write about. More on some of the rest in future posts, probably.

Anyway, I’m hoping for an interesting and useful discussion in comments here. Please, make your thoughts known, people :-)

That was a long article!
Here, have an index:
Children at BiCon (top of article)
Imaginary BiCon
Daytime practicalities
Responsibilities
Evenings
Comparisons
Expenses
Infrastructure
The flavour of change
Activism roles
Critical mass
Why not?
Reasons to write about it
Advantages over what we have now
But bisexuality has the word “sex” in it!
Cramping our style?
What shall we tell them?
Tabloid danger?
More questions
BiCon for adults only
Children as part of the community
Where I’m at

Thanks to everyone who talked to me about this subject and/or encouraged me to write the article, especially the people who raised points I hadn’t thought of.

Other feedback welcome via that form too.