Mad Art Lab made a craft! Well, one of the children who participated in our Scientist Paper Dolls Sandbox at CONvergence 2013 did. Photo by Jamie Bernstein.
Every year, the Skepchick Network and Freethought Blogs get together to host a science and skepticism track at CONvergence in Minneapolis over the 4th of July weekend. This will be my third year participating in programming, and every year it just keeps getting better.
CONvergence is one of my favorite cons to attend, for many reasons. Reason number 1, the big one, is that they work hard year to year to make things more and more inclusive and more safe, both in programming and social spaces. Melanie, our kickass track director, has worked incredibly hard to create a balance of science and skepticism programming that will appear to anyone. She’s taken feedback from a wide variety of strong *ahem, guilty as charged* personalities, who all aren’t shy about bringing up issues they see with representation and somehow taken all of that feedback and made it into a programming schedule that I couldn’t be more proud to be a part of. And that’s just the SkepchickCON panels. Looking at the rest of what the con has to offer, they’ve gone even further in trying to make science fiction and fantasy programming that not only avoids some of the pitfalls of typical convention programming (hello, straight, cis, white male gaze), but actively looks those challenges in the eye, says “hey, let’s talk about this issue”, and sits everyone down for an honest discussion about concerns. Over free giant bowls of soup from the Con Suite.