This is one of my favorite pictures that I’ve taken of Amber for a few reasons:
- It was taken while we were on a road trip. We have so much fun on our road trips together through all of Georgia’s strange little places. They’re our favorite thing we do together other than fuck.
- It’s meta, and we love us some meta.
- It’s the best job I’ve done of capturing one of my favorite little things about her, which is the way her ears peak out from behind her hair.
Plus, I think objectively it’s just a pretty good photo. Good composition, contrast, detail, interesting angle, all that.
Today is our three-year anniversary! Amber put together a well-sourced nerd love retrospective here. We’ll be having a nice dinner together tonight (thanks to everyone who left suggestions a couple of posts ago), and hopefully many more road trips in the future.
Note: yes I ripped off Amber’s title
Amber and I will have been together three years this Friday. We have nothing planned presently, and neither of us really have any ideas on how we should go about celebrating. Our weekend is already booked, so we’re thinking in terms of something we could do Friday night. Any suggestions?
I‘ve been to a lot of conferences and unconferences the past year or two. My interest in them had been waning of late because I felt like the same conversations were happening over and over again and that I wasn’t learning a whole lot. I’m not nearly as interested in picking up freelance work now as I was this time last year, so the networking aspect of them isn’t going to be enough to compel me to attend one or to keep my attention.
I may be a biased judge, given that Amber was the main organizer, but Sex 2.0 was really exciting and interesting to me. There were a few reasons for this, I think:
- Widely diverse backgrounds among the participants, which is amazing considering it was a relatively small event in terms of the number of participants (just under 100). Profession, race, age, geography, sexual orientation and proclivities — there were just a ton of different viewpoints contributing to discussions.
- A core group of out-of-town guests who stayed in the same hotel and hung out together before and after the conference. This created a level of comradery and energy among the participants that I hadn’t been around in a while. They were enthusiastic and engaging everywhere they went, and others followed their lead.
- Strong content. Ideas for sessions came from session leaders, not from organizers’ suggestions. This may sound like a pretty basic concept for something that describes itself as an unconference, but lately more and more events I’ve been to seem to have been staged according to what one or two organizers would think people are interested in hearing about, not what people actually want to talk about.
- (Mostly) discussion-based format. Again, I would think this is a pretty basic concept for an unconference, but Powerpoint has been rearing its ugly head at more and more events I’ve attended lately. There were only a couple of presentations that I know of out of 20 sessions, and they were received well. A small number of them are okay in the context of many high-energy discussions occurring elsewhere because they give people an opportunity for some downtime if they want it without feeling like they’re wasting their time sitting on a couch.
- Great venue. When the event had to be moved from Spring4th, it seemed like a horrible stroke of luck, and we briefly wondered if the conference would even happen. But now that it’s over, I can’t imagine anything being better than 1763 turned out to be. Aside from a dungeon providing awesome scenery, it flowed well, there were great breakout rooms, and a nice chill space up front.
I’m still processing everything I learned. In particular, I came away from Steve Eley’s how not to be the creepy guy session with a lot to think about (no, not because I think I might be a creepy guy). I also really enjoyed j.brotherlove’s Truth in Advertising session and Renegade Evolution’s Sexwork, heels, porn & online feminism session.
Amber, of course, deserves a ton of credit for being the main force behind making Sex 2.0 actually happen. There were several volunteers who were immensely helpful. I don’t want to name names because I fear I’d leave someone out. But really, the people that show up make or break an event, and so I am very thankful that so many awesome people were so generous with their time and came out and contributed.
This was the only iteration of this conference that will happen in Atlanta (at least anytime soon). Amber and I are both taking (at least) the summer off from taking on any freelance work or serious organizational activities, and she won’t be organizing Sex 2.0 next year.
But there’s already talk of making Sex 2.0 a rotating annual event, with a follow-up in either Burlington, Vermont or Washington D.C. next year organized by some of the awesome people who participated this year. I think that’s a good sign that what happened here this past weekend was a success.
