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Feedback from the UK Asexuality Conference!


michaeld

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Thank you everyone who came to the conference or who helped out in any way, online or offline! :cake: I hope you all enjoyed yourselves today (er yesterday!)

 

This thread is for feedback and for you to post all your images, videos for the day, and link any mentions of the conference on social media and other venues! You can also email aven.pt@gmail.com.

 

EDIT: We have been asked about donations. To help fund the conference - and future events - please go to

https://www.gofundme.com/AceConfUK

 

Thanks ith for setting up this fundraiser. :)

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cutiepastels

I was at the conference yesterday, but when I arrived couldn't find my name on the list. Can't remember what I registered under....

Could only stay until lunch time as the heatwave was getting to me. Enjoyed the talks I did manage to attend, and the questions people asked were interesting and all relevant. Helped clear up a few things for me. Wish I could have stayed a bit longer for the asexual relationships talk.

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very well organised. Congratulations and thank you! I stayed from 10.30 am till the end and then I went to the Wellington pub... so, the whole day . Do not do the next one in many years from now... Do it next year in London !

Bye!

Franco

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Irishexilefighterpilot

Hi all

I was at the conference yesterday,  found it very informative, made some new  ace friends which I had few of beforehand. Congratulations to Michael, Lea, Kerry, Gillian and the secret trianglen crew and everyone else connected to it.

 

If any of your members want to get in contact with me, they can under my handle here or by email at nigelmehegan@gmail.com

 

I will additionally be able to answer any questions people may have about the London Asexuality meetup group on meetup.com

 

Regards

 

Nigel Mehegan

 

 

 

 

 

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Thank you everyone for organising the conference, it was lovely to meet lots of people! Well done to the organisers, your hard work is much appreciated :) (especially on the food front)

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Firstly, many thanks. These things don't just happen.

Secondly, at least two things which affect me directly have immediately sprung from it. One is a Kent meet up (See @CaroDee' s post in the meet up section) and the other is the offer of resources from folk at My Umbrella and Scotland. These will encourage me to make  people in an organisation I'm with more aware of stuff.

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Horse Ham Radio

Hey all :) This is Matt from The Secret Triangle talk.

 

I'm just letting you know that we have made our presentation slides public and you can view them here:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Nh1qpmxKcxUb4lAvxt07-wd-hjfUnuwG5jLLlelBQQY/edit?usp=sharing

 

It was a great pleasure meeting all of you yesterday. We found the discussions throughout the day very thought-provoking! I will be following up on a number of the ideas raised with us over the coming days with threads - follow me or periodically stalk my profile to know when these threads go up!

 

In the meantime, please do contact us if you have any further comments or questions about any of the topics raised. We look forward to hearing from you ^_^

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Tasha the demi squirrel

May have felt more comfortable if there was less heat but I very much enjoyed the conference it was great to meet some lovely people if I hadn't had work at 5am the following morning I would have gone to the pub with everyone afterwards but hopefully I can next time ☺

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First of all, huge huge thanks to the organisers! You did an amazing job despite the extreme heat and occasional problems with microphones and the room 2 projector! I wish I'd had more time to chat to you all in person, but between arriving late, sessions running late and needing sensory-overload breaks whenever possible, I feel like I hardly got to say thank you, let alone just chat and check that you were doing OK.

 

Also huge thanks to everyone who volunteered, presented, took part in panels, asked questions, joined discussions or just generally made the conference such a positive, open, understanding and accepting place 💜

 

I found the excessive heat in room 1 very challenging and stuck to much cooler and manageable room 2, except for the final session and morning items where I was one of the presenters or panelists in room 1 so had to be there.

 

The weather was most definitely out of our control though!

 

One of my biggest problems with conferences in general is that I'm always overwhelmed or overloaded and in urgent need of quiet space or head space after sessions, so I spend time away recovering and don't get to meet so many people and 'network'. So I regret how many people I wanted to continue to talk to after interesting discussions, but who I had to leave to go be in a quiet space and then never saw socially again. Sorry if you feel that I ignored you - it wasn't intentional!

 

I was really glad to be able to make it to the pub meet afterwards though, and to find the noise there more manageable than expected. Having a hotel to stay in and only 15 minutes journey 'home' really helped.

 

As promised in 'Where Next?', here's the Intersectionality forum thread about Asexuality and Disability: 

 

 

Also, once again, for those who missed the URL during my talks (I did keep forgetting to give it), my long article about the early history of the online asexuality community: https://graphicexplanations.info/2017/10/29/asexuality-bc-before-cake/

 

That was condensed into 10 minutes of the History session and 5 minutes of Ace Journeys today. It filled an hour at 2012's conference - and it includes a lot more that had to be dropped for time.

 

I hope we have more UK conferences going forwards, and more in different parts of the UK, not just London.

 

And one last time - huge huge thanks to everyone who organised, volunteered or contributed in any way! You rock! 💜🍰🎉

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To Be Named Later

I really enjoyed and appreciated the conference, so my thanks also to the organisers, presenters and volunteers.

 

It was awesome to see so many aces together in one place. Curious if anyone knows the total number of attendees (even if roughly).

 

One question (which has probably already been considered and there's a good reason against this) is what about having Aven names on badges also?  Before and after the conference we know people under their usernames but on the day it seemed to be real first names. (I realise not everyone was on Aven). Apologies if that option was given and I've forgotten about it, which is entirely possible.

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To Be Named Later

@paranoidgynandroid thanks for the link.  The short presentation on the day made me want to seek out the full version. I really enjoyed reading that and it makes me appreciate how fortunate I am to have the community that exists now.

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Horse Ham Radio
54 minutes ago, Idealist said:

One question (which has probably already been considered and there's a good reason against this) is what about having Aven names on badges also?  Before and after the conference we know people under their usernames but on the day it seemed to be real first names. (I realise not everyone was on Aven). Apologies if that option was given and I've forgotten about it, which is entirely possible.

There was an option to have AVEN usernames on the badges - I certainly choose this option. We will work on making this option clearer in the future :) Perhaps we should also encourage attendees to supply as much name information as they are comfortable with to help with contacts?

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Blaiddmelyn

 

1 hour ago, Idealist said:

It was awesome to see so many aces together in one place. Curious if anyone knows the total number of attendees (even if roughly).

 

As the person who sat at the registration desk for three hours and thus got to know the sign-up sheets quite well, my guess would be a little under 200 - though some people left early for various reasons. We had a fair amount of no-shows but the majority of people turned up. If anyone has actually counted the sign-up sheets, they'll be better placed to answer.

 

1 hour ago, Idealist said:

One question (which has probably already been considered and there's a good reason against this) is what about having Aven names on badges also?  Before and after the conference we know people under their usernames but on the day it seemed to be real first names. (I realise not everyone was on Aven). Apologies if that option was given and I've forgotten about it, which is entirely possible.

 

19 minutes ago, nameinagame said:

There was an option to have AVEN usernames on the badges - I certainly choose this option. We will work on making this option clearer in the future :) Perhaps we should also encourage attendees to supply as much name information as they are comfortable with to help with contacts?

As nameinagame says, the form did have this option (I actually just checked it. I would strongly advise people not to register for the conference on it now though :p). I think we can make it clearer and encourage sharing of information but some people may choose not to do so - I chose not to do so primarily because nobody can ever pronounce my username anyway, so I decided to skip to my actual name, which is far easier :)

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To Be Named Later

@nameinagame @Blaiddmelyn thanks.  I'm honestly surprised I didn't include my username then, although we've clearly established my powers of observation aren't great.  The only people I recall seeing with usernames on badges were organisers, speakers and volunteers so thought there might have been some different system for them.

 

Around 200 attendees would be impressive!

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4 hours ago, quarridors said:

Also, once again, for those who missed the URL during my talks (I did keep forgetting to give it), my long article about the early history of the online asexuality community: https://graphicexplanations.info/2017/10/29/asexuality-bc-before-cake/

Hey! : ) Would you mind if we shared that on our AVEN social media? It's quite awesome!!

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4 minutes ago, Idealist said:

@nameinagame @Blaiddmelyn thanks.  I'm honestly surprised I didn't include my username then, although we've clearly established my powers of observation aren't great.  The only people I recall seeing with usernames on badges were organisers, speakers and volunteers so thought there might have been some different system for them.

 

Around 200 attendees would be impressive!

Quite a few people put in a username but didn't tick the box to say they wanted it included on the badge, possibly because it was fairly easy to miss.

 

Maybe next time it might work better to have a write-in box for what people want on their badge?

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2 minutes ago, kelico said:

Hey! : ) Would you mind if we shared that on our AVEN social media? It's quite awesome!!

I would love for it to be shared far and wide, I wrote it for the community and didn't seem to have much 'social reach' into this community by then! Thanks! 😊

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Will the videos be uploaded to twitch? ot have they been uploaded elsewhere?

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Hi everyone. Thank you for a brilliant conference. The speakers shared great insight and history. Extremely brave of the speakers who volunteered to share their experiences. Food was well presented but as others have mentioned, unfortunately the temperature of the day made meeting people a little difficult throughout the day. Catching up and chatting in the pub later did help. Well done to the organisers .

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Hi guys

Had a great day, my first ace meet of any kind so I kept to myself for most of it but tried to speak to some of you in the Wetherspoons afterwards- wished I’d managed to speak up earlier because everyone is and was more than lovely!

 

As everyone else is saying, the heat was very difficult and at lunch time outside was actually colder than inside. I am wondering if a change of venue is food for thought, or inquiring whether they plan to put in aircon!

 

I think the thing I was most disappointed about on the day was the lack of Twitch stream to be honest, much as I appreciate it was being run off dodgy uni wifi haha! I say this because I’m still struggling to explain asexuality to those I know, as it tends to involve discussing far too much of the very subject I’d like to avoid entirely ^^; and I wanted to leave a link to the stream in the group chat of my classmates so they could learn a bit if they wanted to, but alas. Hopefully the tech works better next time around!

 

Definitely interested in any recordings of room 2 as I believe I missed all of those talks.

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Hey everyone,

 

I'm glad so many people enjoyed the Conference! Does anyone have any cool pictures to share? If so, please do private message me :) 

 

A lot of you asked me if there was a non-cash way to donate to support the conference. Mic and I have created this page which will not only help cover some of the costs for this last conference, but hopefully raise enough to plan for a new conference next year in the U.K. (maybe not London?), and one every year after that.

 

Please do donate if you can: https://www.gofundme.com/AceConfUK

 

Thank you!

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banana monkey

This is more feedback on the application process. Prehaps the conference could start later for people travelling on the day (Sunday trains often start later) or be moved to a saturday instead (when trains are earlier). or otherwise make it more clear that people could arrive late/leave early. I didnt realise people arrived late and left early until after applications had closed. I didnt want to come to pride so it didnt prove cost effective to stay overnight, and I could not get a train early enough that morning to get there in time for registration. Had I realised it was ok to be late, I may have registered as i would have only been about 15 mins late anyway. 

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