2009 Session List

All sessions and session descriptions are subject to change.

Building bridges and Alliances between Sex Worker Communities, researchers & clients

We acknowledge from the start that these categores (sex worker, researcher, client) are not monolithic, and that they contain overlapping segments with individuals belonging to more than one category with varying degrees of openness. In order to advance the cause of sex worker rights these communities need to collaborate, yet collaboration is made difficult by distrust (often earned by researchers who have not taken the time to learn how to be allies). There are excellent examples of working alliances, and we’ll discuss how those examples serve as models for other collaborations that can, over time, help reduce the distrust that has made good research, good policy, and good outreach difficult. Collaborative spaces exist online and offline, and ideally participants in these spaces interact as equals, each being recognized for the specific knowledge and skill they contribute.
Session leaders: Elizabeth Wood & Renegade Evolution

Connecting disconnected communities: Using social media for fun,  profit, and the greater good

Everyone knows that telecommunications technologies such as the Internet have changed the world forever, but few people understand how to take advantage of these changes. Crowdsourcing, social media, collective intelligence, and mass collaboration are some of the buzzwords associated with these changes. Commercial businesses and technical grassroots projects such as open source software development have managed astounding feats. So how can non-technical, volunteer driven community organizations—groups that struggle with a lack of expertise, manpower, and budget—benefit in the same way? In this session, Maymay will share tried-and-true tips for getting the most “bang” for your time and effort, discussing the practicalities of developing volunteer workflow and support structures cheaply and easily.
Session leader: MayMay

Craigslist Red, Craigslist Blue: Why we should dismantle the “internet red light district”

Craigslist’s Erotic Services section. AdultFriendFinder. Adam4Adam. Your blogspot blog. Your daughter’s MySpace profile. Online spaces with “bad” sexual reputations are among the most policed, contested, and confounding, both for those who call them home and those outside them. For all the possibilities for novel interactions they offer that aren’t mirrored in offline space, they also confine sexuality to what some (of us) have called ghettos. We hear these sites make policymakers and pundits very upset, but they also seem very excitedat the opportunity to smear them: what better way to get attention but to stir up an internet sex panic? While some politicians and law enforcement and cultural critics are calling for the (predictable) end of online social/sexual networking, we’re going to go one step further and imagine what a future internet without these spaces looks like. Where does sex go online when it doesn’t have a dedicated home? Without getting overly theoretical, we’re going to point to the work of Samuel Delany (in his twin essays “Times Square Red, Times SquareBlue”) and propose the merits of an internet without sex confined to its “proper” place.
Session leaders: Melissa Gira Grant & Joanne McNeil

Customer Relations for Sex Workers

Sex work is at its heart a relationship business, and sex workers face some of the most tangled (and rewarding) client relationships – often with little guidance.

Have you ever wondered how to deal with a creepy client – or a client you worry too much about? Curious about the privacy needs of remote vs. in-person sex work? Need to know what tools are available to keep up with your customers while attracting new fans? If you’re a current sexual professional or seriously considering sex work, this panel will help you set the boundaries you need to keep loving your job.

Speakers from varied areas of sex work (stripping, phone sex, camming, escorting, and porn) will be discussing safety and privacy issues, stalking, using social media to connect with customers and fans, where to draw the personal/professional line, what happens when sex workers get too attached to their clients, how to redirect clients who want to date their provider, and how to market to (and/or train) your ideal clients.
Panelists:  Renegade Evolution, Furry Girl, Sabrina Morgan, Ellie Lumpesse, Kimberlee Cline, & Monica

Delicious Deviance: On Flying Your Freak Flag

Perhaps you are a full blown pervert, but shy about exposing yourself online? Or maybe you are a fledgling kinkster, and unsure of how to remain true to your self while bridging the gap between fantasy and realty, taking the online to the flesh?

There are so many vectors and venues available, it can be tricky, and it can be daunting. But have no fear, you aren’t alone!

This discussion will cover the pros and cons of being out, of maintaining a kinky personae online, on the common pitfalls of finding yourself moving from one world to the other, and how one can maintain one’s humor while maintaining your integrity as a  feminist and as a pervert.

Join Mollena Williams, BDSM Educator, kinky blogger, and Executive Pervert as she discusses and explores online kink and real-time perversions, and offers tips, suggestions and a few amusing cautionary tales to get your gears turning on how to maintain your humor and your integrity as an individual as you cross from pixels to playtime!
Session leader: Mollena Williams

The Evolution and Democratization of Sex Writing

A look back at the history of online erotica, from BBSs and Usenet to Slash Fiction and Sex Blogs. Then a discussion about how sex writing has changed since the advent of the internet and all the new and interesting directions sex writing has taken. We will talk about how the anonymity of the internet lets people write so much more openly about desires and fantasies as well as empowers different genders, gender preferences, kinks and lifestyles. There will be hand outs and a possibly some fun writing exercises and games.
Session leader: Jack Stratton

Gender & Technology: How technology influences hegemonic sexual awareness and vice versa

Technology is a legitimizing force; it can define “normal.” This gives technologists and business people alike an enormous amount of power that too few realize they have. Sadly, hegemonic assumptions about gender and sexuality have made their way into the foundations of our society. One such example is on social networking sites like Facebook, whose most progressive profile option is the infamous “It’s Complicated.” In this talk, Maymay will discuss the intersections of gender theory with social technologies and will showcase some of the areas in which an increased sensitivity to issues of gender will not only result in a better user experience but also a more robust technical implementation.
Session leader: MayMay

Internet Advocacy for Sexual Freedom

Do we need a new national sexual freedom discourse?  Does the transparency of the internet or its opportunity for anonymity help answer this question? Can we use our blogs, elists and online groups to shape the national sexual freedom discourse?  For this workshop we will explore how we can use the internet to transform sexual issue debates into dialogues and then broad conversations creating new allies.  We will use the issues of trafficking and decriminalization of consensual sex as examples.
Session leader: Ricci Levy & David Phillips

Internet Famous but Conference Shy?

Are you great on a keyboard, but overwhelmed by the time you get to the registration desk? Are you charming on Twitter but glued to the wall at the opening night party? Sometimes internet abundance doesn’t translate well to having a great time at that conference. From wildly famous sexperts to curious wallflowers, from keynoters to first-time guests, conference experiences might not easily translate from the keyboard. Find out how, with just a little preparation, you can have the best possible experience at your nextcon.
Session leader: Cunning Minx

Polyamory in Media’s Spotlight

Over the last three years much has happened on the public stage that has the power to affect polyamorous lives.   More than 170 media events that focus on polyamory or are polyamory-related have been documented.  Their sources range from prime-time TV plot lines to articles in campus newspapers.

The good news:  Polyamory is no longer socially obscure.

The bad news:  Visibility attracts attention from people who actively oppose the way polyamorists live their lives.  Increasingly the media is the grass roots playing field that offers the most effective means of influencing public opinion – and hopefully public policy – to give the subject of polyamory fair treatment.

There is no doubt that media interest in polyamory is at an all time high with no real end in sight.  Whereas for many years sightings of poly-specific media events were very few and far between and consisted mostly of hostile daytime talk show experiences, today local, regional and national broadcast, print, and internet-based media are driving a much more positive trend, with polyamorists and polyamory movement leaders often in media’s spotlight.  This tends to reflect well on the concept of polyamory, but troublesome media events still happen, events about which we must remain aware and be prepared to address as is appropriate.

Very recently at a polyamory leadership summit a team was formed to establish a unified means of responding for requests from members of the media for polyamorous families to interview.  Media training is being planned, and so the polyamory community follows in the large footsteps of social movements both past and present.  Come listen and discuss this exciting and challenging trend.
Session leader: Anita Wagner

Podcasting 101

What is this podcasting thing, anyways?  How does it work?  How do listen/watch/read a podcast?  How do you create one?  What skills and equipment do you need?  These are the questions we will address, plus whatever other ones come up.
Session leaders: Nobilis Reed & Ellie Lumpesse

Research on Alternative Sexualities

CARAS, the Community-Academic Consortium for Research on Alternative Sexualities, is a community-based non-profit founded in 2005, currently based in San Francisco (CARAS “West”) and the Washington, DC area (CARAS “East”).  The purpose of CARAS is to facilitate research and professional education on alternative sexualities such as BDSM/kink/fetish, polyamory, and swinging. We do this in a variety of ways, including community review and assistance for research proposals, training clinicians who serve alt-sex clients, and working with community organization to conduct research. This session will introduce CARAS and faciliate a discussion about why this kind of work is important to alt-sex people and how you can get involved to support well-informed research. For more information, please visit the CARAS website at https://www.caras.ws
Session leader:  Rob Bienvenu, Ph.D.  Other CARAS volunteers and staff will be present to answer questions and contribute to the discusssion.

Revenge Porn

‘Revenge porn’ and how it’s going to become more popular as camera phones and tagging become more mainstream in our Facebook/social media culture. How can women cope with getting photos put up without knowledge by a boyfriend or other third party? Is the solution to never experiment with naked photos or videos? Do all relationships have to be treated with the assumption that when it goes bad, your ex is going to plaster photos and intimate details all over the Internet? I am an amateur Internet anthropologist and long time blogger. I’m a freelance tech and entertainment writer.
Session leader: Maria Diaz

Revisiting Naked on the Internet

My book Naked on the Internet: Hookups, Downloads, and Cashing In On Internet Sexploration was published by Seal Press in 2007. This session will include a panel with some of the women I interviewed for the book; we will discuss what has changed and stayed the same in past two years. Questions include: How has the sense of community in online sexual networks changed since 2007? How have new technologies, applications, and websites (like Tumblr and Twitter) shifted the ways we think about sex online? How have shifts in law enforcement like crackdowns on online prostitution, arrests of teens for making child porn, and the obscenity trials of pornographers affected sex online?
Panelists: Audacia Ray, Furry Girl,  Melissa Gira & Amber Rhea

Romantic Erotica

Romantic erotica is now more literary, more explicit…and more convenient than ever. Despite the economy, romance novels for women is booming. How is technology (e-publishing, cell phone novels, etc.) affecting “porn for women”? And what does the young female reader want in her romance novels today?
Session leader: Avatar Koo

Sex Work 2.0 in the Time of Obama

Now that the United States has a new administration, sex workers and their allies are facing different challenges. In this session we ask (and attempt to answer): what should sex worker activists and allies be working toward with the new administration, and how can the average internet sex geek help? This discussion will be a strategy discussion about the messaging we feel the Obama Administration is most receptive to, the various points of entry within the Obama Admin (such as the new White House Council on Women and Girls, etc) and most specifically, map out a viral messaging campaign proposal to bring to the community. This session will plant a seed to advance online and new media collaboration, split up some of the work and identify tasks that can be delegated to various groups/activists who want to be active but aren’t sure what steps to take.
Session leaders: Stacey Swimme & Audacia Ray

Sex Writing Beyond Erotica, Beyond Porn

Why should we write about sex? And if we want to, how should we do it? This seminar will address the challenge of integrating sex and sexuality into fiction, journalism, and magazine writing, all the while avoiding all the trappings of erotica, porn, and lad-mag prurience. Of all interpersonal and cultural phenomena, sex might simultaneously be the most influential but least understood. In this seminar, we’ll approach sex with open minds and attuned bodies, seeking a mature, sophisticated sense of the psychology, personal and cultural import, nuance, and general mystery of sex for most people. Attendees are encouraged to send me samples of their sex writing beforehand (to jack@nerve.com) so I can integrate them into our discussion. I will also provide do-and-don’t examples from real articles and give tips on how to get published by nerve.com and magazines in general.
Session leader: Jack Murnighan

Starting an Adult Novelty Business: How I went from Handbag Designer to Adult Toycase Designer

Have you been interested in starting your own business in the adult industry? Do you have a great idea for a new sex product, adult toy or online store? Hear about Vera’s journey from being a handbag designer in the fashion industry to taking the leap into the adult industry with her For Your Nymphomation locking storage cases. Vera will offer you some advice for being an entrepreneur in the adult world. She will discuss what it takes to run an online store and wholesale business. Hear about some of the challenges, obstacles, surprises, advantages, and satisfactions of running your own adult oriented business
Session leader: Vera Worthington