2009 Session Leaders

Keynote Speaker: Nikol Hasler

Nikol Hasler, host of Midwest Teen Sex Show and mother of three, currently lives in New York. A frequent speaker on topic ranging from technology to creative writing, she spends her free time twittering, painting and cooking. She currently does freelance work as a filmmaker and writer, is working on a television series, a movie and a book. She also likes sauerkraut an awful lot.

Session Leaders

Amber Rhea

Amber Rhea is one of the co-founders of the Georgia Podcast Network, a portal site for Georgia-based podcasts. She co-hosts the award-winning podcast Mostly ITP, which focuses on people and issues in Atlanta (and occasionally elsewhere). Amber is the founder of Sex 2.0 and was the main organizer of PodCamp Atlanta 2007. She also finds time for a day job as a web developer. She started blogging in 2002 and there’s no end in sight!

Sessions: Revisiting Naked on the Internet

Anita Wagner

Anita Wagner is a polyamory advocate, spokesperson, blogger and educator. She maintains her website, PracticalPolyamory.com to assist others who want to learn to be good at their relationships. She is also a resource to members of the media who seek more information. Via her PracticalPolyamory weblog she writes on polyamory, sexual freedom issues and cultural trends and includes resources on resolving jealousy, finding poly-friendly therapists, and working with people in poly/mono relationships.

Anita has appeared in television interviews and major print and web based newspaper articles. She presents educational programs on resolving jealousy and other poly relationships challenges at Poly Living, Dark Odyssey, Black Rose, Building Bridges, Free Spirit Beltane, Florida Poly Retreat, and the Loving More® West Coast and East Coast conferences. She was keynote speaker at Florida Poly Retreat 2008. She was a featured speaker at the 2007 and 2008 Polyamorous-NYC Polyamory Pride celebration and enjoys serving the polyamory community.

Anita serves on the boards of Loving More Nonprofit and Unitarian Universalists for Polyamory Awareness (UUPA), is co-founder and past board member of Chesapeake Polyamory Network (CPN) and the Institute for 21st Century Relationships/the Foundation of the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom (ITCR/NCSF). She is a past NCSF board member. She is a member of the organizing committee of the 2nd National Polyamory Leadership Summit held in March 2009.

Sessions: Polyamory in Media’s Spotlight

Audacia Ray

Audacia Ray is a media maker and activist who is passionate about sexual rights. She is the author of Naked on the Internet: Hookups, Downloads, and Cashing In On Internet Sexploration (Seal Press, 2007) and is the award-winning director and producer of the porn feature The Bi Apple as well as the producer and star of the comedic film short Dacia’s Love Machine. Audacia is a former sex worker who was an executive editor at $pread magazine for three years and is a co-founder of advocacy organization Sex Work Awareness, where she edits the public education blog Sex Work 101 and develops and leads media trainings for sex workers. Dacia is the Program Officer for Online Communications and Campaigns at the International Women’s Health Coalition and an adjunct professor of Human Sexuality at Rutgers University. Dacia has been writing her personal blog, Waking Vixen, since 2004.

Sessions: Revisiting Naked on the Internet and Sex Work 2.0 in the Time of Obama

Avatar Koo

Avatar Koo writes really slutty romance for the discerning chick. She runs Proper Filth (properfilth.com), an e-publishing company started in March 2009, which showcases romantic erotica that is “less cheeze…more sleaze.” A nerd, foodie and karaoke-addict, Avatar lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter (@avatarkoo) and Facebook (profile.to/avatarkoo)

Sessions: Romantic Erotica

Cunning Minx

Cunning Minx has been the tireless producer and host of the Polyamory Weekly podcast since the spring of 2005, now with over 185 episodes in production. A kinky boobiesexual, Minx founded the show as a resource for the poly and poly-curious to form a community, share experiences and help guide each other on their journeys of poly exploration. And hopefully, also guide each other away from common relationship land mines–or at least share sympathy when they step on one!

Poly Weekly has received accolades from the likes of ErosZine, Fleshbot and the Chicago Sun-Times, and Minx has spoken on poly, kinky and Web 2.0 community-building topics at the Heartland Polyamory Conference, Leather Leadership Conference, Dragon*Con, Galleria Domain 2 and New York’s Poly Pride Day.

The Poly Weekly team includes editor J; blog and forums admin Sc00ter; show notes author Raymond; Poly in the Media correspondent Alan; My Poly Family correspondent Earthwalker; Miss Poly Manners; and the Gaia Point correspondent Serena Anderlini d’Onofrio.

Sessions: Internet Famous but Conference Shy?

Maria Diaz

I am an amateur Internet anthropologist and long time blogger. I’m a freelance tech and entertainment writer.

Sessions: Revenge Porn

David Philips

A poly Queerman, 27-year survivor with HIV and kink evangelist, David works as a business development professional for a mid-sized IT services firm. He co-founded the Rainbow Response Coalition, a network of agencies and individuals raising awareness of IPV and building capacity to serve LGBTQI people in Greater DC. He appears in the Kirby Dick documentary “OUTRAGE.”

Sessions: Internet Advocacy for Sexual Freedom

Ellie Lumpesse

Ellie has been writing about her thoughts on sex and the details of her sex life since 2005 and juggles graduate school and teaching with her sporadic blogging and podcasting. She started doing phone sex at the request of readers and podcast listeners and, as such, is lucky to have the best phone sex clients in the entire world. Her blog is at Lumpesse.com and her podcast is found at Bedroomradio.blogspot.com

Sessions: Customer Relations for Sex Workers and Podcasting 101

Elizabeth Wood

Elizabeth Wood is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Nassau Community College. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology from Brandeis University in 1999 for a study of gender, interaction and power in strip clubs. She has published research on sex work and women’s sexual expression on the internet in Journal of Contemporary Ethnography and Feminism & Psychology. She also writes about sex and society as co-founder and editor of Sex In The Public Square. Elizabeth presents her work at academic conferences, but has never felt more at home then she did when last year she presented at the first annual Sex 2.0 in Atlanta. She loves grassroots activism, public intellectual work, and especially spaces like Sex 2.0 and Sex In The Public Square where people, regardless of background or training, come together as equals to share what they know and ask questions that expand our understanding of sexuality and society.

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

Erik Van Riper

Erik is a seasoned high-tech veteran with more than 17 years of experience in Internet technology including Streaming Media, ASP infrastructures and Web-based CRM. Working with experts in large, worldwide distribution networks, Erik led teams to build innovative monitoring and management systems. Erik combines the knowledge and skills of a top-level programmer, the communication skill of a great manager, and the passion and vision of a true entrepreneur.

Furry Girl

Furry Girl is a shy, tempestuous nerd who’s been removing her clothing at “inappropriate” times since she was a toddler. After doing a day shoot for a large adult company in 2002, she decided to cut out the middlemen and run her own porno business. She now operates FurryGirl.com, EroticRed.com, VegPorn.com, TheSensualVegan.com, and will begin blogging soon at Feminisnt.com. She thinks it’s funny to pair her traitor-to-womankind evil capitalist pornographer bio with a photo of her at Karl Marx’s grave. She is not a furry.

Sessions: Customer Relations for Sex Workers

Jack Murnighan

Jack Murnighan is the former editor-in-chief of nerve.com and now their editor-at-large. He’s published two books on sex in the history of literature (The Naughty Bits and Classic Nasty), had short stories anthologized widely (including The Best American Erotica collections of 1999, 2000, and 2001), and twice taught sex writing at the Penn Writers Conference. His newest book, Beowulf on the Beach: What to Love and What to Skip in Literature’s 50 Greatest Hits, will be released May 19, and he is currently working on a racy novel. He can be reached at jack@nerve.com.

Sessions: Sex Writing Beyond Erotica, Beyond Porn

Jack Stratton

Jack Stratton is a native New Yorker, a writer, a sex blogger and an all-around charming fellow. He writes about sex, dating, writing, postmodernism and tying girls up on his web page, writingdirty.com. He is also starting an erotic audio magazine called readingdirty.com.

Sessions: The Evolution and Democratization of Sex Writing

Joanne McNeil

Joanne McNeil is a writer living outside Boston. She blogs about art, technology, and media at The Tomorrow Museum.

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

MayMay

Meitar “maymay” Moscovitz got his nickname the same time he got online; when he was 9 years old. He started exploring the sexuality-related corners of cyberspace one year later. Since 2002, Meitar has been an active member of the New York City BDSM and alternative sexuality communities. He has also become a technology professional and makes his living as a web developer. He is a published author in this regard and (semi-)regularly blogs on well-known sites like SitePoint.com about the state of the art of developing Web technology. Meitar’s passion lies in analyzing the intersection of technology and human sociosexual behavior. When he’s not writing Web code of one sort or another, he’s writing about his experiences as an uneducated feminist and submissive man. “Maymay” co-authors several blogs on sexuality issues, including the increasingly popular MaleSubmissionArt.com, and is the co-founder of the BarCamp-style sexuality unconference, KinkForAll (KinkForAll.org).

Sessions: Connecting disconnected communities: Using social media for fun, profit, and the greater good and
Gender & Technology: How technology influences hegemonic sexual awareness and vice versa

Melissa Gira

Melissa Gira Grant writes about sex & the internet at her award-winning blog, Sexerati, and has reported on sex & Silicon Valleyfor Gawker Media’s Valleywag. She is also the co-founder of the sex workers’ group blog, Bound, not Gagged. Her work has appeared in Best Sex Writing 2008, $pread, Make:, RH RealityCheck, The Huffington Post, & The Frisky, and she has been featured in the San Francisco Chronicle, Cosmopolitan (France), Wired News, NPR, and BBC Radio, among many others. Melissa has been a consultant with the Open Society Institute’s Sexual Health and Rights’ Project and the St. James Infirmary on using blogging, podcasting, videoblogging, and online social networks for advocacy and movement building among sex workers, and has authored a sex education curriculum to be conducted on MySpace for the Internet Sexuality Information Services (ISIS-Inc). She has presented her work on sexual health, human rights, and new media at the 2008 International AIDS Conference in Mexico City, the Third Wave Feminist Foundation, the University of San Francisco, the Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality, the Center for Sex and Culture, the New School for Social Research, and the UC Berkeley Labor Center. Currently she is working with the Tactical Tech Collective on a toolkit for information activists and on her startup, Boffery, an online tool for organizing and discussing one’s sexuality and relationships with trusted confidantes.

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

Mollena Williams

In addition to being a performer, writer, actor and an educator in the BDSM / Leather community with over a decade in the dungeon, Mollena Williams toils away in her “Day Job” in the adult industry. She’s a content wrangler and Senior Editrix for ALT.com and bondage.com: dating and community sites geared towards BDSM practitioners. She has her own blog, The Perverted Negress and additionally throws down on LiveJournal and absolutely can’t shut the hell up on Twitter.

Sessions: Delicious Deviance: On Flying Your Freak Flag

Nobilis Reed

Nobilis Reed is an author and podcaster who has been distributing
audio versions of his erotic stories at nobilis.libsyn.com for more
than two years. At home, he cares for a disabled spouse, two teenaged
children, and far too many cats.

Sessions: Podcasting 101

Renegade Evolution

Ren is a sex worker, pornographer/performer, comix artist, swinger, sex workers rights advocate and blogger. Her work has been included in everything from the Feminist Carnival of Sexual Freedom and Autonomy to Hustler’s “Taboo Illustrated”. She has participated in debates on pornography at William & Mary College and Augsburg College, is a Member of the Sex Workers Outreach Project-East, and blogged/spoken extensively about sex work, sex worker rights and outreach, pornography, the law, sexual autonomy and the first amendment.

Sessions: Customer Relations for Sex Workers

Ricci Joy Levy

Ricci Levy has been engaged in sexual freedom activism for more than a decade. After a successful career in corporate America, serving as Senior VP, Director of Operations of CAP Index, Inc. and as President of R. J. Levy Consulting Inc., Ms. Levy formally entered the world of non-profit advocacy work as Director of Operations for a national non-profit. In 2002, she helped found The Woodhull Freedom Foundation and Federation, an organization whose mission is to affirm sexual freedom as a fundamental human right. As the Executive Director and President of both the Foundation and the Federation, she has been instrumental in Woodhull’s growing leadership in the sexual freedom movement.

Ricci has testified before Congress and has shared the mission of Woodhull in the media, at conferences and in dialogs with legislators and decision makers all over the country. In partnership with The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, Levy was a driving force in establishing a sexual freedom track at Creating Change, the largest annual LGBT political conference in the world. In 2006, under Levy’s direction, the first Sexual Freedom Institute was offered at the conference. The institute is now an annual event, as is the youth academy for sexual freedom, also launched by Woodhull.

Ricci serves on the Steering Committee of the Free Expression Network (FEN), the Advisory Committee of Causes in Common, a group that brings together activists in the LGBT Liberation and Reproductive Justice Movements, and is on the Advocacy Advisory Committee of the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists (AASECT).

Sessions: Internet Advocacy for Sexual Freedom

Robert Bienvenu, Ph.D

Robert Bienvenu, Ph.D. is a sociologist who lives in the Washington, DC area. His work focuses on community-based research, research ethics, and the health and history of the kink communities.

Sessions: Research on Alternative Sexualities

Sabrina Morgan

Sabrina Morgan is a full-time fetish phone sex operator and camgirl. She has been in the adult industry since 2005 and chronicling her experiences since 2006 at her blog Sabrina in Stockings. She considers it a personal mission to bring subtlety and the art of the tease back to erotic multimedia. She is a former Sugasm editor, a reactivated activist, and an out bi femme with a little nylon fetish who spends entirely too much time on Twitter.

Sessions: Customer Relations for Sex Workers

Vera Worthington

Owner of For Your Nymphomation locking storage cases for adult toys and BDSM equipment. Vera began her career in New York City’s fashion industry designing graphics which later evolved into designing handbags, backpacks, and other fashion accessories. During her years working for accessory companies, she traveled often to China to work in the factories where she developed contacts and built relationships that enabled her to start her own collection. She always wanted to have her own line of bags, but since fashion trends would come and go, she wanted to develop something more “season-less” that would not only appeal to a broad range of people, but also fill a special niche. Vera’s “light bulb moment” was when a friend was moving and practically begged her to design a sex toy case for her- “the movers took out my bottom draw of my night table an caught an eyeful of toys! This wouldn’t have been a problem had it not been my brother’s best friend’s moving company!” So with a year of research, development and hard work, she introduced in October of 2004 the now very successful line of locking storage cases cleverly named “For Your Nymphomation”.

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