All the Sex 2.0 info you need (a.k.a. World’s Longest Post)
TRANSPORTATION: From the airport, follow the signs to Atlanta’s humble (by New York/Boston/Chicago/DC standards) transit system, MARTA. Take the North or Northeast line (not like you have any other options) to the North Avenue station. Exit the station at the corner of North Ave. and W. Peachtree St., and the Marriott Renaissance is diagonally across the street. Here is a MARTA rail map, and here is a map showing the location of the station and the hotel.
Maps with driving directions to/from the airport, hotel, and 1763 are available here (if the embedded maps aren’t working, just click the links). If you are taking a cab, be sure to print directions to bring with you, because 1763 isn’t a place most cab drivers will just “know.” There are also phone numbers for several cab companies on the directions page. With rare exception, Atlanta isn’t the kind of city where you just go out on the street and hail a cab.
We’re renting a van to run a shuttle between the hotel and 1763 in the morning. It will leave at 8:00 a.m. Please be on time if you want a ride, as space is limited.
In the afternoon, we will run a shuttle leaving at 5:00 p.m. You are responsible for finding your own transportation to and from the Flesh and Fetish Ball (or anywhere else) that night.
Some local conference participants may be willing to drive carpools in their own vehicles, as well. Please work this out amongst yourselves.
HOTEL: When you check into the hotel, please remind them that you are with Sex 2.0. Otherwise they might conveniently “forget” to credit us your stay.
REGISTRATION: You’re probably tired of hearing me say it by now, but I’m just reiterating because I just know a few random people will show up Saturday morning and get pissed off that they can’t just walk in if their name isn’t on the list. Registration in advance is mandatory. If your name is not on the registration list Saturday morning, you will be turned away. This is to ensure the confidentiality and security of our participants’ identities.
Online registration will be open until 5 hours before the start of the event (so that’s… 3:30 a.m., if I’m calculating correctly). So even if you’re waiting until the last minute to decide whether to come, you’ll still be able to register in advance.
Your name will be listed as the name you indicated to be printed on your badge.
PHOTOS/RECORDING: When you pick up your badge, take one of three different-colored stickers: Green means “It’s okay to photograph/record/video/quote me.” Yellow means “Please ask first.” Red means “Do not photograph/record/video/quote me, or else Amber will smite you.”
FOOD: Boxed lunches from Atlanta Bread Company will be available for purchase for $6 each, cash or check. There are also many restaurants near 1763. Please remember that 1763 will have snacks and beverages available for purchase all day long. Please support Sex 2.0 and 1763 by “buying in” instead of going out! (Total concession sales [not including the boxed lunches] are subtracted from our venue rental fee.)
Snacks available at the concession stand include a variety of potato chips, Doritos, Fritos, Coke, Diet Coke, Sprite, Mountain Dew, and bottled water.
INTERNET ACCESS: There isn’t native wifi at 1763, but the always-awesome Steve Eley has agreed to bring a wifi router and set it up the morning of the conference. So, unless there is a demon in the tubes, we should have internet access!
WEATHER: The 10-day forecast predicts scattered showers, and temperatures in the 60s-70s. Bring an umbrella.
BEFORE PARTY: Regina Lynn is hosting a reading and discussion about her new book, Sexier Sex: Lessons from the Brave New Sexual Frontier, 8:00 p.m. Friday night at Charis Books and More (one of our fabulous sponsors). Details available here.
There is a pole dancing party 9:00 p.m. Friday night. It is open to women only and you must register ahead of time. Currently there are only five spots left! If you have questions about it, just email me.
Some folks were talking about hitting the Clermont Lounge later on Friday night. I highly recommend this.
AFTER PARTY: There is a Flesh and Fetish Swinger’s Ball Saturday night at 1763, hosted by Swinging Atlanta; 9:00 p.m. – 4:00 a.m. Bring your Sex 2.0 nametag and get in at a discounted rate: $35 for single guys, $25 for couples, and single ladies free as usual. Brent Futo, founder of Swinging Atlanta, will be at Sex 2.0 to answer any questions you may have.
Tiffany Brown put together a wonderfully comprehensive list of other fun stuff going on in Atlanta that weekend. Of particular interest is the film screening of “SEX: The Revolution.”
THE LAW OF TWO FEET: Simply put: your experience at Sex 2.0 is what you want it to be. At any time, if you’re not learning what you want to learn, if you’re not getting what you need, you have every right to depart the session you’re in and move to a different one, or none at all.
THE LAW OF NULL SPACE: You are very likely to learn the most in the spaces between sessions, at lunch, at breaks, etc. when you can just talk and hang out with people. Be ready! Have your notebook out, your business cards handy, and be ready to learn at the most unlikely times.
STILL HAVE QUESTIONS? No problem! Just email the Google group and someone will know the answer, I swear!
See you next weekend!!
April 12th Flesh and Fetish Ball: discounted admission for Sex 2.0 participants
For those of you who aren’t high-tailing it out of Atlanta at the crack of 5pm, consider coming to the Flesh and Fetish Ball at 1763 the night after Sex 2.0. Swinging Atlanta is offering discounted admission to Sex 2.0 participants: $35 for single guys, $25 for couples, and single ladies free as usual.
Check out this article to learn more about our new venue and the Flesh and Fetish Ball.
New Sex 2.0 press release ready for prime-time!
Many thanks to Bitch | Lab for writing this press release and Kristi Kane for making edits! Please spread it far and wide, on your own blogs and to any media pals you may have.
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact:
Amber Rhea
Main organizer, Sex 2.0
678-389-9441
Email: sex20con@gmail.com
Web site: www.sex20con.com
Sex 2.0 will explore sexuality, feminism and social media
ATLANTA — What happens when technology, sex, knowledge, and power enable women to meet up, act up, and hook up like never before? These questions and more are the focus of the Sex 2.0 unconference in Atlanta, Georgia on April 12th, 2008. Held at 1763, a 10,000-square-foot, fully equipped dungeon located 10 miles north of downtown Atlanta, the unconference will feature conversations among activists, social networking pioneers, bloggers, swingers, cruisers, sex futurists and kinksters who have been sexing up Web 2.0 from the beginning — whether in Bangalore or Bangor, Maine.
Maybe you’ve heard of Web sites like Facebook, Craigslist, or Flickr. They’re all social networking sites, the heart of a revolution in the way people produce and share knowledge, make friends, reach out for support, and create professional and personal networks.
When women need help with health, sexual, or personal problems, where do they turn? In a recent Pew Poll, researchers found that women were more likely to turn to the Web for knowledge and support. (Reference: Pew Internet & American Life Project, “How Women and Men Use the Internet,” online at http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Women_and_Men_online.pdf).
It’s that heady combination of technology, sex, and knowledge in the hands of women (and men) that fascinates well-known Atlanta-area tech/sex blogger Amber Rhea and inspired her to organize the event. She’s not alone. The grassroots unconference will explore these issues with notable and notorious Web-based activists. On April 12, Sex 2.0 participants will:
- Hear keynote speaker Audacia Ray — blogger, video podcaster, award-winning porn director and author of Naked on the Internet – Hookups, Downloads, and Cashing in on Internet Sexploration.
- Stimulate your “Sex Drive” with Regina Lynn, Wired magazine’s sex-tech columnist and author of Sexier Sex: Lessons from the Brave New Sexual Frontier. In her session “How Love/Sex Happens Online,” Lynn will explore the powerful and unexpected experiences people have with online lovers and what it all means inside the hearts of geekdom. Because sex is the first use for any new technology, Lynn will demonstrate how to get the most out of your phone, webcam or laptop and how to use your everyday gadgets to enhance intimacy, pleasure and fun.
- Explore sexual relationships that spring from online meeting places like blogs and forums in sessions with sex futurist Melissa Gira, who runs the award-winning sex blog Sexerati, and contributes to $pread, WHORE!, Best Sex Writing 2008, and Dirty Girls.
- Make history with T.A. Hines’ session, “A Brief History of Sex.” Hines is the irreverent, popular podcaster and Nerve magazine columnist who chronicles her funky brown chick take on sex and New York City in her weekly Internet radio show Dating Roadkill.
- Tempt your inner erotic writer with sex bloggers and writers like Rachel Kramer Bussel, who keeps things tingling at her Lusty Lady blog, and Viviane, who heats up the Web with her blog Viviane’s Sex Carnival.
- Mix it up with j. brotherlove, Joseph G., Minx and Ren, who’ll host rollicking sessions about online dating, cruising, hooking up, BDSM, and swinging whether for kinksters, sexual, ethnic and racial minorities, straight, curious, and in-between
Rhea says she wants the interactive sessions to be a place where people create the experience they need. “This is not your father’s sex conference,” she said. “An unconference belongs to the people who come — double entendre intended.”
People are often puzzled by an unconference, said Rhea, but it’s almost always an experience that makes you never want to attend an ordinary conference again. “You won’t be in a room, sitting on your hands, waiting for a one-way presentation. It’s just like sex, really: a powerful interaction between people that makes the experience more than the people involved.”
Registration for the event is $10 by February 17, $40 until March 28, and $50 after March 28, with the rest of the cost underwritten by volunteers and sponsors. There are still opportunities for sponsors who want to reach their audience — people at the center of a new media that’s changing the way we live.
Rhea thinks that the approach will attract a wide audience: “Everyone will be there to both raise and answer questions, teach and learn — you can do both in one session. It’s up to you.”
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