Virtual WisCON (Day 1)

 As an old cyberpunk writer, I have to say that I'm deeply fascinated by how online communities are built and how things like Virtual WisCON work/don't work.  

So far? I'd say that it's working for me, on the whole. 

Yesterday, I interacted with the con in a number of different ways. I hung out on a couple of different channels on Discord, I 'went' to the You Tube stream of Rebecca Roanhorse's reading and Q&A, and joined a spontaneous jitsi meeting for writers.  I will detail my experience with each, below.

Discord:  I should preference any discussion about my interactions here by saying that I am an experienced Discord user. I have been on it for a couple of years already, having shifted to Discord to chat with a friend when Skype started acting up for her. I've created my own servers and joined existing ones. My profile on Discord is fannish, because that's exclusively what I use Discord for. My son uses Discord even more than I do, using the voice channel option to talk to friends, etc. So, even if I didn't know how to use a Discord function, I have another expert in the house.

So, my experience might be a little different from others, because I'm extremely comfortable reading and participating in conversations on Discord.

When you click on the WisCON link, it automatically dumps you into the "new arrivals" channel.  From there you can navigate out to other channels. I did what I always do when I'm new to a Discord server, which is I immediately went to read their rules or code of conduct channel, because some servers are very strict about keeping channels on-topic and I want to know what the culture is, obviously. 

WisCON seems pretty chill about the channels being on-topic. Administrators and moderators show up on your feed in a different color and I didn't notice one monitoring any of the chats I checked into, with the exception of # lobby-con.  Interestingly, I had my best experience in the lobby. I actually did that thing that happens at cons, where I happened to be in the channel when a couple of people I know dropped in an said hello.  So, I actually chatted with them (and a few other people I didn't know) about the Madison farmer's market, cheese curds, and life.  So, that felt very much like Con, honestly. 

The other channel I lurked on was # books-and-reading and read/"listened" to a conversation about the anti- culture of fan writing fandom. That one ended up feeling a bit cliquish, honestly? One of the users broke into the conversation to write something like, "If this were real life, I'd introduce [name 1] to [name 2]..." which is good socialization in real life, but on-line had the weird effect of making me, as a lurker, suddenly feel like I was intruding on a conversation between friends? The conversation then very much devolved into people they had in common, the places they lived, etc., and so I left the channel.  I mean, this is the sort of thing that happens at a con? But, it's different on-line because Discord does not let you know that people are 'in the channel' and not active. The only way you know someone is part of the "conversation" is if they post something.  So, this person couldn't have known that I was lurking and that I suddenly felt a little awkward when it was clear they were all real-life friends?  In other servers, this is where an active mod would come on and ask people to either stay on topic or move to a socialization channel. But, WisCON seems to be going for a very organic, make-your-own con on the fly vibe, which is perfectly okay. Like I say, things like this happen in real-life cons and I don't expect there to be someone on hand there to make sure conversations stay on topic. The # birds-of-a-feather area is clearly supposed to be informal. So, I'm not criticizing, just explaining my experience. Real life cons are like this, too.

YouTube:  So, one thing I really do love about the virtual con is that I have my phone set to beep me when WisCON sends out a notification of an event. I was in the middle of a late dinner when Rebecca Roanhorse started her reading, but I was able to jump in online about fifteen minutes in. I went to the Discord and went to # links-to-streams and clicked through to the reading there.  

Watching that reminded me that I'm not actually a giant fan of readings, in general.  But, I LOVED the Q&A session, so that was worth it.  Tempest did an excellent job as interviewer/moderator, IMHO.

I honestly thought the YouTube thing would be weird/distancing, but it was fine.  

Jitsi:  There is a section of the Discord for meet-ups spontaneously generated by anyone. It is in the # spontaneous programming channel. A con-goer named 'W' posted that they were hosting a jitsi for writing, and I asked if it was a hang-out for writers or if we would be hanging out and writing. Since it was at 10 pm CST, I did not feel like I could stay up to silently writie, so I was happy to discover that W was planning on conversation unless people really wanted to write together. I had a little trouble joining it because I wanted to switch over to my new iPad and for some weird reason clicking through from Discord didn't launch my app and so it never properly connected my microphone? But, when I opened my app and plugged in the jitsi address it worked perfectly, so whatever.

I should also note that I'm also extremely comfortable on jitsi as it is the video-conferencing option of choice for my regular RPG group. So, it was weird for me to have so many problems connecting.  I blame my own unfamiliarity with my new tech, the new iPad. 

Jitsi is just like zooming or Google hanging out so I had a lovely time chatting with my fellow writers in the meet-up.  We all used the chat function to exchange Twitter handles so now I'm Twitter friends with a half-dozen new people, which is wonderful.  By CHANCE I ended up in a room full of people who either loved cyberpunk or quirky religious stuff and so I did a thing I never normally do when not on panels, which is I pitched my own writing. I had the very weird experience of people saying, "Oh, I've heard people talking about Archangel Protocol before," which... only at WisCON, because, seriously, no one else has ever heard of me.

I have really discovered that I have no problem whatsoever connecting with virtual strangers on the internet any more than I do in real life. This is where being an uber-extrovert comes in handy. 

So, I ended the evening feeling like WisCON was a really fun con to be at virtually. It will be interesting to see how today progresses.

I wonder, however, how other people are doing with it?