APW 2013: Opening Ceremonies

APW–or “Ay Pee Dub”, as the kids say¹–is Atlanta Poly Weekend (SFW), and I went to it for $50 and half a hotel room.

Holy. Shit.

What I thought was going to be a pretty cool conference full of pretty cool panels and too-wild parties turned out to be a really friggin’ awesome conference with panels quite relevant to me and people I found pretty amazing. I didn’t end up going to any parties.

What I brought home from the conference is a boatload of thoughts, perspectives, and several new behaviors, some of which I want to write about in a little series:

1. Degendering
2. Codependency and Identity
3. (Mental) Ableism
4. Intellectualism, Anarchy, Privilege, and Power
5. Poly Activism

I’ll update this post to include links to the future posts as they come out.

On a techie note, I wrote about how slick Guidebook seemed before the conference. Guidebook continued to be pretty awesome to use, but a scheduling change mid-morning of the second day of the conference couldn’t work its way to my phone. I got an error about being unable to get the “version” a couple of times, and the schedule never got corrected.

Since it was a small conference, they posted up wall schedules for folks without the app, which was fine enough. I also don’t know where the snafu was, on Guidebook or on how the organizers set up the schedule change, so I’m not particularly inclined to point fingers.

On a sweeter note, the conference turned out to be an event that let me and Gregory do what we do well: geek and reflect on intellectual and emotional stuff. There wasn’t a panel that didn’t spawn some sort of conversation, except for maybe the panel on activism.

In addition to mind-melding with Greg, I got to share stories with folks attending, as well as presenters, all of whom also attended panels. I sat in the lobby and talked with folks about their lives, whether and how they’re out to their colleagues and families, and various shenanigans from living polyamorously.

My worldview is enriched.

And now on to the series.

¹: No one says that.