BiCon 2013

This should brighten up your Monday morning… it’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for!

The workshop programme for the BiCon 2013 is now available as a PDF download: check it out now!

The session titles don’t give much away in some cases but have no fear: a special session guide will be available to download before BiCon so you can have a read about each workshop and start thinking about which sessions you might like to attend. Keep an eye on our Twitter and Facebook accounts for this, and if you’ve registered, you’ll be emailed a copy in the week before BiCon. (If you haven’t registered, there’s still time to do so for non-residential passes!)

There will also be print copies available of the session guide at BiCon itself.

In addition to the official workshops in the schedule, there are a couple self-organised off-site sessions which will be publicised at reception during the event, along with details of how to sign up for them.

Please note that although this is an accurate programme at the moment, there may be last minute changes, but anything we alter will be publicised around the reception desk during BiCon itself and in the Morning Update each day.

As past attendees will know, there’s usually a BiCon Ball on Saturday evening, and it sometimes has a theme, and this year, we’ll be maintaining this semi-tradition with the theme of Feeling Fantastic!

Ask yourself, what makes you feel fantastic? – and go with it! Whether it’s who you are inside, who you fantasise about being, or anything else – just as long as it makes you feel fantastic! Full of rainbows and sparkles? Let’s see the bright colours and glitter! Tomboy with an inner femme bursting to get out? We want to know! Perhaps you’re geek and proud… but you don’t tell anyone that you like to paint. Now’s your chance to come out and play, whoever you are, or whoever you would like to be!

The idea of having a ball theme is to get your creative juices flowing when planning your wardrobes for the weekend. Getting dressed up is a great form of expressing yourself, especially at BiCon, where it’s hard to be “too weird” – and self-expression is exactly what the Ball is all about… but do remember that the theme isstrictly optional and you’ll be welcome at BiCon and the Ball whether you choose to come in Edinburgh’s sparkliest ballgown or shorts and t-shirt (well, we can hope for more sunshine, can’t we?)

DIY Disco!

In addition to the BiCon Ball, we’ll be having music on Friday and Saturday nights, and instead of the usual set-up where we have DJs controlling our music all night, we’re throwing it out to the community to decide what gets played on the dancefloor this year! If you fancy putting together a playlist of your favourite music, email your name, phone number, artist names, song titles and length of tracks to email address removed by Thursday 4th July, and if your playlist is chosen, you’ll get an email from Mat to arrange getting your tracks from him. We’ll have a notice in the registration area to advertise the running order, so that you can make sure your friends are on the dancefloor when your music is playing.

Playlists need to be 20 minutes or less, have songs that are free from very offensive language and work well together. One playlist per person!

The dancefloor will be open from 8pm til half past midnight on both Friday and Saturday nights, with the bar closing at midnight.

Movie Night

It gets even better! On top of the music, we’ll have a film night from 8 til midnight on Friday and Saturday, hosted by the Scottish Transgender Alliance. There’ll be a wide range of short and feature-length films celebrating gender diversity and bisexuality for participants to choose between, and of course, we welcome you tobring along your own favourites for inclusion.

We hope to open the BiCon registration desk at about 2pm on Thursday, and finish around about 2pm again on Sunday.

These times are not fixed in stone and if there are any alterations to either start or finishing time, we’ll post about it on the BiCon 2013 Twitter feed and BiCon 2013 Facebook page.

On Thursday, there will be a socialising space in one of the venue’s bars during the evening, but there will not be any official sessions. This is because we don’t have access to the main venue building on that day.

If you arrive before the evening space opens, and don’t want to sit around chatting, the extinct volcano known as Arthur’s Seat, which offers amazing views over the city, and the Royal Commonwealth Pool are both close to the site. (And of course, there’s plenty more things to do in central Edinburgh as well.)

On Sunday, if the weather is good, we hope to continue the BiCon tradition of a last day picnic to finish up any food, and again, there are plenty of things to do if you are leaving Edinburgh later.