On Welcoming

[mrissa]

We have been talking a lot, around my house, about welcoming, about conventions and communities and welcoming people into them. I keep saying a thing that sounds tautological and yet strikes me as important, which is: if you don’t welcome people, they will not feel welcome. Welcoming is a thing that someone has to do. It does not spring up of

Comments

[laurel]

Oh sure. I oversimplified here, my document also encouraged folks who've been around awhile to be more welcoming and ways they might do so and so on. I think. I may be remembering wrong I've written so many "Con 101" sorts of things as well as "can't we all get along" things and "we should be more welcoming" things.

I have done a lot a lot a lot of welcoming stuff for Minicon and Minn-StF for example over the years. Even when it's hard. I got burned out on it for a time. But I think some of it has helped at least a little bit. I haven't had the spoons to do much in recent years, alas.

As for the point of gatherings, it depends on the gathering I suspect. Some conventions actually have more of a "show" model where you go there to watch events or programming and wouldn't necessarily be interacting much with those around you as you did so. Not my sort of con, though my first cons were this sort. But there are times when I'm at more of your typical fan-run con where I would like to just sit in a panel and listen and not have to interact with people at all, but I'm weird like that.