!!Con West 2020 - Opening Remarks, day 2

Hello! Good morning, everyone! How are you doing? (applause) Good! Cool! Awesome! We have one more day of exciting talks. And I’ll do some housekeeping, some announcements, so first of all, I would like to thank our sponsors. Without them, this wouldn’t be possible. We’re very, very grateful for the generous support. Second, if you can, you should donate to the UCSC Strike Fund. Maggie has put up a sign outside where she’ll be matching donations up to $500, and there are details of how you can help contribute.

01:13 - The other thing is: We have a code of conduct. You can read it on our website. And if… You can either send us an SMS on a number that will be displayed here during the breaks, or you can flag one of us in a yellow T-shirt and talk to us. There’s a Google form online, where you can send in anonymous complaints, if you have them. The other thing is that we have a quiet room. The quiet room is across the courtyard. And if you can’t find it, or don’t know where it is, you can again flag one of us in yellow T-shirts, and we’ll show you the way. The other thing is bathrooms. We have two right outside the auditorium. They’re all-gender restrooms. And we have men’s and women’s restrooms.

02:12 - One on the left, in the left building, and one across the courtyard, again. And if you can’t find them, we can again help you. And I want to invite Maggie to talk about Exclamation Foundation for a few minutes. Woo! Maggie! Thank you. Okay. Everybody take up your thingy. You don’t have to take it off. I’m just taking it off because it was in my way. Turn it over so your name is not facing you.

02:44 - So you may see – and you probably saw this already – it says !!Con West 2020 was brought to you by Exclamation Foundation. So what is the Exclamation Foundation? This past year, we finally incorporated a holding body. !!Con and !!Con West for a while were run out of one of the original organizer’s LLC, which was named Bang Bang Corn, if you’ve seen that name around. Perhaps you’re a sponsor and have seen an invoice from Bang Bang Corn and wondered… I wonder what that is? So now we have an actual holding body.

03:24 - If you’re interested in the details, I’ll share one sentence with you. We’re a non-tax exempt non-profit. So what that means is we have a board. Lindsey is our president. I’m currently treasurer. Julia, who I think is somewhere, is secretary. And we have bylaws that we abide by, and there’s no equity or ownership structure. So we’re not a 501c3. We have thoughts about maybe doing that in the future, so that we can apply for grants and accept personal donations that are tax exempt for individuals. So… Those are the details. If you are curious about more, and if you’re curious about what we’re gonna do with this, and what it means for the future of !!Con and !!Con West, we’re curious too. And we’re figuring it out.

04:11 - If you have ideas that you want to share, I’m happy to hear them. Lindsey is happy to hear them. I’m sure Julia is happy to hear them as well. So come find us and talk to us at one of the breaks. (inaudible) Oh, Lindsey just asked: How do you email the board of the Exclamation Foundation? I believe you can email us at board@exclamation.foundation. And we will get that email. If you go to the website, exclamation.foundation, you will also see a mailing address, which will also come to our email. Because it’s 2020.

04:49 - (laughter) Thank you! Thank you, Maggie! Okay. So I want to introduce our first speaker for today. Erin is a digital scholarship librarian. Her work focuses on digital tools and practices to make education and knowledge production more democratic, collaborative, and publicly engaging. And she is going to be giving our keynote today. So please join me in welcoming Erin for our first keynote today! (applause) .