Official International Wrong Planet Conference / Festival

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Hallo I'm new.

I wish Alex and the others would update this more often.
It makes me excited to think about something like this ^_^

Yeah! I'm not sure how I could help. But I want to! I make really good coffee!

On a more serious note, I would love to hear Temple Grandin speak. She is the reason I found my Aspergers. She speaks alot about autism and how it helps and hinders her.

I personally think its next to impossible to get a large number of Aspies to agree on anything LOL. I like the idea of having two major conferences and being linked so that we can all, sort of, be together. Like one in Europe and one in the US. I cant travel at all right now but I would love to come.....and the good coffee is a real pull in for me

there's a site where you can form a group for the purpose of meeting up together. Using this site you can try it out on a smaller scale and no money since a meetup can be held in a park as a potluck or something. The site is meetup dot com. Yes, I know people spam but this is real. I'm a member of four groups though this site, which by the way, it has allowed me to socialise at my own speed and it's helping me a lot. I'm in a local hiking club here and three vegetarian based groups here in Chicago. These groups have their meetups and I can decide if i want to go to whichever ones.

A conference seems like a major task without any experience to getting it done. You might want to try it this way and go slow.

Not sure if you have any specific ideas of performers/speakers, but I know that Peter Tork, of Monkees fame, has Asperger's and has a blues type band. He has stated that he loves doing venues such as this, and he would probably be a good speaker as well.

I also know that there has been a lot of discussion about the location, and while I would love to see it in a more central location, as well as a location that was not such a sensory overload, it needs to be held, at least initially near to the people that are responsible for organizing it.

Yes, there's the strip and downtown but other than that, there'a lots of Vegas which is actually laid back desert culture. Also, Vegas has cheap airfare and hotels, Californians can drive there. One problem with Vegas is that Amtrak doesn't go there, you have to switch to Greyhound part way and for those of us that have no interest in being microwaved and child molested by TSA at the airport, planes are a no-go.

There's one other thing that I think you should concider. My vegetarian club in Chicago has over 2000 members and yet most meetups are only attended by less than a hundred people and this is local, where it's easy to attend. Apparently there are a lot of people that think they want to meetup but in reality they don't and you just have to know that Aspie's would be even more inclined towards this than most. For me, I kinda of have to force myself to attend a meetup. Seemingly just having to do my laundry is a good enough excuse to not go lol. You get into a kind of comfortable isolation and it takes a lot of willpower to break out. You wonder 'why am I doing this, I'm OK right where i am right now' lol.

Of course we all know why we would even concider an Aspie meetup and it because it's difficult for others to understand the challenges we deal with and so we wonder if a relationship with another Aspie would be the thing and so we hope to find our S.O. at the meetup.

Why doesn't this site have a dating thing like Eharmony?

New and very interested in a meetup like this. Obviously Alex alone has voice enough to submit a call to action in this regard. Thusly I believe it can be quite successful.

It would attract media coverage and that is excellent. It would also be nice to have a physical forum to discuss activism and such. I for one am looking back on 32 years of suffering and I cannot bear to think that so many others are going through the same, wasting their talent for basic survival.

Thusly I am in. I am working in Alaska for the summer but in the meantime, as well as when I return, I can help with Seattle area organizing, fundraising, carpooling and advertising efforts. I do not know many traditionally diagnosed aspies but I have family on the autism spectrum both dx'ed and un dx'ed.

I also come with a lawyer. I know many people in the medical profession that may be willing to donate small amounts.

It would help to have a letter of intent, a PO box for supporters to mail checks to and a bank account for those checks to be deposited in.

Frankly the above statement seems like a good set of baby steps.

Also accountability should be established. An NPO or something similiar can be set up with relative ease. This would protect Alex from consequences of failure in the event that the event did not eventualize. There would have to be some way to return the monies if it for some reason cannot be used for the reasons they were submitted.

I believe I have a lawyer willing to do the work pro-bono.

Organizers, should I check with my lawyer to see if this is something he is willing to do? If so, who should he contact? Or to whom should I remit his contact information?

Oh and also I believe an outdoor, free of charge satellite tent city is a good idea. To this end if I am able to be there physically my experiences with Occupy Seattle could lend wisdom to such an endeavour.

Oh and I can supply and staff a medical tent/station.

I want to know, when and where will it be happening?

I'd LOVE to go to a WrongPlanet convention!

sounds great ¡¡ good luck

If you can hookup with someone who runs conventions such as anime, comic, sci-fi, etc., most of these get sponsors. Not very good at this myself. I've tried to learn, but you have to get hooked in with the right group of people and a bunch of other stuff. The most I can say I definitely is reliable experience to learn/help out with registration. Big numbers don't bother me. . .

I would also suggest starting small and building up. You could have like a tour of events too rather than one event that tries to get everyone from all over the nation. Start with areas you're familiar with. That's usually how most things develop- start small and get bigger. Might be worth networking with other organization(s) that already have establishments/networking, etc. Definitely advantages and disadvantages to that. Got to think about your time and energy too.

I'm really pleased to be involved in attempting to make this a reality. I'm currently crunching the numbers and will be in charge of approving the musical talent for this project. It's gonna be better than talent show stuff. The acts will be better than the current professionals so many of us have become accustomed to. I will not be kind in my choosing. Top of the line artists only...and they will be on the spectrum.

Anyway, I wanna give a shout out to Alex Plank and Evan for sticking your proverbial toes in the water to get this happening. This is gonna be big! Stay tuned for updates. This is goin' down in 2013!