One of the most important considerations for running a successful KinkForAll is its venue, the location where the unconference activities takes place. This page outlines considerations that go into looking for, communicating with, choosing, and ultimately using a venue space.
(This page is a stub. Please help by expanding it.)
Choosing a venue
Ask yourself the following questions when appraising a potential choice of venue for KinkForAll events:
- How easy is the venue to get to by car? By public transit? By foot? (Bad example: Must use car over tolled roads. Good example: Single train or bus ride.)
- How sexuality community-neutral is the venue? (Bad example: BDSM/fetish club. Good example: University classroom.)
- How sexuality community-friendly is the venue? (Bad example: Anti-sex Church group. Good example: Sexuality community center.)
- At what times is the venue available? (Bad example: Only open late at night on weekday evenings. Good example: Space available for a full day on the weekend.)
- How much does the venue cost? (Bad example: Premium rates with extra fancy conference amenities. Good example: Pay for only the room itself, source everything else from participants.)
- How unconference-friendly is the venue? (Bad example: strict noise policy and many other events going on close by. Good example: a space that tolerates noise, spontaneous social gatherings in all spaces, and a constant stream of people.)
- How many presentations can occur simultaneously? (Bad example: only enough space for one presentation at a time. Good example: multiple breakout rooms that allow presentations to be run in parallel.)
It is strongly advised to rent the venue for at least a half hour prior to the announced starting time of a KinkForAll so as to give yourself and other participants enough time to physically set up. Similarly, remember to give yourself some amount of reserve time in the venue space for clean up. Typically only 15 to 20 minutes is necessary if everyone chips in to clear chairs, throw trash away, and so forth.
Additional notes
Here are some additional notes with regards to venue selection.
- Smaller rooms more closely packed together are better than larger rooms spread far apart. The more rooms we have, the more presentations we can run simultaneously and the less likely each room needs to be bigger since more people will be more spread across multiple rooms anyway. I.e., increase the number of rooms we have instead of the sizes of the rooms as we expect a local event to grow in attendance.
- Splitting a large room with DIY dividers works in a pinch, but is less than ideal because such dividers often do a poor job of isolating the sound from one presentation from being overheard in another. This makes it difficult for both audience and presenter to focus. (Discussion list thread.)
Images of example venues
KinkForAllProvidence was held in university classrooms. The main room had stadium-style seating.
KinkForAllNewYorkCity was held at an LGBT community center. The main room had fold-out chairs with an obvious stage.
KinkForAllWashingtonDC was held in a public government building's cafeteria. The space was flat and not divided, but large enough to avoid cross-talk from one corner of the space to the other.
