Hello Skepticontown!

Sorry it’s been a while since we’ve posted, but rest assured that we have been diligently working on your favorite (are at least a close second…maybe even third) conference evar!

Some news for you:

1. We are THISCLOSE to finalizing who is speaking at SK6 and hoo dang, it’s gonna be good. We’ll be releasing names in June, so look out for the information then!
2. Our good pal Jerry DeWitt has this documentary on Kickstarter on what it has been like to come out as an atheist in his small community, you can see the trailer here. Warning: it’s amazeballs.
3. The schedule for this year is not yet set in stone, but we will have that by July just in case you were wondering when a certain someone will be speaking or when you can get your drank on.
4. We think you look really good today, is that a new shirt?

Until next time!

Love,

Skepticon

The money donated will not only fund the entirety of the center’s expenses for a year in which more than 1,000 people will be tested, but will also assist them in buying a house to run the facility rent free.

If you sat down and thoughtfully listened to Tony Pinn’s talk on the Fight Against Theism, teared up as JT Eberhard proposed on stage at the end of his talk, or even if you were one of the asshole commenters on Rebecca Watson’s tear down of popular evolutionary psychology, then we owe you our thanks. Especially if you accidentally clicked a link or you weren’t using Adblock. Double especiallies if you shared the link on Facebook and/or Reddit.

Also, we’d specifically like to thank the speakers for allowing us to monetize their videos wherever possible. Particularly anyone who’s talk generated 30 Reddit threads in less than a year that eventually direct everyone back to the video.

Skepticon would really like to give a hand to Rob for putting all of this together. He is an invaluable resource that puts countless hours of work filming, editing, uploading and maintaining the videos from past events.

Tonight, Skepticon would like you all to don your favorite bed sheet as a cape and jump off the couch.

Why?

Because now we’re all saving lives and it’s about damn time we dress the part.

To do this, just visit skepticon.org on any iOS device. Then click the share button at the bottom of the screen…

Then click the Add to Homescreen button

Tada! Now you have dino goodness right on your screen!

]]> http://skepticon.org/add-skepticon-org-to-the-home-screen-on-your-ios-device/feed/ 2 http://skepticon.org/tgif-sk6-hotel-information-released/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=tgif-sk6-hotel-information-released http://skepticon.org/tgif-sk6-hotel-information-released/#comments Fri, 22 Mar 2013 20:19:19 +0000 Lauren Lane http://skepticon.org/?p=2228 You can follow this link to reserve your hotel rooms or use the code SKPT13 when you reserve online or over the phone. We here at Skepticon HQ hope that you all have a great weekend full of skepticism and awesomeness. And donuts. Aaaaand bacon. Love, Skepticon]]> Happy Friday everyone!

I am happy to announce the hotel information for Skepticon 6!

Accommodations will be at the University Plaza Hotel Center that is across from the Expo Center. You can follow this link to reserve your hotel rooms or use the code SKPT13 when you reserve online or over the phone.

We here at Skepticon HQ hope that you all have a great weekend full of skepticism and awesomeness. And donuts. Aaaaand bacon.

Love,

Skepticon

Community Driven

Every penny spent came from somebody just like yourself who visited our donation page at some point, or sent us a check or handed us the money in a dark alley in person, or we spent out of our own shallow pockets. The event itself isn’t cheap either, and sometimes surprise financial obligations spring up and we beg for help.

In an effort to prevent future surprises, we are going to try and push Skepticon donations harder and earlier than ever before. Part of the fun of helping run Skepticon is that we get to be the fun, experimental convention that doesn’t mind breaking a few eggs. One of new and exciting ways to turn our visitors and community into long term financial contributors is about doing something no other convention really does. Well, that we’ve seen anyways.

Transparency

Notice the honesty about turning you into a financial contributor? That’s part of this whole transparency thing we are going to try. We are starting to utilize our web presence more and we’ll try to be more visible within the community IRL and such. Over the past couple months we’ve worked on a series of social media and website goals. Most of these won’t be interesting to you, but the important thing to keep in mind is that we are going to start pushing out more regular, informative updates to what we are doing.

Our website itself needed a redesign, and it now looks fantastic and we all love it, but more importantly it’s functional. We want to use it to try and convert more of our web traffic into the loyal Skeptonite community that spreads like a wildfire. We know that the more people visiting the site, watching past talks on YouTube and seeing Facebook posts means the more potential donors to convert to real donors.

Near future goals for site content (we’ll get to others in later posts):

• Keep this weekly feature going about how we get money, how we spend it, and how much routine things cost. This will essentially be r/mildlyinteresting material to keep you confident in where the money is going, but also serve as a “*POKE*Can you donate again? A little more?”
• Keep our fun Skepticon Facebook active and use it to draw attendee stories we can use for a future weekly feature. We have a lot of site traffic from people who haven’t attended a prior Skepticon and this will hopefully suck them in.
• Keep our Skepticake feature in our weekly lineup. Dropping links to potential speakers and checking to see if anyone is interested, but also getting you excited about things you might have missed in our awesome community.

Feedback

We would definitely like feedback about all of this from you. We want to know what you want to hear about, what you want to know about Skepticon and how it’s produced. Want to know how much those sweet chairs you loved so much in the main hall set us back? Also, if you believe conferences on whole should remain a Man Behind a Curtain, we want to know that too.

Skepticon 6

November 15-17th 2013

Springfield, MO

At the Springfield Expo Center

We’re still finalizing our hotel deal, but check back on February 18th and we’ll have that ready to go.

Can’t wait to see you all in the fall!

Love,

Skepticon

P.S.–If you like us, you can support us by donating here! :D