Update on planning for BiCon 2024 – it's happening, but later!

The first in the series of events we now call BiCon was held at the start of December 1984, so 2024 sees the fortieth anniversary.

With no Pride event happening in London in 1998, this makes BiCon the UK’s longest continuously running annual LGBTQ+ event!

Although there is no-one running a residential BiCon this year, there was no way that we (OK, Ian W) were going to let that record go.

So we are looking to have a BiCon in London, close to the anniversary.

It will be held over a weekend.

It will be non-residential and, if you don’t live in London, you will have to sort out accommodation yourself.

While that will make the event different to recent ones, it makes the event possible: as anyone who has run one knows, dealing with the accommodation for a BiCon is more than half of the work, even after you have found a suitable venue.

The first six BiCons were all non-residential, as were BiCons 8 and 9. Before this year, the most recent non-residential one was 12 which was held in 1994*, so it will be thirty years since the last one.. another significant anniversary!

Don’t miss it.

We should have more information, including the dates, by the end of August. And if you want to help run this, please get in touch!

* if you are wondering how BiCon 12 could happen ten years after the first one, there were two in 1985, the only time that has happened.

Update on planning for BiCon 2025 – team still needed!

Following our last announcement, a potential team came forward to run BiCon 2025, but unfortunately they have now had to withdraw. We are therefore still looking for volunteers to take on planning and running a BiCon next year.

If you are interested, please get in touch. If you do so, please also give us permission to pass on your contact details to others who also get in touch, so that we can speedily link you up.

We are hoping that next year's BiCon can be residential, if possible, but we remain open to new ideas, formats and ways of running the event.

We look forward to hearing from you!

It's 2024! So you may be wondering when BiCon 2024 is going to be.

At BiCon 2023 a group came forward offering to plan a future BiCon. However, they no longer feel able to form a team to run a BiCon, as no further volunteers have come forward. BiCons can only happen when there are volunteers to run them, and finding venues that fit all our needs is getting harder and harder.

Because of these difficulties, it is clear that there won't be a BiCon in its traditional residential form in 2024.

If  there is to be a BiCon in some form in 2024, we need people to come  forward to run it. We are aware of some people who are  considering this. We are open to alternative plans, which might include  a non-residential event (for one or more days) or an online-only event.  It would be fine to have two things called BiCon in one year, so one  in-person and one online-only event are options, as is a hybrid event.  Any event would need to follow the BiCon Guidelines.

We  are very much hoping that a residential BiCon will happen in 2025. For  this to be possible, a team needs to be in place soon, well before  summer 2024. Many venues need to be booked 12-18 months in advance. We  are open to proposals from a team, including variations on the  traditional format.

So, please talk to  your friends and let us know if you have a potential team for either 2024 or 2025. If you have a few people but not enough for a team, we may  be able to help find more volunteers (no guarantee though!).

Continuity’s 2023 AGM will be was on 1st October 2023 at 2pm on Zoom.

PUBLIC MINUTES of the GENERAL MEETING of BICON CONTINUITY LIMITED

(Unapproved minutes subject to approval at next AGM)

1. Housekeeping around the use of the Video Conferencing software

    Brief organisational note.

2. Election of a Chair of the Meeting

    A member volunteered. There were no other candidates and objections. The member was duly elected as Chair.

3. Quorum check

    The current quorum is 5. Sufficient Members were in attendance (see agenda item 5.)

4. Appointment of a Minute Taker to the Meeting

    Ian Jackson volunteered. There were no other candidates and objections. Ian Jackson was duly appointed as Minute Taker.

5. Recording Attendance

    Members present: 12
    Non-members present: 1
    Apologies received: 2

6. Consideration as to whether any non-members of the company should be granted speaking rights.

    Proposed and approved by consensus (no objections):
      Everyone in attendance to be granted speaking rights, subject to Chair's discretion. One specific member was granted speaking rights.

7. Election of Directors/Trustees

    Reported: the following directors were co-opted in September 2023:
      Ian Jackson
      David Matthewman
      Ian Watters
    Their term would end at the AGM unless they are elected.

    The following directors are standing down:
      Marsh Penman
      Karen McAtamney

    The other directors are (in order of first becoming director):
      Anna Sharman
      Asha Wolfe-Robinson

    The following three directors were standing for election:
      Ian Jackson
      David Matthewman
      Ian Watters

    Each candidate was invited to make a short statement, and the attendees given the opportunity to ask questions.

    The candidates were asked about their attitude/approach towards disagreement /consensus. Constructive disagreement, without getting stuck, was encouraged.

    The Chair proposed to elect Ian Watters.
      in favour: many
      against: none
      abstention: one proxy abstention
    Carried by show of hands. Ian Watters duly elected.

    The Chair proposed to elect David Matthewman.
      in favour: many
      against: none
      abstaining: one, David Matthewman
    Carried by show of hands. David Matthewman duly elected.

    The Chair proposed to elect Ian Jackson.
      in favour: many
      against: none
      abstention: one, Ian Jackson.
    Carried by show of hands. Ian Jackson duly elected.

8. Finance

    The treasury/accounts volunteer presented finances, via screenshare of a spreadsheet.

    There was a short discussion of our reserves: notably, the timing of BiCon versus our financial year varies, so the changes in reserves from one year end to the next can be misleading.

    Reported: We expect a venue deposit to be about GBP 12,000 – 15,000.

    The volunteer is still happy to run finances. We have adequately many directors and delegated volunteers with access to the bank account.

    The volunteer's report was accepted by the meeting, and they were thanked for their continuing work.

9. Directors' update

    Report:

    Minimal activity by directors this year. We're hoping with fresh influx of directors more will be achievable next year. There was an in-person directors' meeting in July.

    HMRC may want us to do a corporation tax return. The Directors would like a volunteer with more accounting experience, and/or recommendations for an accountant.

10. Volunteers

    We've had quite a lot of help from volunteers, but we would like more, if and when the Directors send out a call. There is a mailing list and a Slack, for volunteers and members.

    The Slack is bicon-continuity.slack.com; the announcements mailing list is https://groups.io/g/biconcontinuityannouncements

10. BiCon 2023

    We had a BiCon. It went well. The 2023 BiCon lost a little money. Final accounts are TBD.

    There was a short discussion of the two motions from the 2023 BiCon Decides (DMP).

    Thanks to the 2023 team from the chair and the meeting for running successful convention under difficult conditions.

11. BiCon 2024/25

    Update on 2024/25: Conversations are ongoing. 2024/25 may be a different shape.

    We encourage the community to volunteer, and to support organising teams.

    David Matthewman volunteered to be point of contact between Continuity and prospective organising teams. (Teams should contact info@biconcontinuity.org.uk, which will reach David.)

12. Any other Business

    Report: there are people trying to improve communication between current and past teams and volunteers, and our repository of experience. Thanks from to those people for motivating and coordinating this project, and for being enthusiastic and motivational.

    The Chair pointed out that the request for a volunteer to Chair the meeting should ideally be made in advance. They are happy to chair 2024's AGM as long as they can be involved in the AGM planning to enable clearer chairing.

(Minute-taker's note: this version of the minutes is for publication on the Bicon Continuity Limited website. As agreed at the AGM itself, it omits people's names, other than the names of the Directors, in line with the GDPR.)

Do you want to help make BiCons happen in 2024 or 2025?

It would be brilliant if the first BiCon Decides (Bicon's annual decision-making meeting) had well developed proposals to run a BiCon in 2024 and/or 2025. If you're potentially interested in being involved in making BiCon 2024 or 2025 happen, read on – you don't have to commit yourself yet, and you can volunteer in a small way or a large one.

Running BiCon is a big job, but some priorities are more important than others. We expect that any team will continue to prioritise access, particularly around continuing and growing anti-racism work, handling conduct well, and challenging unacceptable behaviour.
Outside of that there is a lot of freedom for a team to create a BiCon that perhaps involves less effort by the team in advance.

We’re open to teams who want to suggest running a less “traditional” BiCon as well those who want to organise one in what’s become the usual way. Some ideas have already been suggested about ways to make BiCon a bit less work for volunteers, which we’re happy to share with anyone who’s interested, but we want the shape of BiCon to be led by the community, of which teams are very much a part.

If you want to propose running a solely online event or a hybrid one not at a university and/or without onsite accommodation, we want to hear from you. Finding a venue is always one of the harder jobs for teams and we don’t have very much up to date community knowledge of venues (other than perhaps Leeds Beckett from 2022 and Nottingham Trent from this year), so do feel free to make enquiries with venues. You do not need approval to run a Bicon from BiCon Decides or Continuity to scope out venues or to form a provisional team. We’re putting this call for teams out now, as this is a good time to be making enquiries with venues for events in 2024 / 2025.

If you are interested in taking on an organising role that extends beyond a single BiCon as part of helping to ensure better carryover of knowledge between teams, we also want to hear from you.

If you’re potentially interested in leading or being part of a team please email info@biconcontinuity.org.uk You don’t have to commit yourself yet – we’re happy to have a chat about it and share more details of what’s involved. We can put people in touch with each other (if they aren’t already).