The Whipper Snapper!
Newsletter of the Leather Leadership Conference XI
Minneapolis April 20-22 2007
Vol. 1 Number 2
Register today! The price goes up on March 1st.
In this issue:
- Important info on LLC hotel registration
- Tee shirt update
- This Is Your Brain On Leather
- Volunteer at LLC
- Poster Session and Artists application deadlines extended
- You can announce your business in LLCXI program!
- Ground Transportation info
- Out Front MN Lobby Day at the Capitol
Your editor also thought we would include some kinky Minnesota humor for those who are not familiar with our upper Mid-west sense of humor. So look for these quips contributed by local kinksters between articles!
You know you are a Kinky Minnesotan if…
you go to a Play
party and half the people there
are talking about LLC instead of playing!
1. THERE IS PLENTY OF HOTEL SPACE AVAILALE FOR LLC XI
You’re coming to Minneapolis for LLC and you want to be close to the
action! It’s easy to reserve a hotel room for LLCXI online. You
can reserve your room when you register for the conference or contact the
hotel online:
If you call the hotel directly to reserve a room make sure to
specify that you are part of LLC
You know you are a Kinky Minnesotan if… the safeword is "Uffda"
2. THE TEE SHIRT EVERYONE WANTS TO BE SEEN IN!
Of course
you want to be wearing the One and Only LLCXI Tee Shirt, but there are only
two ways to get one. You can order one ahead of time and pick it up when
you arrive or you can order wait to receive yours afterwards. In other
words we will NOT be selling Tee Shirts on site. Please look for the
T-shirt design on the LLC website.
You know you are a Kinky Minnesotan if…
you
check the temperature before you wear vinyl.
3 THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ON LEATHER
Lots of Food for Thought at LLC XI
By Steve Lenius Reprinted from Lavender Magazine
It has been said that the body's largest sex organ is the brain.
Members of the leather/BDSM/fetish community tend to understand this, and put that understanding to good (sometimes diabolical) use in the bedroom, playroom or dungeon. Even outside of play situations, our community has a sparkling and active intellectual life. The Minnesota Leather Pride Committee has, over the years, sponsored evening roundtable discussions on various leather-related topics. Attendance has always been good and the discussions have been spirited.
Now the eleventh annual Leather Leadership Conference promises to take things to another level. The conference, scheduled for April 20-22, 2007, will bring leather/BDSM/fetish community members from around the world to Minneapolis. Participants in this year's LLC will be able to choose from a menu of thirty different presentations, workshops, and panel discussions (painstakingly distilled from over 70 proposals), and from among six different caucuses, or group discussions. (Only a few of the workshops are listed below. Click here to see the complete list.)
In keeping with the artistic bent of this year's conference theme The Art of Sharing Power… A Work in Progress, presentations at this year's LLC have been arranged into six different groupings named for various types of mosaics, all of which Minnesotans and other mid-westerners will readily recognize. The first mosaic, Crop Art, includes presentations dealing with organizational themes. Crop art is composed of seeds and seeds, properly nurtured, grow into a healthy plant. Likewise, proper organizational nurturing yields a strong and stable organization. Crop Art presentations include Leadership for leather community leaders, When consent doesn't count decriminalizing consensual BDSM behavior, and Leadership vs. Management.
The Sand mosaic includes presentations about event planning. Sand mandalas (introduced to Minnesota by Tibetan immigrants) and leather events both require enormous amounts of coordinated effort and planning resulting in a beautiful and vibrant, yet transitory, creation. When a mandala is completed, the four winds eventually scatter the sand, which will never be reassembled in quite the same fashion. Likewise, at the end of a leather event the participants return home with inspiration and memories of a beautiful gathering that can never be exactly repeated. Sand presentations at LLC XI include creating equitable educational events for any size community and putting sex back into leather.
Presentations dealing with community outreach, publicity and promotion are included in the Quilting and fabric art mosaic. Quilting bees have historically been used to bind members of a community together and to welcome newcomers into the community. Quilts and other types of fabric art have long been used to communicate within a community and to document its history. Quilting and fabric art presentations at LLC XI include Outreach from the BDSM community: effective communication with police, hospitals and social service agencies and Citizen Kinkster developing community using tools of the new media.
One of the questions often asked by newcomers to the leather/BDSM/ fetish community is Where do I fit in? Presentations for newcomers, or for those working with newcomers, are included in the Tile and ceramic mosaic. These large mosaics often cover a breathtaking expanse, yet each one of the millions of pieces is perfectly integrated and plays its part in creating the dazzling whole. Tile and ceramic presentations include supporting young adults in alternative sexual lifestyles, creating the gender-safe kink organization, Leather youth leadership organizing our community, and Mentoring sowing seeds to grow the next crop of leaders.
Presentations about presenters? But of course (or, to be Minnesotan, you betcha) they're included in the Glass mosaic. Presenters are educators, and for hundreds of years stained-glass windows have been used as educational tools. Presenters also need to promote themselves in order to get speaking engagements, and mosaics of glass tubes filled with glowing neon represent attention-getting promotional devices. Glass presentations include You get what you pay for: the value of good education, Developing skills-based presenters, Understanding sexual freedom as a leather leader, and Getting it out there (presented by Mistress Amanda Wildefyre, author and performer of Confessions of a Lesbian Dominatrix
Finally, Stone mosaics represent the very foundation of our community: personal growth, the history and philosophy of leather, and relationship issues. These basics give us the capacity to create the other types of mosaics listed above. Stone presentations include Sleeping with the competition sharing power with rival groups, Submissives in Leadership, and Planning for relationship changes.
In addition to these workshops and caucuses, the conference will include
an opening keynote by noted photographer and activist Barbara Nitke, a closing
keynote by International Mr. Leather 2003 John Pendal, an opening cabaret
emceed by Patrick Scully, optional pre-conference workshops, and an optional
Saturday breakfast with speaker Laura Antoniou, internationally acclaimed
author of the Marketplace series of erotic novels.
You can find full details on Leather
Leadership Conference XI, including
a complete listing and more details on the various mosaics and workshops.
You know you are a Kinky Minnesotan
if…
the
term "hot dish" can be used to describe both your
potluck contribution
and your date for the evening.
4. Calling all Volunteers
LLCXI IS LOOKING FOR A FEW GOOD KINKSTERS
Well, actually
quite a few! We need volunteers.
We will offer training in each of the jobs, and tour the hotel before the
conference. The volunteer jobs include:
Thursday Conference Prep:
We need 5 people to assist with setting up.
Thursday Night Reception:
We need a total of 10 people for various duties: set up, break down,
servers, and guides.
Preconference Institute:
We need a total of 7 people
Cabaret:
We need 4-5 people
Information/Registration Desk:
We need a total of 4 people
Room Monitors:
We need a total of 36 people
Poster Session/Art Gallery:
We need a total of 10 people
Security
Ideally, we would like to find one or two who would act as head of Security
for the entire weekend. Additionally, we would like to have 7-10 people
help with Security.
Sunday Tear Down:
We could use several people; we are not sure exactly how many at this time.
You can download the volunteer questionnaire and more complete information
at the LLC Website
Please contact us at llcvolunteers@gmail.com with
questions/comments.
You know you are a kinky Minnesotan if…
Boot worship
might involve salt residue
5. IT’S NOT TOO LATE
TO APPLY FOR POSTER SESSIONS and TO DISPLAY YOUR ART
The deadline
for the applications to display your art and for the Poster session has been
extended to March 1st! So what the heck is a poster session anyway? I’m
glad you asked! It's an opportunity for organizations to set up a small
display and chat with folks about your group. OK, think back to grade
school and the Science Fair. You made your diorama about the life cycle
of a newt and then you stood by it as people wandered thru and answered questions. Poster
Sessions are just like that except that nobody wins a prize and well OK no
newts, unless of course, that’s your kink.
You can
download the Artists and Poster Session applications on the LLC website.
You know you are a kinky Minnesotan when
the bearskin rug in
front of your cabin's fireplace
is splattered with wax droppings.
6. YOU CAN ANNOUNCE YOUR KINKY BUSINESS IN THE LLC PROGRAM!
For program
announcement rates and placement contact: promotion@leatherleadership.org
You know you are a kinky Minnesotan if… knife play involves cleaning Bambi's during hunting season.
7. EVERYTHING YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW
ABOUT…
GETTING TO MINNEAPOLIS AND LLC XI . . .
And getting to the host hotel once you’re here
If you're attending Leather Leadership Conference XI in Minneapolis (April 20-22, 2007), you have several options for travel to Minneapolis. You can fly; you can drive; or you can take Amtrak.
AIR
The Minneapolis/St. Paul International Airport was *the* star of the 1970 movie Airport, which paved the way for the disaster film as we now know it. (Since 1970, however, the airport has seen much construction and expansion, so it no longer looks like the airport in the film.)
The Minneapolis/St. Paul International Airport consists of two terminals. The Lindbergh terminal is the larger, main terminal providing gates to major airlines, while the Humphrey terminal provides gates to budget and charter airlines. It will be important to know which terminal your arrival flight will fly into, and more important to know which terminal your departure flight will fly out of.
Once your flight gets to the Minneapolis/St. Paul International Airport, you will need ground transportation to get to the host hotel, the Hyatt Regency in downtown Minneapolis (1300 Nicollet Mall, (612) 370-1234). The airport's website lists many ground transportation options. Here are the highlights--see the airport's website for more information:
1. If you don't have a lot of luggage and the weather is nice, take the Minneapolis Light Rail train from the airport to downtown. There is a stop at 5th St. and Nicollet Ave. in downtown Minneapolis that is eight blocks from the host hotel. It will cost you all of $2 or so. Service is every 8-10 minutes during peak times and every 10-15 minutes at other times. The ride takes about 25 minutes to downtown.
(Be aware that light-rail service at the airport is currently only from the Lindbergh terminal. The Humphrey terminal's light-rail stop is closed for construction of an adjacent parking ramp, but there is free shuttle service to the Lindbergh terminal where you can catch the light rail to downtown.)
2. If you don't feel like hauling luggage on the train or don't want to walk from the train to the hotel (a very pleasant walk down the Nicollet Mall), the Hyatt (and all the other downtown hotels) use SuperShuttle for airport transportation. Fare is $14 one way. No reservations are necessary from the Lindbergh terminal (the main terminal)--just go directly to their pickup point. From the looks of their website, no reservations are needed from the Humphrey terminal (for charter and low-fare carriers) either, but you must find a courtesy phone and call for pickup.
3. Cabs are available but will be expensive--$25, $35 or even more to get to downtown. (All cabs from the airport are obtained from the cab starter--one does not just hail a cab at the airport.)
DRIVING
Driving to LLC might be an attractive option, especially if you live in the Midwest. You can travel by freeway or find a scenic route if you've got more time. (One possibility: a pleasant drive through southeastern Minnesota along the Mississippi River on Highway 61.)
Minneapolis/St. Paul are at the confluence of two major freeways: I-94 running basically east-west and I-35 running basically north-south. Be aware that once you reach the Minneapolis/St. Paul metropolitan area, I-35 splits into I-35E (St. Paul) and I-35W (Minneapolis, which is probably the one you want if you're coming to LLC).
Parking is available at the Hyatt for $12 a day; the rate is the same whether or not you are a registered hotel guest. On-street parking in the neighborhood of the Hyatt might or might not be available.
AMTRAK
When considering travel plans, don't overlook the possibility of intercity rail travel, especially if you're coming from Chicago, Madison, Milwaukee, Portland or Seattle. Amtrak's Empire Builder connects all those cities and more. The cost is reasonable, the views out the windows of the train can be breathtakingly beautiful, and it can be a relaxing way to travel. (Yes, Amtrak occasionally has horror stories, but so do the airlines.)
The Empire Builder stops at the Minneapolis/St. Paul Amtrak terminal in the Midway area of St. Paul. City bus service runs on University Avenue two blocks from the Amtrak terminal, but considering that the train arrives from Chicago and points south at about 10:30 at night, it's not really practical. That means your only real option to get from the Amtrak terminal to the Hyatt is to grab a cab at the Amtrak terminal. The fare to downtown Minneapolis will probably be $20 to $25.
You know you are a Kinky Minnesotan if…
you
are at a play party and everyone is
excited because there are lemon bars
8. APRIL 19 IS OUT FRONT MINNESOTA LOBBY DAY AT THE CAPITOL!
Thursday
is not only the Opening Night Reception for LLCXI, but also OutFront Minnesota's
Lobby Day at the Minnesota State Capitol in St. Paul. For More info on
Lobby Day check out: http://www.outfront.org/action/lobbyday.html If
anyone is interested in participating, we will endeavor to find hosts and rides
to the event.
Coming in future additions
Minneapolis Restaurant Options
Anticipated Conference Highlights
We note – the Leather Leadership Conference does NOT sponsor any play parties with this event.
Another group is throwing a couple of parties on Saturday, April 21 – and information may be found at www.tcmayhem.com
Your Promo Co-Chair notes: I make a mean lemon bar! The Whipper Snapper Editor makes a Nutella Cookie that is world-reknowned. Look for these recipes and more at the Poster Session – near the Tea and Strumpets and KinkyCookieBakers display!