Many thanks to Bitch | Lab for writing this press release and Kristi Kane for making edits! Please spread it far and wide, on your own blogs and to any media pals you may have.
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact:
Amber Rhea
Main organizer, Sex 2.0
678-389-9441
Email: sex20con@gmail.com
Web site: www.sex20con.com
Sex 2.0 will explore sexuality, feminism and social media
ATLANTA -- What happens when technology, sex, knowledge, and power enable women to meet up, act up, and hook up like never before? These questions and more are the focus of the Sex 2.0 unconference in Atlanta, Georgia on April 12th, 2008. Held at 1763, a 10,000-square-foot, fully equipped dungeon located 10 miles north of downtown Atlanta, the unconference will feature conversations among activists, social networking pioneers, bloggers, swingers, cruisers, sex futurists and kinksters who have been sexing up Web 2.0 from the beginning -- whether in Bangalore or Bangor, Maine.
Maybe you've heard of Web sites like Facebook, Craigslist, or Flickr. They're all social networking sites, the heart of a revolution in the way people produce and share knowledge, make friends, reach out for support, and create professional and personal networks.
When women need help with health, sexual, or personal problems, where do they turn? In a recent Pew Poll, researchers found that women were more likely to turn to the Web for knowledge and support. (Reference: Pew Internet & American Life Project, "How Women and Men Use the Internet," online at http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Women_and_Men_online.pdf).
It's that heady combination of technology, sex, and knowledge in the hands of women (and men) that fascinates well-known Atlanta-area tech/sex blogger Amber Rhea and inspired her to organize the event. She's not alone. The grassroots unconference will explore these issues with notable and notorious Web-based activists. On April 12, Sex 2.0 participants will:
- Hear keynote speaker Audacia Ray -- blogger, video podcaster, award-winning porn director and author of Naked on the Internet - Hookups, Downloads, and Cashing in on Internet Sexploration.
- Stimulate your "Sex Drive" with Regina Lynn, Wired magazine's sex-tech columnist and author of Sexier Sex: Lessons from the Brave New Sexual Frontier. In her session "How Love/Sex Happens Online," Lynn will explore the powerful and unexpected experiences people have with online lovers and what it all means inside the hearts of geekdom. Because sex is the first use for any new technology, Lynn will demonstrate how to get the most out of your phone, webcam or laptop and how to use your everyday gadgets to enhance intimacy, pleasure and fun.
- Explore sexual relationships that spring from online meeting places like blogs and forums in sessions with sex futurist Melissa Gira, who runs the award-winning sex blog Sexerati, and contributes to $pread, WHORE!, Best Sex Writing 2008, and Dirty Girls.
- Make history with T.A. Hines' session, "A Brief History of Sex." Hines is the irreverent, popular podcaster and Nerve magazine columnist who chronicles her funky brown chick take on sex and New York City in her weekly Internet radio show Dating Roadkill.
- Tempt your inner erotic writer with sex bloggers and writers like Rachel Kramer Bussel, who keeps things tingling at her Lusty Lady blog, and Viviane, who heats up the Web with her blog Viviane's Sex Carnival.
- Mix it up with j. brotherlove, Joseph G., Minx and Ren, who'll host rollicking sessions about online dating, cruising, hooking up, BDSM, and swinging whether for kinksters, sexual, ethnic and racial minorities, straight, curious, and in-between
Rhea says she wants the interactive sessions to be a place where people create the experience they need. "This is not your father's sex conference," she said. "An unconference belongs to the people who come -- double entendre intended."
People are often puzzled by an unconference, said Rhea, but it's almost always an experience that makes you never want to attend an ordinary conference again. "You won't be in a room, sitting on your hands, waiting for a one-way presentation. It's just like sex, really: a powerful interaction between people that makes the experience more than the people involved."
Registration for the event is $10 by February 17, $40 until March 28, and $50 after March 28, with the rest of the cost underwritten by volunteers and sponsors. There are still opportunities for sponsors who want to reach their audience -- people at the center of a new media that's changing the way we live.
Rhea thinks that the approach will attract a wide audience: "Everyone will be there to both raise and answer questions, teach and learn -- you can do both in one session. It's up to you."
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