OCALICon 2017 – Part 1

For those who don’t know OCALICon is an Autism and Disabilities conference, held at the Columbus Convention Center, in Ohio. I first found out about it in 2015, as one of the Autistic bloggers I follow was a panelist. I had wanted to attend in 2016, but unfortunately I wasn’t able to due to lack of funds. I finally got to attend this year as a vendor.

Signing up to be a vendor was relatively easy. The event coordinator was very easy to work with and answered any questions I had relatively quickly. He was also very accommodating when I mentioned I cannot do phone calls, so we stuck to email communication. I very much prefer written communication most of the time.

The event was a Wednesday through Friday thing. They had setup for vendors on Tuesday, but I wasn’t able to make it down for that. We set up very early Wednesday morning, as in a little after 6am early. My friend Brick came as my table helper.

On day 1, we got there sometime around 6:30 or so, I think. We got in and parked relatively easily. Though I parked in a garage I had never been in, in my 12-13 years of attending events at the same venue. The entrance to the convention center from the garage was in the newly renovated added on area, so that was a little disorienting for me. Once we figured out where the elevators were we found our way to the vendor hall easily. OCALI did have lots of signs pointing the way which was great. Once outside the vendor hall, one of the volunteers helped us find the event coordinator I mentioned before.Once inside and with the event coordinator, he took us over to get our badges. Then let us borrow a cart to get our heavier items over to our booth more easily.

When we got to our booth we discussed how we wanted to set it up. We decided to make 2 tall towers out of cubes. The one on the left had our #REDInstead sign facing the A$ booth (they somehow ended up diagonal from us, but luckily they just set out leaflets and didn’t actually have anyone manning the booth). It also had a shelf where we put my Autism Pocket Guides for people to take. On the shelf below that was various weighted plushies. The cube tower on the right we hung chewable jewelry and various other fidgets. And on the table we had another smaller cube with my pins and Brick’s chainmail items on it. On the table itself we had various bins filled with stim/fidget stuff.  We ended up finishing set up a tiny bit after the room opened for attendees at 9am.

I will continue with how the day 1 went and the other two days in another post.

Milestones Autism Conference

In a couple of weeks I will be attending the Milestones Autism Conference here in Cleveland. Another one of my Autistic friends is going with me. I imagine we are going to be quite annoyed and pissed off most of the time, just from what I have read of some of the panel content. But unless more Autistics start going to these things, they are not going to change. They are going to keep talking about us without us there.

I am planning on wearing my “I’m an Autistic Event Planner” shirt one of the days. And possibly my “Autistic Faerie” one the second day, though that may change. Going to be bringing my small backpack filled with stim toys and my ear defenders. Also will have my business cards for this blog to hand out. AND a new thing I just made today and sent to print. I decided I should make up a “Pocket Guide for Autism Acceptance”, which has various information on stimming, echolalia, functioning labels, identity first language, and executive functioning in a short easy to read format. So I will be handing those out as well since an Autistic perspective is very needed at these sorts of events.

I hope I can make a good impact on some of the people I will be interacting with at this conference. And help change some minds on any outdated or false information that some people may have on Autism in general.

Conventions

This weekend I will be going to Ohayocon.

I have been attending this convention since I was 15; I am now almost 28. Even though it’s not one of the best conventions, I go to see all the friends I have made over the years during it. When I was younger and before my diagnosis, going to conventions had been where I found my people – others like me. Many of these friends were also undiagnosed Autistics and didn’t realize it until I got diagnosed and started talking about autism things.

I have found that fandom conventions in general have a lot of Autistic attendees, as they are a place where we can be super geeky and info-dump about special interests, yet mostly no one bats an eye. Normally in public settings I am very shy/reserved and I try to hide. I do not “people” very well at all. On the other hand, at conventions I am very outgoing and am very much in my element. Also, without fail, some “muggle” will come ask me about the convention – no matter if it’s one I am staff at or not.

I have been attending conventions almost half my life now. They are a huge part of my life; so much so that my husband and I got married at TrotCon 2014, which is the one we own/run. It just made sense, as both of us have been attending conventions forever now.

I do hope I continue to make more friends by attending conventions.