That was amazing! We got applications for over 250 people from every continent except antarctica (snubbed by the penguins!). This is such an amazing group of people with such diverse backgrounds and ideas.
The applications are closed now, and we will be going through them and trying to figure out how to accommodate as many people as possible!
Application Rundown
From a quick peek at the application summary, here’s some fun quick stats about people who applied!
Places
We had people from every continent apply! (well except antarctica!) Most applications came from SE Asia, Europe, and North American.
Genders
108 female-ish identifying applicants
28 non-binary / other
10 unknown
105 male-ish identifying applicants
Types of things you do
This was one of the coolest parts of this conference. We attracted folks with a crazy wide variety of talents and most people spanned multiple aspects of this conference based at intersections between interaction design, field biology, and art.
Over half the people identified as some sort of artist or designer, at least a third each seemed to relate as biologists or some kind of tech folks, and 13 of you were too amazing to be summed up in any of our boxes except that one box 😉
Timings
now this is the trickiest thing for us people running this thing, how can we get as many awesome excited people as possible to join us. Earlier I had joked that i will have to do some heavy logistics in case 100 people signed up to come for one week. uh oH! Currently each of these weeks can only hold 30 people :/
Sponsors
Awesome sponsored raised over $2500 USD! adding to our initial budget of just $6800 for renting out the place
This money is helping us out do things like
- Provide a couple travel stipends to some cool participants from far away!
- pay some documentarians to help us capture the whole event!
- Add sustainability measures to our conference (like industrial water purifiers instead of using tons of plastic bottles)
- and lots more!
Expanders!
–So our conference is free! we got your housing covered, your food covered, and there’s not even “registration” fees. You just have to get there. At this basic level we have a big house we are renting (that can hold 10 people) and a big yard (that can hold 20). As of right now, these are the logistics we are planning for. There are several other cabins at Baan Mai, however that you can rent for ~45$USD per night. We are trying to see if we can rent some of these cabins, or more camping space at a reduced rate, but they can be slow to make deals with. But if you are an applicant interested in paying for their own room/housing while at the conference, please send me a note! This would potentially free up space for more participants to join us in total.
–What happens after Jan 30?
- We will look over the applications! My goal is to try to get as many of you here as possible! We had a LOT of folks apply though, so we are rushing to figure out how much we can expand it if possible. Logistics are going to be our big challenge here
- Refine dates period- lots of people have asked me about changing dates, we may send out a more refined survey to learn exactly what days everyone is planning on coming
- We will send your official acceptances (or waitlistings) in February (will try to make this as soon as possible, but bear with us)
- Refine your details period
- You will need to fill out a form to make any revisions to your project proposals
- You can revise any of your personal details and contact info (we will only use the personal info you give us, so you can make up pseudonyms or whatever you want).
- You will also send in a photo you want us to share related to you or your project
- you will also send in a SUPER SHORT 3 sentence bio (most node leaders already have this taken care of.
- you will select a publication type – see below
- Publishing Projects -You will have a choice after you are accepted of how we publish your project on our site (the goal is to connect you all to each other, so we want to get started on that!).
- Public-Web / print, Public-Group – This will be the default. We will list your projects and yourselves on our website in a way similar to how we have the node leaders listed at www.dinacon.org/people
- Anonymous-Web / print, Public group – If you want, we can leave your personal details or contact information off the website, and still leave up descriptions of your project and the timeframe you are going to be there (so maybe people can coordinate with you). You will still be included internally with our group mailing lists for better coordination.
- Waiver- we will have a basic waiver you need to sign that just says you acknowledge that you are entirely responsible for your own self and safety and such.
- Code of Conduct: We will have a code of conduct you need to agree to about how you are required to be nice to your fellow people on the island (or we will literally kick you off the island!)
- Deposit – as noted in the FAQ, we want to make sure those people signed up and accepted actually show up to claim the space we reserved for them . http://www.dinacon.org/faq So we will have you give us a 20$USD deposit that we can give you back on the island (probably in baht).
