As most of you know, Elizabeth has proposed a panel for SXSW Interactive 2008 called Pink Ghetto Blasters: Destigmatizing Sex via Online Community Building which she'll moderate with me, Lux Nightmare, Violet Blue, and Rachel Kramer Bussel as panel members. The online voting process is now drawing to a close; it ends Friday, September 21 at 11:59 PM, Central Time, so as of this writing, that gives us a little less than 36 hours to get all our friends to vote for us. Voting is easy; just go to the link for the panel above, go through a quick registration process, and give us five stars. That's all.
That depends: It will only be a SXSW panel if enough people vote for it, so head over to our SXSW panel picker page and vote! (You'll need to register there to vote, but I promise you it isn't a terrible process, and it's not like you'll have to remember the password for long!)
SXSW (which stands for South By Southwest) is a week-long annual music, film and "emerging technologies" festival that takes place in Austin, TX. The SXSW Interactive festival focuses on the emerging technologies part.
These photos are just a sampling from Viviane's Flickr set. Thanks Viviane!
Me, with co-founder Chris Hall and Rachel Kramer Bussel
Audacia Ray, Lux Nightmare and Rachel Kramer Bussel
I'm sleepy and exhiliarated after our "coming out party" last night. It was really amazing to meet so many friends of Sex in the Public Square face-to-face, in one place and at one time! Your enthusiasm for this project was palpable, and I can't wait to see where that energy takes us.
Slowly throughout the day today and tomorrow we'll be getting pictures together, so if you took any you want to share send them along to me at elizabeth at sexinthepublicsquare dot org or drop me a link to your Flickr page or just let me know where to find your shots.
Here are just a few to get you started. They're of our fabulous speakers, who I really can't thank enough for honoring our project by sharing their work. You really did demonstrate all the different kinds of things we want this site to accomplish!

Lux Nightmare's exploration of the pink ghetto...
Here's the poster for our "Coming Out" party. (Yeah, it's the same party we've been talking about. We just decided "coming out party" sounded better than "launch party. Don't be confused!)
You're coming, right?
(Click on the image for your own poster-sized copy. It's a PDF, so you need Acrobat or something similar.)
Rachel Kramer Bussel is an unavoidable presence in the New York City sex and literary scenes. The woman is an absolute whirlwind of activity; she always has something new in the works, and anyone who's scanned the erotica section of their local books has seen her name a lot, on the spines of books like She's On Top, Up All Night, and Caught Looking. I swear to god the woman is popping some kind of literary Viagra. In addition to all her writing and editing, she also runs a monthly reading series on Manhattan's Lower East Side called In the Flesh.