The ABCs of Attending Charmed! - A through M
Will Charmed!2024 be your first kink event? Or your first event full stop? Here is a short primer to guide you through the experience.
A - Attendance
How will you attend Charmed!2024? In-person? Online? In-person and online? All three of these are options! Charmed!2024 is a hybrid convention, which means that we plan to stream most of our classes. Some of those classes will be recorded and re-broadcast over the weekend, so that people who missed them the first time around have a second chance. All streamed content is available to every convention attendee – in-person attendees are welcome to watch streamed content via their own computers from the comfort of their hotel rooms.
B - Before the Convention
Register for whichever attendance option works for you!
If attending in-person:
Reserve your hotel room!
If you haven’t done so already, join our Discord server!
Arrange your travel!
Make sure your Covid vaccinations are up to date and that you have a test to take in the three days leading up to your arrival!
Make sure that you have enough well-fitting masks (like N95s or KN94s) for the entire weekend!
If you’re attending virtually:
If you haven’t done so already, join our Discord server!
When it’s available, verify your identity on the event server!
If haven’t got it already, sign up for Zoom!
C - Consent
At Charmed!2024 (both in-person and online) consent needs to be:
informed, affirmative, and revocable. Any scene, play, or hypnotic interaction between two or more attendees needs to be negotiated with those benchmarks in mind.
Consent standards need to be generally observed as well. For example, attendees need to have consent before they:
Touch another person, even in non-sexual ways
Touch or handle another person’s property, be it human property or toys/equipment/clothing
Insert themselves into or interrupt a scene in progress
Involve another person in their scene or non-scene activity
The entire consent policy can be read HERE on our website.
D - Discord
Although information about Charmed!2024 is being released through multiple sources, being a member of our Discord server is a vital step in being fully informed for the convention. In the months leading up to Charmed!, Discord is the best way to get to know your fellow attendees! It’s where you’ll find things like a general chat full of people with experience attending conventions, and closer to the event, room-share and ride-share channels . For the convention itself, we’ll have a special event server that attendees will be invited to join sometime in December. All communications, updates, and class links will be made only in the event server! You can join our regular server HERE
E - Etiquette
Navigating a new space, whether it be online or in-person, can be daunting, especially when there might be rules that you don’t know about. If you’ve never attended a kinky convention before (and Charmed!2024 qualifies!) here are some things to keep in mind.
Everyone will be using a scene name. Very few people attend a kink con using their “real world” name. This is usually for safety and security reasons; reactions from non-kink people to anything kink-related can range from “that’s weird” to “burn it with fire” and it’s not an exaggeration to say that there are people who have been outed as kinky who have had their lives ruined– losing their jobs, relationships, and children in the process.
Observation and use of diverse pronouns is our standard. You’ll have the opportunity to put your pronouns on your badge (or in your ID on Discord) and we expect you to use the correct pronouns for every person you encounter. You may encounter a pronoun you’ve never seen before, if this happens, do your best to remember it and correct yourself immediately if you accidentally use the wrong one.
Any and all hypnosis must happen with prior negotiation and consent. This means that trying out your killer handshake induction on a random, unsuspecting stranger is expressly against the rules. It also means that our convention is off-limits to non-attendees! Our door dragons (volunteers who guard each entrance to the official convention space) will be checking the badges of every single person who passes them, and if you don’t have your badge you don’t get to go in. Trying to involve other hotel guests (or staff!) in your hypno-hijinks is also against the rules.
F - Food
Our hotel has its own restaurant that offers room service, but your food options are far broader than that! Most of the guest rooms have mini-fridges, and it’s not unusual for attendees to get a weekend’s worth of groceries and forgo restaurants entirely.
Another popular choice is to order meals using a delivery service app. There are many restaurant options near our hotel, which give attendees many options for take-out, dine-in, and to try to have a sit-down meal with a large group in under an hour because you’re strapped for time…
… yes, that last thing is something that people try to do, and my official advice is that you never get done in under an hour. Like, ever.
G - Gaming
As in board games, card games, role-playing games, etc. There will almost certainly be a place for gaming, which may or may not be in our con suite (a social-gathering space provided by the con for basic chilling and hanging out.) In past years, we’ve had gaming as an evening event, and I’d be shocked if that wasn’t the case again in 2024.
H - Hotel
I am not going to tell you where our hotel is at this time. (If you read that in Peter Falk’s voice, then you know where my head goes anytime I use the phrase “at this time”.)
For security reasons we do not share the name or exact location of our hotel with non-attendees. This means you’ll find out what it is after you’ve registered! Here’s what I can tell you: Location: Annapolis, Maryland. The hotel is within walking distance or very short driving distance of local shops and restaurants. Cost: $104.00 per night + tax $117.52 per night with tax. Payment is due when you physically check in, in person, at the hotel. Upgrades: Upgrades may be available but are not guaranteed. If any possible upgrades are available you will be prompted by the hotel site to apply after you've registered. You will not know if you are receiving an upgrade until you physically check in, in person, at the hotel. Possible Upgrades: Early Check-in: $25 (one time charge) King Corner Room: $42 (nightly up charge) Junior Suite with King Bed: $77 (nightly up charge) How to reserve a room: After you've registered for the convention, you will receive a confirmation email. At the very bottom of that email you will find a direct link to our discounted hotel rooms. Please, unless you have a very compelling reason not to, use that link to reserve your room! Filling a pre-specified number of rooms is part of our contract with the hotel. You must be 21 to reserve a room! Please note that discounted rooms are available from Wed January 10 through Tues January 16. You will need to edit the days of your stay when you are reserving a room through our form. Check In is at 4pm Check Out is at 12pm Cancellation Policy You can cancel your reservation any time before 11:59pm local time on January 7, 2024. Amenities On-site Restaurant w/room service Mini Fridges Microwaves Fitness Center Free Parking Free WiFi Digital Key (for Hilton Honors members)
Accessible rooms are available; to request one you’ll need to contact the hotel directly.
I - Important Links
Registration: https://bit.ly/46JXxjW Volunteer Application (includes Consent Team) -- https://forms.gle/3ZHTPjXwLSAvcXa97 Presenter Application/Class Proposals -- https://pretalx.com/charmed2024/cfp Official Website: https://charmedhypno.org/ Charmed!ChitChat (The Official Charmed! Newsletter): https://open.substack.com/pub/charmedhypnocon/p/charmed-chitchat-18a?r=2dd9vo&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
J - January
Charmed!2024 will be Martin Luther King Jr. Day weekend: Thursday, January 11th through Sunday, January 14th. Monday the 15th is MLK Day and many people have the day off, so you can expect to see attendees staying after the con officially ends on Sunday and traveling home on Monday. If you’re trying to decide when to leave, staying Sunday night for a final evening with friends is often the highlight of the con for people.
Annapolis weather in January is usually briskly cold, with an average high temperature of 45 degrees Fahrenheit ( 7 degrees Celsius), and definite possibilities of snow. If it snows, it will be inches, not feet, and the only real impact on con attendees will happen when it comes time to travel. If there are major storms during Charmed!2024, attendees traveling by air will definitely want to keep an eye on their flight statuses!
K - Kink
Charmed!2024 is a kinky con. While everyone’s level of kinky engagement with hypnosis is different (for example, some people play almost exclusively in the “recreational-with-no-kink-elements pool, and others do not necessarily equate “erotic” with “kinky”) overall our convention celebrates kinky erotic hypnosis. Our schedule and attendees reflect that! You might have the opportunity to attend classes that were developed in a BDSM background, showing power exchange relationships or the intersection of hypnosis with other disciplines like shibari, dollplay, and forced chastity. (There are also classes that don’t have anything to do with kink or BDSM; we do try to have something for everyone!)
L - Lobby
As a kink con, it’s very important for us and our attendees to maintain a low profile in non-event spaces of the hotel like the lobby. In non convention spaces, we ask that attendees do their best not to invite direct attention. Again, for some people, being outed as kinky in their vanilla life can have devastating consequences. Outside of official conspace, we ask that attendees do things like flip their badges over so they can’t be read easily, keep discussions that graphically describe their hypnosis hijinks private, and cover their kinkier outfits with a coat or robe when traveling to conspace.
Non-attendees always try to enter conspace at some point or another, that’s why we have door dragons. Our goal is to keep these interactions to the barest minimum.
M - Masking
For health reasons, Charmed!2024 will continue to be a masked conference. This means that everyone inside con space will be required to wear a well-fitting mask like an N95 or KN94. We will also be requiring that attendees be masked in our badge pick up area, which is in a public part of the hotel. Presenters may remove their masks when they are presenting a class. We acknowledge that many events and locations around the world have acceded to the public opinion that masking is no longer necessary, but we have a high number of immunocompromised people that attend our event and we refuse to endanger them by ignoring the reality that Covid is still a threat.
Attendees will also need to be fully vaccinated for Covid, and will need to provide proof of a negative Covid test result to registration staff when picking up their badge.
Attendees are welcome to make their own decisions about whether or not to mask outside of conspace.
The ABCs of Attending Charmed! - N through Z will be available on August 15th
