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Logistics

The following applied to the 2023 event, and will be updated all at once as the 2024 event draws near.

Late Registrations

We have had four pricing tiers for registration: Supporter, Early Bird, Standard, and Late Registration. All are now sold out except for Late Registration, which is $300.

We offered plans with Lodging and No Lodging, but Late Registration only has No Lodging available. We’ve finalized paying for the food and lodging based on the attendees who applied so far, and that’s all that we will have available. So, those who apply late will need to arrange their own lodging and not partake of the food we provide to attendees.

Also, we are running severely short on time slots in which to present. Each time slot has a session happening on the stage and another session happening in the couches-and-armchairs area. It will help if what you create and bring to the event is an exhibit which you bring physically, rather than giving a talk.

Note-- some attendees have offered to share their assigned space in the AirBnB in order to admit a friend to Fluidity Forum, and we are grateful to them for their generous impulse. However, the operators of both of our AirBnBs have set strict limits on the number of people who sleep there. (Visiting during the day is fine.) In one sense, they are not at capacity, in that it is physically possible for people to share the space assigned to them. In another sense, they are at capacity, no matter where the occupants sleep, and the operators enforce that number with video cameras pointed at the entrance doors.

Our application form is now closed. However, you may still apply by emailing contact at fluidity dot com with your answers to the following questions:

  • What is your name, or the name you wish to go by?
  • What do you hope to get out of Fluidity Forum?
  • What would you like to create and bring to Fluidity Forum?
  • What major city are you closest to?
  • What projects are you working on? What are your specific interests or focus if any? Or to put it another way, what’s your deal?
  • What else would you like to tell us about yourself?
  • Do you need financial assistance (lowering the cost)?
  • In the “How We Measure Success” part of the Vision page, we briefly outlined five expectations. Please confirm you’ve read them. What do you think of them?

We will approve or reject your application as soon as possible, at which point we’ll send you the following links:

Discord server

Fluidity Forum has a Discord server, where we have conversations by turns enjoyable and practical. We did things like collect the preferences of attendees about when they want their presentations to happen, or coordinating group video calls throughout the year. It’s often the first place new information will go. If our Discord invitation link to you is expired, or if you can’t find it, please contact us at the email address which we used to email you your application acceptance and we’ll give you a new invitation.

Travel to and from the airport

Fluidity Forum has arranged for registered attendees in all ticket packages for a minivan to take you and your luggage to and from the airport, DTW (Detroit Metro Airport, in Romulus, Michigan).

The minivan service will mainly be available Friday, September 22, and Sunday, September 24, but we can work something out for Thursday through Monday. (You must contact us to occupy our limited sleeping arrangements on Sunday night. Please see Sleeping Arrangements below for more details.)~~

Here are the times when the van is currently scheduled to pick up attendees at the airport:

Thursday 8:00pm and 10:45pm
Friday 8:00am, 2:30pm, & 3:30pm
Saturday 5:30am

Here are the times when the van is currently scheduled to depart for the airport:

Sunday 4:00pm & 6:00pm
Monday 2:00pm, 4:00pm & 6:30pm

If you provide your own transportation, an Uber from Detroit’s airport (in Romulus) to our AirBnB and venue (in the center of Detroit) costs an estimated $43, one-way (20 miles).

Carpool Schedule

Van arrives at airport:

  • Thursday 8:00pm and 10:45pm
  • Friday 8:00am, 2:30pm, & 3:30pm
  • Saturday 5:30am

Van departs for airport:

  • Sunday 4:00pm & 6:00pm
  • Monday 2:00pm, 4:00pm & 6:30pm

Function space venue

Sessions will take place at The Congregation, 9321 Rosa Parks Blvd, Detroit, MI 48206. It’s a historic church building in a nice neighborhood of Detroit, which was converted to a cafe. We are renting the downstairs floor, which is a rec center room.

The upstairs sanctuary space will continue to conduct cafe business during the event. There is a large patio and a yard full of picnic tables. We have also reserved the picnic shelter next door, for things like movement meditation and the play-fighting session.

Here’s a map of our function space, divided into two areas for two simultaneous sessions at a time. One area is a stage with eyes-front seating, and the other is a circle of couches and armchairs. Each area will have a projector with screen. One of the projectors accommodates aspect ratios of 4:3/16:9, and the other one, 4:3/16:10/16:9. They accept HDMI. Each area will also have a video camera to record sessions, and a separate battery-powered audio recorder (so we have two streams of audio for remixing later).

Fluidity Forum session space floor plan

Sleeping arrangements

We have two AirBnBs. If you’re a registered attendee, you’ll be sent the address of your AirBnB before you leave for Detroit. Each attendee has been assigned a place to sleep.

One sleeps 20 people, and will host the after party at 10pm on Saturday night. It’s 1.4 miles from the function space venue, on Grand Boulevard.

The other AirBnB is an apartment that sleeps 4, and is for those who wish to sleep early and wake early. It’s 1 mile from the venue, on West Euclid in the charming North Lasalle neighborhood.

If you are a registered attendee, you should have received a form asking for your sleeping preferences, to determine whether you get a room with a door or sleep behind a privacy screen, or to be the only person sleeping in a room, whether you want the stay-up-late-and-sleep-in AirBnB or the sleep-early-rise-early AirBnB, or whether you get a bed, a bunkbed, a couch, or an air mattress behind a privacy screen.

We used that to assign beds, and then we posted images to the #general channel on the Fluidity Forum Discord of a map of everyone’s sleeping arrangements.

We will have a limited amount of carpooling to the AirBnBs during the day, and beyond that attendees may use a ride share service.

We have 3pm noon check-in on Friday, and 11am check-out on Sunday at the main AirBnB on Grand Boulevard. We will move your luggage to our secondary smaller AirBnB on Euclid (the operator is very friendly to us, and happy for us to do this). We can also store some luggage in Fluidity Forum’s cargo van if necessary.

Those who are flying out on Monday may sleep in the Euclid AirBnB, with checkout at 11am on Monday morning, or at Matt Arnold’s house 1.5 miles from the venue in the North End neighborhood.

Food

Our function space venue is providing some catering, plus we are making a Sam’s Club run for refreshments to provide near our function space at all times.

Upstairs, our venue will be running their full cafe while our event happens in the downstairs rec center room, so attendees can patronize their business, although Fluidity Forum cannot cover this. Doordash is also an available option if desired.

You’re also extremely welcome to provide food. Even though our venue serves food and drinks, we have a specific contractual stipulation that we may bring in our own. That’s what three attendees are providing in lieu of giving a talk (homemade kombucha, homemade bread, and homemade fruit preserves).

Here’s what we’re providing:

Catering by The Congregation:

  • Friday:

    • Assorted Wraps

  • Saturday morning:

    • Bagels with Cream Cheese
    • Drip Coffee Tote

  • Saturday afternoon & evening:

    • Assorted Wraps
    • Hummus and Tabouli
    • Flatbread

  • Sunday:

    • Bagels with Cream Cheese
    • Drip Coffee Tote

From Sam’s Club:

  • popcorn, 112 bags (4 packages of 28 each)
  • granola bars, 128 bars (2 packages of 64 each)
  • trail mix, 112 bags (4 packages of 28 each)
  • cookie variety pack, 48 (2 packs of 24 each)
  • half and half, 4 64-oz cartons
  • water, 48 bottles
  • 1 pack of 35 cans for each of these:
  • Coke, Diet Coke, Sprite, Diet Sprite, Dr. Pepper, Diet Dr. Pepper, Vernors Ginger Ale, Diet Vernors Mountain Dew, Diet Mountain Dew

I’m going to keep my espresso machine at the main AirBnB during the weekend for attendees to use.