FanFair Day 1

The day started off with an Orientation Brunch and I left right after I eat and before the orientation, it is the same talk that they give every year so I wasn’t interested in sticking around for it. Instead I went grocery shopping and bought some stuff to have in my room for the week.

I wanted to attend the keynote address by Nick Adams who is Director of Transgender Media & Representation at GLAAD but life got in the way, I got some type of stomach bug and I didn’t want to get too far away from my room.

In the evening I went to the Virginia Prince Transgender Pioneer Award Banquet where they honored where they will honor Gwen Smith and Martine Rothblatt. Dallas Denny gave the introduction and the award to Gwen Smith and she gave a short speech.

In her introduction Ms. Dallas talked about Ms. Smith’s history as an activists and of her many accomplishments,

Gwendolyn Ann Smith has been an advocate for the transgender community for most of her adult life, with a focus on the trans community on the internet, as well as in honoring those we have lost due to anti-transgender violence. Starting in 1992, she lobbied America Online, getting the company to change its policies and allow discussions on gender issues on their service. This led to the creation of the first public forum on a major online service, the Transgender Community Forum, one year later. This service allowed thousands of transgender people worldwide to connect on a daily basis. With the rise of the World Wide Web, Gwen began to provide web management for many within the community, creating sites for the Southern Comfort Conference, for transgender photographer Loren Cameron and many others, pioneering the early transgender web. She is still involved on transgender internet projects, serving as the managing editor for Genderfork. Her best known work on the Internet, however, is Remembering Our Dead, a project founded in 1998 to chronicle the scourge of anti-transgender murders. Through this project, Gwen founded the Transgender Day of Remembrance. The event, now 18 years old, is honored in hundreds of locations across the country and worldwide. Gwen also writes a column on transgender issues and ideas for the Bay Area Reporter in San Francisco, California. Her column, Transmissions, has been running biweekly since 2000. Her essay, “We’re all someone’s freak” is also featured in the book Gender Outlaws, edited by S. Bear Bergman and Kate Bornstein.

According to Wikipedia Martine Rothblatt,

Martine Aliana Rothblatt (born 1954) is an American lawyer, author, and entrepreneur. Rothblatt graduated from University of California, Los Angeles with a combined law and MBA degree in 1981, then began work in Washington, D.C., first in the field of communications satellite law, and eventually in life sciences projects like the Human Genome Project. She is the founder and Chairwoman of the Board of United Therapeutics. She was also the CEO of GeoStar and the creator of SiriusXM Satellite Radio

They also had an auction to raise money for their scholarship program and raised over $900 for it.

Today Ms. Smith is giving the keynote talk.