Whew! What a fast paced whirlwind weekend! I am still catching up on my sleep and recovering (I actually think that my thighs will be recovering for several weeks but more on that later). Here are some of the things I remember most about The Floating World 2008 (which I would link to by the way except that they seem to have already ripped the site down for this year):
Classes!🙂 OMG!! I think the offered total was 146 classes over the course of about 60 hours. Classes started at 2p on Friday and ran all the way until 1130 at night on Sunday! I have always LOVED going to events for the classes. In fact many times I would wait to register for an event until I saw what classes were being offered and by whom. If I wasn’t going to learn something new that intrigued or excited me, I’d look for another event. I admit that after 15 years or in the lifestyle and attending national conferences like this for at least 10 years, it gets harder and harder to impress me with a class schedule because many times I glance at one and yawn because I have seen them all before but this event definitely had something for everyone!! I went to great classes by presenters I had either never heard of or gotten a chance to see before and I finally got to catch several classes by presenters I have been dying to see but never had a chance to get to before due to schedule conflicts.
A few of my favorites were “Deep Connection” by Jim Deuder, “Self Actualized Sub” by Aranea, “Elegant Pain” & “Self Defense” by Mojo Daddy, “Cutting Cautery & Sutures”, by Sir Top, “Anatomy for BDSMers” by Jay Wiseman, “Pain is Inevitable, Suffering is Optional” by Lee Harrington (who Brett and I were delighted to be room mating with), “Emotional Edgeplay” by h Gross (more on Lady Catherine later when I tell you about my thighs). And trust me, I barely scratched the surface because there were just so many classes to choose from at every time slot and I was teaching my own classes during three of them! So, yes, it was truly an amazing line up of educational opportunities.
However I do think future schedules could use a bit of tweaking to better line up classes for people interested in particular tracks and offer them a progression of information. For example, I had several people complain to me that they had to choose between my Adaptable Bondage class and Dov’s rope class that were both at 4p on Friday. I also noticed that they had an intermediate to advanced whip class on Friday night and the 101 class on Sunday which didn’t make a lot of sense to me.
Speaking of my classes… they all went great! The first one Friday (Adaptable bondage) had the smallest attendance with about a dozen people (but hey it was Friday at 4p. I think the majority of the attendees arrived after work that night. Saturday morning I premiered a new class called CBT from A- Z in which I ran through the alphabet offering ideas on several dozen types of sensation play for male or female genital and for nipples. Since it was a first run I was really unsure how the timing was going to run and did not get to do as long of a demo as I would like but I got great feedback from many of the 40 or so attendees that said they loved the class so I look forward to offering that one again. My last class on Sunday was the Ecstatic Caning class and that was also quite well attended with over 40 people (some opting to stay in spite of the standing room only conditions) but it was very VERY hard for me to scream over the loud speaker and music of the pony show that was going on on the other side of the curtain. I still think the class went pretty well considering but I would have to say my least favorite part about Floating World is …
The Noise!!🙁 Ughhh I wasn’t crazy about this part last time and well, to be honest, it may be the factor that causes me to drop Floating World from my list of events to do next year. The building the event is held in had very very high metal ceilings and the majority of the classrooms are simply curtained off areas along the sides of the main dungeon area so even though we had somewhere around 30,000 square feet of space, the noise was almost deafening at times! I don’t really know what can be done about the sound quality of the classes rooms in the main space but if I decided not to return to FW to teach next year, this will have most likely been the deciding factor.
The People: Ok so although the attendees were not unique to FW there sure were a heck of a lot of great ones there. I didn’t get the final head count but I heard estimates of upwards around 1000 attendees and I wouldn’t doubt it. I loved seeing so many familiar faces and meeting lots of new folks as well. One of the highlights for me was meeting for the first time someone who I have been talking to almost weekly since FW07. She picked up my coaching card at one of my classes last year and we have been friends ever since but hugging her for the first time was wonderful. 🙂
I also really just love connecting randomly with folks and offering what ever I can to help them along their journey. There was one guy in particular who asked me what I thought about the new flogger he had just picked up (his first one I think) and I spent 20 mins or so offering him some tips on being able to better control where his tails land and what sensations he is producing. It did my heart a lot of good to see how much he improved just from that short little interaction. I really just love spreading the joy! 😀
So all in all I had a truly wonderful time at FW08 and I am going to jump off line to do a coach call and be back later!!!
