The BiCon DIY Silent Disco

This year BiCon will have a DIY Silent Disco on Friday night. Here's some more about it from organiser Katy…

 

When and where is it?

On the Friday night of BiCon 2018, in the main bar from 9.30-11pm.

What’s a silent disco?

A standard silent disco is one where everyone wears headphones and everyone dances to music from a DJ. It’s just like a normal dance party except that nobody else hears the music, so it’s great for places that don’t allow loud noise.

What’s a DIY silent disco?

  • It’s a silent disco without a DJ or equipment. Instead, anyone who wants to join in brings their phone or some other way to play music, and their own headphones or earbuds. Then we all dance together, but not necessarily to the same songs.

What will I need to bring?

  • Something to play music on – your phone, an MP3 player, etc. If you don’t have anything to play music on but still want to join in, contact us and we’ll try to arrange something.
  • Headphones or earbuds. (Again, if you don’t have any, get in touch and we’ll see what we can sort out.)

What music will I be listening to?

  • We will have public Spotify playlists in different genres available (see the bottom of this post for details) so if you have Spotify you can listen to those. Because everyone will be listening individually, you can skip around between playlists, skip songs, whatever – it’s entirely up to you.
  • You can also bring your own music and listen to that, in whatever format works for you.
  • If you’d like to create a Spotify playlist for other people to use as well if they want to, please feel free! All you need to do is tell people how to find it.
  • You can search Spotify for playlists, but it’s not always reliable, so if you can’t find a playlist on the night by searching BiCon 2018, check the #biconUK hashtag on Twitter for links, or find Katy who can message you links.
  • If you’d like people to know what you’re dancing to, you can Tweet your current song using #biconUK or post to the FaceBook BiCon group – we’ll have a silent disco thread on the night.

Will it be weird that everyone’s listening to different music?

  • Not nearly as weird as you might think. Although the music in everyone’s head is different, it’s surprisingly easy to imagine that we’re all dancing to the same beat. There’s probably some kind of profound message there. 😊

Will people be watching me?

  • No more so than they would be as a traditional disco. It might feel odd for a bit, but that should wear off. And if you do decide it feels too strange, you can stop or take a break at any time, obviously.

What are the advantages of having a DIY silent disco at BiCon?

  • There are a lot of people at BiCon who don’t like hearing loud music in the bar and find it’s hard to talk over. This solves that problem.
  • There are a lot of people at BiCon who have very disparate musical tastes – not surprisingly, since it’s a gathering based around sexuality not musical taste. This means you can dance at BiCon to your own choice of music.

What will it be like in the bar if I’m not taking part in the silent disco?

  • Quieter!
  • If you’re in the bar and not taking part in the silent disco, feel free to enjoy the sight of people dancing just as you would at any disco, but please don’t make anyone feel self-conscious – we’re sure nobody at BiCon would even think of pointing or laughing at anyone, but just for clarity, please don’t. It can be odd watching people dance when you can’t hear the music, but you’ll soon get used to it.

BiCon Spotify 
The free Spotify app won’t work as well for the silent disco because you’ll get ads and can’t skip many songs, but you can pay 99p for a 30 day trial of the paid app and then cancel, and then you’ll get the more useful paid version.
Playlist Links