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Even after 38 years, the Creating Change conference matters now more than ever

✇LGBTQ Nation
Daniel Villarreal

Over 2,000 queer activists and organizers from across the U.S. descended on Washington, D.C., last week to attend Creating Change, the nation’s foremost political, leadership, and skills-building conference for the LGBTQ+ movement. The event marked the conference’s 38th annual gathering since it began in 1988.

If you’ve never been, the six-day conference features over 100 workshops and caucuses, day-long identity-based institutes led by community educators, keynote presentations by distinguished activists, and awards ceremonies honoring trailblazing queer civil rights pioneers.

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The conference is a cross-generational gathering of activists, offering queer people with diverse intersectional identities a chance to connect, commiserate, strategize, and heal. While many of the attendees are seasoned community organizers and educators, many are also committed allies or queer community members who have never experienced a predominantly queer space that is so spiritually, politically, and even sexually charged (as the conference hosts numerous sessions and workshops on sexual health, kink, sex work, and more).

Other LGBTQ+ publications I have worked for in the past have sometimes shied away from covering the conference, seeing its happenings as “too activist-y” and “insider baseball” that detracts from the more “clickable” churn of breaking political news (and its usual villains and outrages).

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Participants smile during a presentation at the 2024 Creating Change conference.
Participants smile during a presentation at the 2024 Creating Change conference. | photo by Camille Farrah Lenain / reprinted with permission from The LGBTQ National Task Force

However, this year, LGBTQ Nation tapped journalist Tyler Reed to cover several thought-provoking sessions and the annual State of the Movement address from Kierra Johnson, president of the National LGBTQ Task Force (the organization that puts on Creating Change), to hear about the challenges facing our community this year and beyond.  

Rather than viewing Creating Change as an event only for hardcore activists, we think the conference embodies some of the best of our community’s diversity and strength. The conference has increasingly acknowledged the sovereignty of the queer Native American community, offered meal vouchers and conference scholarships to aid attendance by marginalized community members, and fostered cross-generational educational opportunities so that younger activists can learn from seasoned veterans about the best strategies for healing and resistance.

These skills and considerations will help our community remain as robust, healthy, and united as it will need to be to face off against the corrupt and cruel policies of the current presidential administration. Indeed, the Creating Change conference remains a vital part of our community’s backbone, not only for the opportunities it provides its attendees, but also for the skills and connections they take home and use to benefit diverse and marginalized communities nationwide.

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Handheld Steering Wheel Controller Gets Force-Feedback

✇hackaday.com
Bryan Cockfield

For a full-fledged, bells-and-whistles driving simulator a number of unique human interface devices are needed, from pedals and shifters to the steering wheel. These steering wheels often have force feedback, with a small motor inside that can provide resistance to a user’s input that feels the same way that a steering wheel on a real car would. Inexpensive or small joysticks often omit this feature, but [Jason] has figured out a way to bring this to even the smallest game controllers.

The mechanism at the center of his controller is a DC motor out of an inkjet printer. Inkjet printers have a lot of these motors paired with rotary encoders for precision control, which is exactly what is needed here. A rotary encoder can determine the precise position of the controller’s wheel, and the motor can provide an appropriate resistive force depending on what is going on in the game. The motors out of a printer aren’t plug-and-play, though. They also need an H-bridge so they can get driven in either direction, and the entire mechanism is connected to an Arduino in the base of the controller to easily communicate with a computer over USB.

In testing the controller does behave like its larger, more expensive cousins, providing feedback to the driver and showing that it’s ready for one’s racing game of choice. It’s an excellent project for those who are space-constrained or who like to game on the go, but if you have more space available you might also want to check out [Jason]’s larger version built from a power drill instead parts from an inkjet.

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