There have been two BiCons at the University of Edinburgh's Pollock Halls. The first, in 1999 used them for both accommodation and session space. The second, BiCon 2013, had the session space at the John Macintyre Conference Centre.

Both involved dealing with Edinburgh university's 'Edinburgh First' organisation.

In 2013, we fulfilled our end of the contract. They did not.

When that had become clear, this is what was said at the start of one of the plenaries. Unusually for me, it was written down and emailed to myself to read out, otherwise I would have used phrases like "fucking unacceptable" and "don't fucking harm my attendees" a lot.

When I run a BiCon, I try to make it better than last year, and make next year's team wonder 'How can we do better than this?'

What has been happening this year has made that second bit easier than I – and many of you – would like.

BiCon organisation is a series of compromises, but the results of those should not be a surprise to attendees.

Specifically, some of the accommodation is designed like a hotel, not a series of flats, because it is a hotel. It just happens to have students staying in it outside holidays. BiCon hasn't had shared accommodation like that since 1999, the last time we were here. We mentioned it when talking about the venue on the website, but we didn't realise some of the implications.

Combined with being full with two groups – those associated with golf's Open Championship and with language schools for teenagers – as well as us, this means that there is not as much bi space as I and many of you would like.

In terms of people staying on the site, we are a 'one in ten' minority.

The situation was worse on Thursday evening when, faced with paying for access to here, including having our own bar, we did without. We would not have had any access to run the BiCon registration desk here during the afternoon if we hadn't needed to set up the dance floor.

But we didn't have a facility to issue BiCon stuff in the evening, so people arriving then didn't get badges to show they were here for BiCon.

The result has been that many attendees have been feeling unsafe here.

I am happy to talk more about some of the reasons why this happened, later, but..

I am going to say now that I am very unhappy that they were right to feel unsafe.

In the months and weeks before BiCon, we have talked in detail to the venue about the discrimination and prejudice that too many of us are too familiar facing, for multiple reasons. We have also talked to them about our behaviour.

It is not just you who have read the code of conduct. The venue staff who handled the issuing of the room keys so well have read it, for example. That's because as part of our booking, we have had to give the venue it too. They insisted on a change to it.

If you behaved like some of the golf groups, treating us like a freak show, taking photos, and so on, we would do something about it.

People who break our code of conduct will be at least talked to. If someone has been warned before, this year or not, and they break it again, they can expect to be kicked out.

We cannot kick out the golf groups. We will be asking why they are not being held to the same standard.

The venue also know about our child policy – that we expect a responsible adult to be in charge of under 18s.

If a child here behaved as the language students have done, including pissing around in the lifts, deliberately crashing into people, including those with visible disabilities, and, again, treating us like a freak show, we would be having words with the responsible adult.

We cannot do that directly. They appear to be without any proper supervision for much of the time. We will be asking why it appears that the language schools are not being held to even the legally required standards.

While in general, the venue security have been helpful to us, we are aware that there has been at least one example of miscommunication between one set of venue staff and security. We will be asking about that too.

You can help us by telling us about your experiences. If you have had any of this crap, or any other kind, please, please, please tell us. Ideally, write it down and stick it in the Code of Conduct box on the registration desk.

I cannot emphasise enough how much we want to know about things that could spoil your BiCon. You may think some may be your fault, You may think some may be our fault, You may think some may be the fault of others. Doesn't matter, please tell us.

Thank you.