Worldcon in the Meeting Press

[kevin_standlee]

My thanks to Bob Daverin and Ben Yalow on the SMOFS list, who were able to locate the current locations of two articles originally published in Meeting News giving Worldcon good coverage:

The Science of Unconventional Planning

Born Into a Love of Science Fiction (a sidebar to the above article)

And one article about the woes of the Seattle in 2002 Worldcon bid that we have to hope hotels and convention centers won't read when we come calling on them with proposals:

Sci-Fi Saga In Starwood-Swollen Seattle

Comments

[palatinate.livejournal.com]

It's good to get positive coverage and especially coverage from people who actually make some effort to understand what we're about - although I did find the comment "He's edited books for the New England Science Fiction Association, which publishes works of dubious commercial merit ..." somewhat odd!

Dubious Commercial Merit?

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

You're right that is not the most ringing endorsement ever written. There certainly are other more positive ways of describing specialty small press publishing!

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Favorite tidbit: we're SMERFs.

SMERFs

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Yep. Bruce Farr and other Phoenix-area conrunners used to run a conrunning convention called SMERFcon.

[debgeisler.livejournal.com]

I was at NEMICE today -- the New England Meetings Industry Conference & Exposition -- and picked up a lot of tasty bits from suppliers all over our region. People asked me what I did, and I told them "teach courses in meeting planning...and run SMERFs on a volunteer basis." Only one person didn't understand -- he was a guy from the tall ship company in town, who was clearly "not one of us" (where "us" were meeting planners and suppliers).

I explained...and he seemed relieved that we weren't blue.

[saphyre-blue.livejournal.com]

On that Seattle article at least it is from 1989 and we can mention that it is severely out of date. The manager quoted Yogi is no longer with Starwood. The convention center and surrounding hotels are very interested in a Worldcon coming to Seattle. This year they hosted our local Anime con Sakuracon.

Bobbie

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Yes, I should have mentioned that, I guess. I think the point was that when we're trying to present ourselves as well-behaved SMERFs to the meeting industry, we should cite the first two articles (the first one in particular).

If someone ever cites the third article back at us -- as they might if they decided to search that site for references to "science fiction" -- we can explain, as you did, that it appears to have been specifically a matter of individual personalities, and that the situation in question no longer applies.

This is similar to how anyone trying to get 501(c)(3) status for a fannish non-profit conrunning group would be well-advised to know about:

1. Cleveland Creative Creative Arts Guild v. Commissioner (50 T.C.M. (CCH) 272 (1985); not online that I can find), which established why non-profit tax-exempt groups can operate art shows where individual artists make private profit through the sale of their artwork. Cite this in support of your application. (SFSFC included it up front in our original Form 1023 application, so the IRS inspector could easily find it.)

2. St. Louis Science Fiction Limited v. Commissioner (49 T.C.M. (CCH) 1126 (1985).), also known as the Archon case, where Archon's parent organization put a big KICK ME sign on their Form 1023 application, got rejected, and took it up to the tax court and lost. Don't cite this one in your application, but be prepared to refute it if the IRS inspector cites it as a potential reason for denying an application. And they might, as it's one of the few cases involving groups of our sort that ever made it up to the Tax Court.

[saphyre-blue.livejournal.com]

Excellent information! I did not notice but is this material by anychance Tagged for conrunners?

Tag, I'm It

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

The only tag on this message is "Worldcon." I don't know if there are other tags that would help.

[blackfyr.livejournal.com]

You might want to keep track of this link to a PDF with a discussion of the CCAG case taking up most of page 22 complete with footnotes.