So perhaps it's time for WorldCon to start thinking of a single location?
The standard response to this question is, "Then it wouldn't be the Worldcon anymore." And I tend to agree.
There is no doubt that one of the contributing factors to the cost of a Worldcon membership is that every year's convention is a 5000-plus member one-shot startup. You could get rid of a bunch of the "overhead" cost, or at least amortize it over time, by doing exactly what Comicon and Dragon*Con have done: hire a few paid staff and run it in the same place every year.
Similarly, the Olympic Games could be made much cheaper to organize if you held them in the same city every four years, with a permanent organization, instead of making them gigantic one-shot events. (The "permanent organization" of the Olympics -- the International Olympic Committee -- doesn't actually operate the various Games. They just authorize local organizing committees to do so. There are a lot of analogies between Olympics and Worldcons.)
All of these things would make them cheaper. Would it make them better? I don't know if I have an answer for that.
For instance, if you happen to live in Southern California, you might say that "Holding the Worldcon in Anaheim every year would make it wonderful!" But would you feel that way if the permanent location was Boston? Or Glasgow? Or Japan, for that matter?
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2006-05-14 06:09 am (UTC)There is no doubt that one of the contributing factors to the cost of a Worldcon membership is that every year's convention is a 5000-plus member one-shot startup. You could get rid of a bunch of the "overhead" cost, or at least amortize it over time, by doing exactly what Comicon and Dragon*Con have done: hire a few paid staff and run it in the same place every year.
Similarly, the Olympic Games could be made much cheaper to organize if you held them in the same city every four years, with a permanent organization, instead of making them gigantic one-shot events. (The "permanent organization" of the Olympics -- the International Olympic Committee -- doesn't actually operate the various Games. They just authorize local organizing committees to do so. There are a lot of analogies between Olympics and Worldcons.)
All of these things would make them cheaper. Would it make them better? I don't know if I have an answer for that.
For instance, if you happen to live in Southern California, you might say that "Holding the Worldcon in Anaheim every year would make it wonderful!" But would you feel that way if the permanent location was Boston? Or Glasgow? Or Japan, for that matter?