My Ears Are Burning

[kevin_standlee]

This is, I'm afraid, going to be one of those enigmatic postings where, unless you have all of the rest of the pieces, you won't know what's going on. And there is always the possibility that I'm reading more into something I read today than I should, and seeing myself in something aimed at someone else.

People keep asking me, "When is the Bay Area going to hold another Worldcon?" I keep answering, truthfully, variations of, "I don't think it should until the local environment becomes less toxic."* I don't see a lot of things that make me think the necessary changes have happened yet. Oh, maybe some of them, but the toxic elements are still there. (Incidentally, I don't see anyone else emerging who seems interested in drowning himself in personal debt to do the necessary work. The previous two Bay Area Worldcons came near to financially ruining me and at least one other person. Anyone else want to try carrying that anvil into the swimming pool?)

When I co-chaired ConJose, I managed to antagonize a whole lot of people, most of them local to the Bay Area. I think that in a whole bunch of individuals' cases, I had the choice of being liked or of getting the convention done. We couldn't have done it both ways. I put the convention first, and I'm better aware of the consequences than certain people think. While I'm flattered at the respect I've received in worldwide conrunning circles, I also know that I'm all but persona non grata in a number of local circles. As someone who wants to be liked, it hurts me more than you'll ever know that the price of getting the convention done was the friendship of those people.

Here's a quote from the penultimate issue of Emerald City:

There is, of course, a matter of committee culture here. Interaction’s staff were very good at cross-departmental communication, at least the divisional level which is where I worked. I recall from ConJosé that attempts to comment on what another department was doing were often greeted with fury by the people responsible for that department.

I think that's a fair assessment. Had I taken the choice of "not hurting people's feelings," while trying to manage ConJose, then fairly significant pieces of the convention wouldn't have happened at all, or else they would have happened much less well than they did. As it was, it was a pretty near thing, and I'll go to my grave frustrated over the things that went wrong or at least went very mediocre as far as I'm concerned.

I'm not saying we couldn't have another Worldcon in the Bay Area, or that it couldn't be well run. But I think it would have to rely upon "outsiders" -- people not part of the regular Bay Area conrunning circles -- even more so than the previous two did. The only other way to avoid the toxicity that I can see would be to try for one of the existing conventions to try running on their existing management structure, rejecting any outside involvement and just trying to run things at Worldcon scale out of their own resources. Neither alternative sounds very attractive to me.
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*I realize that this doesn't really answer the question posed. Another indirect answer is, "I know when I'd bid and what I'd do to maximize my chances of winning another bid sometime before 2020." To anyone with an understanding of fannish politics, I should think the answer is pretty obvious, and I leave it as an exercise for the student.

Comments

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Well, the convention itself is run on about a $1 Million budget these days -- ConJose's gross turnover was about $985,000. If you mean how much it costs someone wanting to lead a bidding group, well, that depends a lot on personality. Over many years, I've spent tens of thousands of dollars traveling to conventions I wouldn't have otherwise attended to promote a bid (or convention), or even if it was a convention I might have attended, spending more money than I would have done on my own. That's a lot of hotel rooms paid for out of my own pocket. Bids/cons have usually paid for the direct cost of the parties -- the food and beverage, that is. That's a lot of airline trips. I don't have a good way of itemizing things, but I'd roughly estimate that ConJose cost me more than $10,000, but probably not more than $50,000. OTOH, I'm still paying for much of that, so there's interest expenses. The one year I had enough direct expenses to itemize deductions and take a minor advantage, I think I spent around $6,000 or so.

Not everyone is likely to be as crazy as I am. But I'm not sure the Bay Area bid would have succeeded if I hadn't done the things I did. Which would have been bad for fandom, as we would have gone to the election with nothing on the ballot except Roswell! 2002 (election in 1999) was the year that the WSFS site selection system nearly collapsed. (That was one of the reasons I supported "no zone" bidding -- I knew there were not enough viable bids under the zonal system, with two-thirds of North America shut out each year.)

[querldox.livejournal.com]

Although a Chicagoan did point out to me at LACon that there are problems with the 2-year/no-zone/non-US bids combo. They apparently don't feel they can move to the 2009 slot as they'd appear to be jumping on top of the already established bidders. 2010's effectively gone to Australia. 2011's out, since KC is within 500 miles so they couldn't really start bidding until they know for sure, and there's a fair chance they won't be eligible.

So let's say we end up at some point with another three-way race. But instead of Denver-Chicago-Columbus, it's Philadelphia-Chicago-Bay Area (just offhand trying to come up with a "bad" site in each region). An awful lot of potential sites in all three former regions get nuked by the 500 mile radius.

[timill]

Close sites being cut out is a design feature - for debate see the Minutes of the 1998 WSFS Business Meeting

Among other things, it was felt that eg Chicago not knowing whether they could bid for 2011 until 2007 would cut down on the money bids would spend more than 2 years out.

[redneckotaku.livejournal.com]

I would love to see Baltimore or some other East Coast city host a NASFIC at the next opportunity in 2010. The trouble with me leading a bid is that I don't make enough money to traverse the country trying to get votes. I am not part of WSFA or BSFS because my time is always tight as a Department Head of a convention. I would be seen as an outsider because I am part of anime fandom as much as Science Fiction fandom. I think it is going to take the anime fans to get involved in Science Fiction fandom to help it grow in the new century.

[timill]

Well, you've got two years to establish your groundwork, since you can put off the start of any serious campaigning until the vote in 2008. A whispering campaign should do the job nicely, with a few adverts and occasional East Coast appearances in early 2008 (Arisia on)

[tkunsman.livejournal.com]

Well, I agree that it is going to take the anime fandom getting involved in sci-fi to help it grow.

As far as the NASFic bid goes, heck you can start now. Send off some e-mails to the people that ran the Worldcon in Baltimore to see if they would help you, or if they might be interested in running a NASFic bid for 2010. There was a hoax bid/party excuse for Bucconeer 2 on the Worldcon bids page, but no e-mail listed.

Balitmore has excellent convention facilities, and a cool city to boot - so why not hold a NASFiC??

[avt-tor.livejournal.com]

Being part of anime fandom doesn't make you an outsider. Not being active in past Worldcons or NASFiCs makes you an outsider. You can fix that.

[redneckotaku.livejournal.com]

One of the reasons, I am planning on going to Worldcon next year is to learn about what it takes. I have also asked about staffing. I am also taking flyers with me to anime cons to get new fans excited about Worldcon 2007 in Japan.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

As timill said, that's a feature, not a bug. Many people (me included) think that long, drawn-out bid campaigns are bad things. They waste resources (money and people points). People have proposed banning campaigning more than X years in advance. I oppose such proposals, both on theoretical "free speech" grounds and practical ones (people would have "we're not bidding" parties or otherwise evade such prohibitions). So "no-zone" makes bidding too far in advance a bad idea for structural reasons for most North American sites instead. It doesn't actually prohibit you from bidding many years before your election; it just makes it inadvisable for practical reasons.

In the case you describe, once one of the three sites was selected, the rest of the continent opens up and you'd have a (relatively) economical two-year bidding campaign.