Site Selection Misconceptions

[kevin_standlee]

My Google Alerts turned up this blog post that included this misconception about where Worldcons are held:

Every other year, WorldCon alternates between a U.S. and an international location.

That's not true, of course, but as I reviewed in my head the locations of recent Worldcons, I realized that if you've only come to the field after 2001, you might think so. Look at where the Worldcons 2002-onward have been or will be:

2002: San Jose
2003: Toronto
2004: Boston
2005: Glasgow
2006: Anaheim
2007: Yokohama
2008: Denver

Now if you believe in patterns predicting the future, this means good things for the Montreal in 2009 Worldcon bid. OTOH, what about the Australia in 2010 bid? They don't have any opposition, and are unlikely to do so.

If Montreal wins for 2009 and (as seems almost 100% certain) Australia wins for 2010, it will be only the second time in the history of the Worldcon that there have been two consecutive non-US sites. (The only time to date was 1994 Winnipeg and 1995 Glasgow.) And it will be the first time ever that there will be no seated Worldcons in the USA, since in the 1994-96 period we selected Worldcons three years in advance, not two.

I guess this shows that the convention is indeed more global than it once was, although I suppose we'll be able to find detractors who say that it's bad that it's still held in the USA so often. When we were running up to the 2002 Worldcon in San Jose, I and Tom Whitmore did an interview with a reporter for the San Jose Mercury News who had done his research and knew something about fandom -- he was wearing a Green Lantern signet ring! -- but said, approximately, "How can you call it a 'world' convention when most of them have been held in the USA."

I replied that while he'd obviously looked at the Long List of Worldcons, it wasn't really fair to look at the entire (at that time) sixty-year history of the convention, but that he should look at the past twenty years instead to see how things were trending.

Since I started attending Worldcons in 1984, there have been or will be (through 2008) Worldcons in these countries:

USA: 16
UK: 3
Canada: 2
Australia: 2
Netherlands: 1
Japan: 1

On the average, two-thirds of Worldcons held after 1983 have been in the USA; however, as I noted above, the percentage has been 50% since 2002.

Will this trend (generally, for more non-US Worldcons) continue? I don't think so. I think it more likely to level out at roughly 3/5 US Worldcons; however, don't try holding me to that prediction for any given five consecutive Worldcons.

Oh, I did go and post a comment to that blog correcting the misconception, as well as clarifying that NASFiC can be held outside the USA (although it never has been).

Comments

[jeffreyab.livejournal.com]

You would be correct. I have been to Chicago cons and you see a few Toronto fans there. In Toronto most of the fans are from Ontario at Ad Astra. In Detroit its primarily Michigan with some from Chicago and Ohio.

Also I have met Ontario people at worldcon who said they never went to local cons.

I believe on the Bos Wash corridor you are more likely to run into out of state fans.

Much of Toronto's 500 miles is cut up by Great Lakes.

The East Coast has been really active in worldcons where as the Midwest has been much quieter and more spread out.

As a parting thought how many worldcon fans attend their local, regional and out of region SF conventions?

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Much of Toronto's 500 miles is cut up by Great Lakes.

Not nearly as much as Boston's is by an ocean.

I believe on the Bos Wash corridor you are more likely to run into out of state fans.

That's not difficult when the states are the size of counties in which I've lived.

The East Coast has been really active in worldcons where as the Midwest has been much quieter and more spread out.

I don't know your definition of "midwest" or whether it includes the entire Central zone. In any event, I point to: Chicago, Columbus, Kansas City, and the just-announced somewhere-in-Texas bid, not to mention the 1994 Worldcon in Winnipeg. And Minicon was approaching Worldcon size before it deliberately downsized.

how many worldcon fans attend their local, regional and out of region SF conventions?

I don't have hard data. I have anecdotal data, such as encountering Sacramento fans (when I lived in the Sacramento area) at Sacramento airport on the way back from Chicon V who attended Worldcons but didn't attend any local cons, even right in their city. (Sacramento hosted Eclecticon at that time.)

[jeffreyab.livejournal.com]

Well I believe the Mid West Zone ran from the Rockies to the Appalachians.

So the area is not as densely populated as the East or even the West zones.

If you look at repeat cities the East has New York 4, Philadelphia 3, Boston 4, DC 2, and Baltimore 2 most in easy driving distance of each other. Of course its hard to say where this is going but with Arisia, Boskone, Philcon, Lunacon, Readercon, I-Con and Balticon there is a good core of cons within easy driving distance.

The Midwest has Chicago 6, Toronto 3, New Orleans 2 and Cleveland 2. Toronto is not that big a con city and Cleveland and New Orleans appear dead as far as cons go.

The big regionals Marcon and Minicon have not translated into worldcons the way Philcon, Boskone and Disclave/Balticon did for the East Coast. Windycon on the other hand has.
MidWest Worldcons tend to be more one shots than East Coast ones, the exception being Chicago of course. With LA it is the leading location for Worldcons.

Now I forget how this started.

[debgeisler.livejournal.com]

If you look at repeat cities the East has New York 4, Philadelphia 3, Boston 4, DC 2, and Baltimore 2 most in easy driving distance of each other.

One note, however, about repeat cities. Many of them haven't really been repeaters in the "modern" era of Worldcons (which I'll arbitrarily claim are those large enough to require a convention center, so 2,000+ participants). For instance, in the East: New York has not had a Worldcon in the modern era (the last was 40 years ago); and Philly has had only one in the modern era (the first two were in 1947 and 1953).

(From my point of view, though, it's really sad that there isn't much of a fannish presence in Cleveland anymore. I was 9 in 1966, when the last Cleveland Worldcon was held. And I never heard of fandom until I moved to Boston in 1984.)

[jeffreyab.livejournal.com]

True its really hard to make connections like that.

In Detroit for instance the main common thread between the current bunch of conrunners and Detention was Howard Devore.

However if a city continues to hold conventions decade after decade the cadre is there to hold a worldcon.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

What debgeisler said. Worldcons changed significantly in nature sometime in the 1970s, and certainly by the early 1980s when (with the exception of that one set of facilities in Chicago) you had to use a convention center.

This is a variation of what I told that reporter for the Mercury News -- you can't make meaningful comparisons between pre-1970s Worldcons and modern ones.

[jeffreyab.livejournal.com]

So these days you need a local cadre that can run a convention and a convention centre?

So it sounds like that even though the North East has many active fans it would be hard for them to host another worldcon due to convention centre problems?

How many off site worldcons have there been? Where the bid/con committee did not mostly live in the host city?

I was thinking that Orlando, Miami, and Brighton were examples.

[debgeisler.livejournal.com]

So these days you need a local cadre that can run a convention and a convention centre?

Actually, the reverse is true, really.

We tend to judge the "modern era" of Worldcons based on several factors:

Worldcons got too large to fit (except Chicago) in a hotel space and had to add a convention center -- with all of the complications that includes

Conventions became more complex. Multiple tracks of program, exhibit, more events, films, etc. got added -- requiring more people to run things.

So many people were needed for the convention to run successfully that it became increasingly impossible to run Worldcon with nothing but local talent.

So it sounds like that even though the North East has many active fans it would be hard for them to host another worldcon due to convention centre problems?

Not at all. The problems are much more likely to be ones of affordability and interest than anything else. Although we have a lot of fans in Massachusetts, nobody's muttering about another Worldcon right now...and properties are pretty pricey, too.

But we still have a great convention center combination in the Hynes/Sheraton/Marriott, and it's likely the new convention center (BCEC) may eventually have enough hotel rooms nearby to actively consider for a Worldcon.

[avt-tor.livejournal.com]

Chicago or Atlanta, though I'm not seeing a Worldcon in Atlanta on Labor Day weekend...

[totient]

Although we have a lot of fans in Massachusetts, nobody's muttering about another Worldcon right now

Well, not within earshot of you, anyway.

Boston is one of a very small number of cities which could hold a Worldcon exclusively using local talent. That's not to say that that's how it's done when the Worldcon is in one of those cities, but it could be. Minneapolis might be another. Toronto certainly is not.

[debgeisler.livejournal.com]

Boston is one of a very small number of cities which could hold a Worldcon exclusively using local talent.

We have a lot of fans in this area, but the needs for a Worldcon are not just for the willing -- they're also needs for specific skills, management experience, knowledge of previous Worldcons, etc.

Being foolish enough to believe that all of the talent you need to run a Worldcon is located in your city is a really, really bad idea.

[totient]

The statement was in no way meant as a critique of who was in charge of N4. You had the great luxury of having your pick of local and imported talent, and of course making use of those options is what made N4 so great. But I still disagree with your statement that running Worldcon with only local talent is "impossible", at least here.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

There's a difference between "technically feasible" and "a good idea."

Larger metropolitan areas like Boston, greater LA, the SF Bay Area, and Chicago possibly could somehow manage to cobble together a Worldcon committee out of only people who live within easy driving distance of each other and who can gather to meet in person often. Trying to run a Worldcon with that committee is a Really Bad Idea. Oh, you might appear to have, on paper, the skills. What you're unlikely to have is the cultural knowledge of Worldcon as an ongoing entity.

You may have a lot of local conrunners who have great technical skills at various bits and pieces of convention running. But most of them have never attended a Worldcon before, let alone worked on one. Therefore, almost none of them have any idea of the convention's overall culture, and are likely to evaluate everything in terms of how it would work at their local convention.

You might have, for instance, a Masquerade director who runs 200-entry events at your local 10K-member anime con. He doesn't have any connections with Worldcon costuming fandom, and manages to antagonize at least half the entries in your Worldcon masquerade out of sheer ignorance of cultural norms, and when called on it, says, "I run bigger masquerades than any of you, so sit down and shut up; I know what I'm doing. Besides, this is [Big City] and we do things our way here."

Another possibility: Because your talented local conrunners don't travel much outside of their local area, they don't really "get" that a really substantial portion of the members will be coming from a country that isn't the USA. They may well end up doing something that completely antagonizes all of your non-US members on account of not having any non-American members on your committee telling you, that "What you propose doing will really tick off non-American members."

These are not really that hypothetical. The serial numbers have been scratched slightly, but the situations are, alas, all too real.

[totient]

There's a difference between "technically feasible" and "a good idea."

Completely agreed.

You might have, for instance, a Masquerade director who runs 200-entry events at your local 10K-member anime con

And we also have Richard Hill, who ran the N4 masquerade, and Susan de Guardiola and Donna Dube, who have each run Costumecon masquerades, and Jill Eastlake, who just ran a 39-entry event at our local 2K+ member Ambitious Regional and who's about as plugged in to Worldcons as it gets. And that's just counting the folks in New England; Byron Connell and Carl and Elaine Mami and a host of others who've run Worldcon or Costumecon masquerades are also nearby enough to be regulars at Boston convention.

The point I am trying to make is that Deb had way more high quality local talent to include in her mix than Toronto did. Not to knock Barb Schofield who did a wonderful job, but she's not going to do it again and there aren't three other strong local possbilities there the way there are here.

[totient]

at Boston convention

... at Boston regional conventions.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Well, that's understandable. A model that has worked for some conventions is for most or all of the divisions to have one "local" and one "remote" manager, either as co-division heads or as one being the deputy of the other. In theory, you can then partner competent "locals" with "out of towners" who will give that added perspective.

But running distributed committees is really hard work. You have to keep stressing communication, and you have to get people to "buy in" to the idea. I've been on enough committees of different styles to have seen a huge range of reactions. Me, I'm much more likely to over-communicate -- although I reckon many people on the ConJose committee will probably roll their eyes and say, "by 'over-communicate' he means 'micromanage and talk too much.'" I'd rather do that than be King Log from whom no decisions ever get made.

But I digress, as usual.

[debgeisler.livejournal.com]

You had the great luxury of having your pick of local and imported talent...

Luxury? No. We made a virtue of necessity, by recognizing well before we won that a distributed committee was inevitable and working from the outset to make it function right.

There have been groups that made exactly the same assertion about their local con-running community that you are making about Boston's. Those are Worldcons that are...shall we say, not memorable for excellence.

Perhaps you're right, and it's not "impossible" to run *a* Worldcon with nothing but local talent.

But it wouldn't be a Worldcon worth running.

[totient]

That's not to say that that's how it's done

Ah, that sentence makes me sounds like the total neo who doesn't know who he's talking to. I should perhaps have said "That's not to say that's how it should be done".

[tkunsman.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Cleveland is about dead as cons goes. Right now, there is only a rather inexperienced Anime con in June. I wish they could get their act together, and try and make the convention a little bigger, or little more organized.

I also saw a new anime/gaming convention down in Akron, OH, but they are not having their first convention until 2008.

And to make matters worse, in 2006 there was a hoax web site to host a sci-fi convention to mark the 40th anniversary of Tricon -

Cleveland does not have facilities to host a Worldcon, but I feel does have enough facilities to host other sci-fi conventions. If only the City Council can get together to finally build a new convention center.