Worldcon Bids 2008

[kevin_standlee]

The 2008 bids took the head table. Representative of all known bids were there, including the rather (of late) quiet Columbus bid.

Dave McCarty of Chicago's bid started. It's the same site as past Chicago bids (Hyatt Regency), which has added additional function space since last time, and they may not need to use function space in other hotels; other hotels may be needed for overflow sleeping space. Bid theme is "To Serve Man" and many hot dogs have been served already. People piled on to the bid about errors made for Chicon 2000, which Dave freely admitted and said they would learn from them and improve. Unfortunately, this descended into minutae of conrunning, and I got tired of trying to record it all. (The bid is for Labor Day weekend.)

The Columbus bid was represented by Joni Dashoff, who expressed the regrets from the Columbus bid for not having hosted a party at the Worldcon this year and gave reasons for this. (I should note that I am a pre-supporter of all bids, and have no particular axe to grind in this bid; I regret that some people reading this are likely to assume that I have personal reasons for giving a negative review here.) The Columbus Convention Center and surrounding hotels would be the venue. Note that there is a 24-hour food court (that would probably be popular). Joni attempted to put a good face on the (IMO) generally lackluster public face of the bid, which has been nearly invisible of late in the SMOFfish arena, but she had to admit that the local fan base, while experienced with large conventions like Origins, does not travel a lot and is perhaps not plugged into the usual Worldcon conrunning circuits. (The bid dates are Labor Day weekend.)

Denver in 2008 is led by Kent Bloom, who calmly followed the rather defensive Columbus and Chicago bids with a pitch for downtown Denver, with a bid for a Wednesday-Sunday, August 6-10. (Why? Because that's when the convention center was available for 2008.) Their bid committee is large and geographic diverse, and the theme is "competence and outward focus." He said, "We're looking to take the best of the Worldcons we've attended and to possibly improve upon them and bring more social space and interaction between the members of the Worldcon." (I probably dropped some words there.) The core hotel is the Adam's Mark, which has lots of rooms. In response to a question from Tom Whitmore, Kent said that four bidcom members live in metro Denver, with an additional six in the Colorado Springs area, with the rest scattered around.

All bids have expressed a williness to participate in Pass Along Funds.

Gary Blog tossed a fairly harsly worded question at Columbus saying, "Why bother? You weren't at Glasgow or at Seattle." Joni reiterated the extenuating circumstances of the bid leadership -- death of parents is a pretty significant issue. When asked, "Why aren't more of the Columbus committee here?" Joni had no answer.

The Adams Mark is 5 blocks (at 12-14 blocks/mile) from the Convention Center.

All bids were asked about the weather, heat, humidity, allergies, and similar, but I didn't try to record the answers.

Note that you can vote on 2008 site selection if you are a member of either L.A.con IV or Interaction.

Comments

[bovil.livejournal.com]

Why did Columbus miss Interaction?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Columbus Bid and Interaction

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

The stated reason was a death in the family of the people on the bidcom who would have gone (I suppose the chair, but I didn't hear details, and I was getting tired enough to miss them if they were volunteered).

Re: Columbus Bid and Interaction

[tammylc.livejournal.com]

So far as I can tell they have almost a single person bid com, at least when it comes to traveling. So if anything happens in Kim's life or she just can't afford to go to a con, the bid has no presence.

They don't seem to be at all interested in recruiting people to help them bid. When they were bidding for '07, I helped them with a party at ConJose and was part of a group of SMOFS that were giving them advice on how to bid, which conventions to go to, etc. I live 3 hours away from Columbus. But they never asked me to join the bid, at a time when I was going to 12 or 13 conventions a year.

Re: Columbus Bid and Interaction

[cogitationitis.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've offered to help too, and been ignored. My vote for '08 is still up for grabs...

[shsilver.livejournal.com]

You say the Chicago bid was defensive. Was that before or after People piled on to the bid about errors made for Chicon 2000?

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Ah, good point. The material in my entry above is not nearly as chronological as it may appear from reading them. Dave had something of a right to be defensive when people wanted to slag him for errors made by others for which he had no responsibility.

I'd like to think (but can't be sure) that if I was in the same position, I would try not address too many specifics, while saying, "We will make a good-faith effort to not repeat known erros, while working from our past strengths." (Yes, I know that sounds like a platitude.)

Unfortunately, rehashing obvious known errors in detail -- and someone dredged up stuff from MidAmeriCon's Masquerade as a fairly harsh question tossed at Kansas City -- is probably not hugely productive in these Inquisition panels.

Trust me, I Feel the Pain of people sitting up their on the Fannish Inquisition. One thing that I thought valuable was for our committee to role-play an FI session, because internally we almost always could come up with much nastier questions than anyone is likely to ask, and we could work out diplomatic replies to most of them. This made the actual Inquisition seem less difficult.

[shsilver.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the clarification. Asking about some of the issues raised by Chicon 2000 is a fair line of questioning, even though there is only a reasonably small amount of overlap between C2K and the Chicago in 2008 Bid.

Asking KC in 09 about problems with MidAmeriCon seems a bit on the grudge-holding side.

Interesting

[johnnyeponymous.livejournal.com]

I've heard that a lot folks think that the Columbus bid is dead in the water. I can't say that I'd vote for Columbus since it's up against a Denver bid that I think is very strong despite the weak weekend they've chosen and the distance from the Hotel to the CC. It's roughly the distance from the Radisson to the CC in Seattle, if I'm reading that right.
Chris

Re: Interesting

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

I consider their date choice an advantage, not a weakness. I'm urging Worldcons to move to early August. The historical reasons for Labor Day are fading and even becoming disadvantages, and we should surrender the field to Dragon*Con -- besides, there are people who would attend both Worldcon and D*C if they could, but for commercial reasons have to pick D*C, and I'd like to have those extra people.

Re: Interesting

[(Anonymous)]

Moving to early August does have disadvantages; e.g., more cities are likely to have hot/humid weather (a factor when it's ~.4 miles between hotel and convention center, as you describe Denver), and there's also the problem of crowding Pennsic (which is similar in size to D*Con if not larger, still has many con-going attendees, and is spreading farther and farther before its major dates). Losing pros to D*Con is an issue....

/CHip

Worldcon Dates & Weather

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Is the difference between early August and four weeks later really that significant in the cities that are likely to have hot weather? I know that the weather in San Jose is about the same in early August as it is in early September.

Winnipeg, I admit, was slightly cooler than it would have been four weeks earlier, but we're talking maybe 1-2 degrees C. I don't think the difference between 15 and 17 C is worth considering.

And if we have to consider Pennsic as a factor, then on the opposite side of the ledger, I submit that Burning Man is siphoning off attendees from Labor Day. I know that ConJose lost a number of good mid-level staff people because they told us they "always go to Burning Man."

[twilight2000.livejournal.com]

a) LOVE earlier weekends -- students and teachers and families all are in school LONG before Labor Day in both the US and Canada, from my understanding -- not to mention the D*C issue -- we may not like it, but when Ann McCaffrey attends D*C, it becomes very difficult to say "Real writers don't care about D*C" -- or whatever other platitude we've been telling ourselves. Time to surrender the field -- I agree wholeheartedly with you, Kevin!

b) The Columbus bid was treated very badly by almost everyone -- including the "mavens" I was sitting near in the back. That said, if a bid is so small that it can't field anyone to EITHER WorldCon OR NASFIC because of one person's family issues, it's probably too small to be successful -- any previous cons not withstanding. The fact that they "perhaps [are] not plugged into the usual Worldcon conrunning circuits" is a real problem. Not including "locals" (for sufficiently broad definitions of "local") is also a problem.

c) MY GOD this whole thing went on FOR-FREAKING-EVER!!!! AAAUUUUGGGGGGG!!!!!!!