The Biggest Little Worldcon City...?

[kevin_standlee]

As Reno in 2011 is now running apparently unopposed, this has led to people speculating that "this will be the smallest city to every host a Worldcon." Well, that all depends on how you define it, I think. "By Mayoral Proclamation," the 1958 Worldcon was in South Gate, California, although it was physically in Los Angeles. I think most people probably count this as "metropolitan area" rather than the technical city in which the convention was held, so, for instance, all five Bay Area Worldcons are all in the same "place" for this purpose, so the fact that Berkeley only had 114,091 in 1970 (the 1968 Worldcon was in the Claremont Hotel on the Oakland-Berkeley boundary; the hotel's entrance is in Berkeley but most of the hotel was in Oakland) isn't relevant.

A little searching finds that the Reno-Sparks Metropolitan Statistical Area had 410,272 people in 2007. I thought that possibly Brighton, with a listed population at about the same time of 251,400, might beat it; however, you have to use comparable terms. An MSA is the county (or counties) in which the named cities are located (in Reno-Sparks' case that's Storey and Washoe counties, Nevada). The equivalent for Brighton is East Sussex, which has a claimed population of 752,900. Winnipeg might also be in the running -- its metro area is listed as 694,668.

Maybe other people can look over the Long List of Worldcons and do more research, but after my first pass, it does appear that the 2011 Worldcon is probably going to be in the smallest metropolitan area to ever host a Worldcon. The facilities there certainly aren't small, however. I'd be more comfortable if there was one more large hotel directly on site rather than a kilometer away, but there's plenty of convention center space; more than we'll need, I'm sure.

Comments

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

San Jose is in a separate MSA from San Francisco-Oakland.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Irrelevant, really; if I wanted the numbers, I'd just get them for the Consolidated MSA instead. As I say in the comment below ceemage below, the real question is to what people "feel" about it. Is San Jose part of a single "metro area" or do most people consider San Jose, San Francisco, and Oakland to be distinctly different places? Similarly, I think most people consider Anaheim to be part of "greater Los Angeles," but San Diego is not the same "metro area."

And if you decide to make such distinctions based on the legal city in which the event is held, then you get into a completely different set of nit-picking, such as "which city hosted the 1968 Worldcon?"

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Once you mention MSAs, MSAs are relevant.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Yes, but this is what I get for not talking in footnotes. MSAs to me include all of their variations, including CMSAs.

San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose are all part of the greater San Francisco Bay Area from the point of view of anyone who doesn't live in the Bay Area. If you're coming here from the US east coast or from overseas, piddly little differences like San Jose versus San Francisco aren't relevant to most people.

I note that the SF in '93 bid was resented as "carpetbaggers" because it was launched by people in Sacramento. Now I don't consider Sacramento to be part of the greater Bay Area (although the suburban pseudopods are reaching out toward each other to fuse in the Dixon area), but from the perspective of people back east (say), the distinction seemed meaningless. OTOH, I'll never forget talking to someone at a Bay Area convention and trying to explain where I lived (Yuba City) by starting with Sacramento. That Bay Area resident said, approximately, "Sacramento? I've heard of it, I think -- that's in Nevada, right?"

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Kevin, people on the east coast think we can make a quick drive to LA for the day. It's in the same state, right? (Jon Carroll reports astonishing an east coast editor when he requested plane flight and overnight stay expenses on being assigned a reporting task that required a trip to LA - the editor had had no idea it was that far away.)

By some standards you can put San Jose in with SF. But by MSAs you can't.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

I did wonder if anyone coming to ConJose was going to fly to LAX and try to take a taxi to the hotel.

As I said, I should have spoken in footnotes. My mistake was trying to summarize and not digress into the distinctions between the MSAs and CMSAs. I admit the mistake. I was wrong. I will try to remember never to make such a mistake ever again, and will then accept the fact that most people's eyes will glaze over.

Brighton and Hove, Actually.

[ceemage.livejournal.com]

Although Brighton & Hove is in East Sussex for ceremonial purposes, all this means in practice is that, if the Queen pops in for tea, it's the Lord Lieutenant of East Sussex who is responsible for organizing the welcoming party. Most local government services are provided at Brighton & Hove level, so I would argue this is the relevent figure for this comparison.

At the other extreme, if you count the whole of the Bay Area as one place, you could argue that Brighton is just a commuter overspill for London. And hence counts as the same location as 1957 & 1965.

I suspect this is one of those philosophical debates where you end up saying "I guess it depends what you mean by 'is'..."

Re: Brighton and Hove, Actually.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Well, that just goes to show that I should never abbreviate anything and should always include the long form of everything, because someone will decide to tell me I'm wrong. Sigh. But the real question here is "what do people mean by the area." Do most people consider Brighton to be part of Greater London? (I'm not being sarcastic.) Similarly, would you consider San Jose to be part of the same metropolitan area as San Francisco or Oakland? Is Anaheim part of "Greater Los Angeles?"

Re: Brighton and Hove, Actually.

[celestialweasel.livejournal.com]

If San Jose is in the same metropolitan area as San Francisco and Oakland then I think Brighton is in the same one as London. Plenty of people commute to London from Brighton. Brighton is often sarcastically referred to as 'London-on-Sea'.
Actually, the train service between Brighton and London is a lot more frequent than that between SJ and SF.

Re: Brighton and Hove, Actually.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

In fact, Brighton is really no farther from London than San Jose is from San Francisco.

Re: Brighton and Hove, Actually.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Fair enough. Considering that most Americans probably think of most of England, if not the entire UK, as a single "point," Brighton is probably part of Greater London by their reasoning. Also, of course, anyone flying to the event is going to almost certainly go to a London-area airport, with Gatwick being the most convenient, what with it being on the Brighton main line and all that.

By the "where would I fly" definition, San Jose/Oakland/San Francisco are as much a single market as Southeastern England is. For ConJose, I recommended that people fly to SJC because the airport is so close to downtown, but acknowledged that if having a direct flight from a long way away is more important, SFO is a better option. A few people even flew to OAK, although getting down to San Jose from there is a pain.

Re: Brighton and Hove, Actually.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Item: When I went to Mythcon in Connecticut, I flew into Dulles. True, I spent a few days meandering up the coast before I got there, but it's all in the same area, right?

And when I flew home, immediately after the con, I flew not out of Bradley, which was 10 minutes away, but JFK, because of flights convenience. So is the Hartford area part of the NYC metropolis?

Come to think of it, I once flew to Boston when my goal was New York City, for the same reason.

Re: Brighton and Hove, Actually.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

The presence of outliers does not invalidate the core.

As you probably know, San Jose is actually the largest city in the Bay Area -- and third largest in the state after LA and San Diego. But I still think that for the foreseeable future, SJ will be defined by anyone who doesn't live in the area as a suburb of San Francisco.

Re: Brighton and Hove, Actually.

[ceemage.livejournal.com]

Do most people consider Brighton to be part of Greater London?

I would say no. By contrast, most people would probably consider Croyden, to take a suitably fannish example, to be part of London. Except for the people who actually live there.

Re: Brighton and Hove, Actually.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

That makes sense to me. Thanks for the elaboration.

Re: Brighton and Hove, Actually.

[ceemage.livejournal.com]

Another interesting feature of Croydon is that I have consistently mis-spelled it for at least the last 20 years, despite the fact that I should know better.

It was also the first trial area for full postal codes in the UK.

Re: Brighton and Hove, Actually.

[celestialweasel.livejournal.com]

And is hence the only place with 0 digits in the bit before the space - CRO in the pilot became CR0. I think.

Re: Brighton and Hove, Actually.

[drplokta]

Actually not. There's also CM0, BL0, SL0, SS0, PR0, HA0 and FY0.

[drplokta]

The Hague's population is 475,904, with 600,000 in its immediate metro area (according to Wikipedia). Of course, it's part of the wider Randstad which includes Rotterdam and Amsterdam and has a population around 7 million.

[drplokta]

But the winner is Heidelberg. Population 142,666.

[drplokta]

Interestingly, I mentioned two of the three Wordcons ever held in a non-English-speaking country as contenders for the smallest city ever. The third one is the clear winner for the largest city ever to host a Worldcon -- Tokyo metro area has a population of 35 million.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Ah! I forgot about that one. Good catch.

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

That by far beats the city that would have been my usual suspect. Denver 1941, with a population of about 325,000. Back then most of its suburbs were still independent cities with farmland in between. It still might be the smallest US city to host a Worldcon as well as the smallest Worldcon.

[jeffreyab.livejournal.com]

The relevant figure is how many fans that can day trip to the con if they want to.

Reno has never struck me as being a hotbed of fandom compared to say Berkley or Southgate or Winnipeg all of which had active local fandoms when they hosted a worldcon.

Reno is a carpet bagger con in the full sense of the word.

One reason I was voting for Seattle until they dropped out.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Understandable, and as you know, Reno has never claimed to be anything but a "carpetbagger" committee. We are, however, fortunate to have one viable committee. It would have been troublesome if Seattle had lost their facilities with no active alternative.

[barry-short.livejournal.com]

Do very many people actually day trip to Worldcons?

I don't have the hard data to verify anything, but my gut instinct from my admittedly limited WC experience is that one-day memberships represent a very minor portion of the total number of memberships sold. I recall LACon IV's "teaser" rate, and refund guarantee, in an attempt to increase one-day passes, which suggests that someone perceived a need to do so.

In theory, I get the appeal of being able to day trip, but I'm not sure that the option really makes any significant difference. Are there any hard stats available? (I suspect that if they exist anywhere, you're the most likely person to know how to find them!)

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Do very many people actually day trip to Worldcons?

That depends on what you mean by "day trip." Do you include the people who commute to the convention, and therefore live within reasonable commuting distance, as "day trippers?"

I don't have the hard data to verify anything, but my gut instinct from my admittedly limited WC experience is that one-day memberships represent a very minor portion of the total number of memberships sold.

That depends on what you define as "minor." For example, of the 5,162 individuals who attended the 2002 Worldcon in San Jose, 816 of them were single-day members, which means 15% of the on-site attendees were "day-trippers" not even including the "commuters." I don't think that's minor, considering that the revenue from those memberships alone exceeded the convention's operating contingency in the budget.

I recall LACon IV's "teaser" rate, and refund guarantee, in an attempt to increase one-day passes, which suggests that someone perceived a need to do so.

I was partially involved in the discussions that led to L.A.con IV's experiment. (Alas, they didn't include an "exit survey" to discover why people took advantage of the teaser rate, so we never resolved many of the questions associated with it, but that's outside of the scope of your question.) The Anaheim Worldcons are in probably the ideal place for "day trippers" with a vast number of people within the day-trip catchment area. Many people who have some interest in SF genre conventions but whose only experience of them are smaller, cheaper events, are significantly put off by the price of a Worldcon membership. The "teaser" membership removed most of the "risk" associated with checking out the convention. You could come down for a few hours and see if there really was more to this than, say, just going to Loscon or some gate show, and if you decided it wasn't for you, you could leave having only spent $20. 767 of their 5,738 on-site attendees (including people who took advantage of the "teaser" offer) were classed as single-day attendees, so they actually had a slightly lower percentage of single-day attendees than did ConJose. However, I have no figures on how many "teasers" converted their memberships to run-of-con and therefore no longer counted as single-day.

In theory, I get the appeal of being able to day trip, but I'm not sure that the option really makes any significant difference.

It all depends on where the convention is and how densely populated the area within commuting distance is. The standard rule of thumb among Worldcon runners is that there are three main groups of attendees:

1. The regulars; these people say, "If you hold it, I will come" and will make a definite effort to attend every Worldcon they can. These people tend to vote in site selection more than the other two groups, so Worldcon bids tend to pitch themselves to them, since the point of bidding is to win the election.

2. The "one-day drive" crowd. These people will attend Worldcon if it's relatively convenient to get there, defined roughly as how far they can drive in a day by most Americans. The definition stretches in places where car culture is not as prevalent; for instance, most of Western Europe would be in the "one-day" catchment of a UK Worldcon, even though more of them would be taking the train or short-haul air trips instead of driving.

3. The commuter/day-trippers. These are the people who live within easy commuting distance by car or public transit. Some of them will buy full memberships and simply go home to their own beds at night. ConJose's Toastmaster actually commuted most nights of the convention, I understand, although we did provide him with a suite as well, of course.

Each of those three groups has completely different profiles, and a successful Worldcon will work out separate strategies for appealing to all three groups.

[barry-short.livejournal.com]

That depends on what you mean by "day trip." Do you include the people who commute to the convention, and therefore live within reasonable commuting distance, as "day trippers?"

I was specifically thinking of one-day memberships - and I understand that "how many is not many" is somewhat philosophical. 15% is honestly much higher than I would have guessed.

I took "day trip" to mean "go for a day" as opposed to "not get a hotel room because I live close". There might be strategies that could increase the number of persons local to a WC attending for single day, while I doubt there is anything that would significantly affect the percentage of locals who commute other than possibly getting incredibly cheap room rates.

Holding WC in a high-density location would undoubtedly increase attendance from group 3, and probably group 2 as well. But I know potential attendance isn't the only criteria for selection - if it was, the con would rotate between LA, SF & NYC. Seems to me the challenge for Reno (or any similar city) is to convince people in group 2 of why it's just as convenient as any large city - or if not, what tradeoffs make it equally or more desirable as a destination.

Personally I'd be happy to see WC in more Reno-sized cities and fewer LAs - I'm simply not a fan of large cities. Just personal preference, but it's what puts me solidly in group 4 - I'd rather go someplace with the potential to be interesting outside the convention center.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Are there any hard stats available? (I suspect that if they exist anywhere, you're the most likely person to know how to find them!)

Yes, there's a fair bit of statistical data available, albeit not presented in "pretty" form, at the SMOFInfo site. For specific details about memberships for such conventions as the WSFS Formulation of Long List Entries (FOLLE) committee has been able to obtain, you can check out the membership details spreadsheet (requires Microsoft Excel).

[barry-short.livejournal.com]

Wish Denver was there. Bigger MSA than Reno, but more comparable than LA, I'd think.

Thanks for the link.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Wish Denver was there....

Huh? The D3 figures are in the spreadsheet -- column AH. By the WSFS Formulation of Long List Entries Committee formula, there were 3,752 bodies on site, 333 unique single-day attendees (about 9%).

[barry-short.livejournal.com]

Ah, OK - Open Office wanted me to open the individual con spreadsheets instead of the master spreadsheet. 9% is more like what I'd expect - I was guessing between 5 and 10. Looks like the average is around 12-13%, with larger cities performing better, no surprise there.

The numbers make it pretty clear that Group 1 is the biggest of the three components of attendance (looking at NA cons only) - while attendance increases in more populous cities/regions, it doesn't appear anywhere close to increasinging in direct proportion to the population of the surrounding area.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

We've been very poor at doing any internal surveys, but I think you underestimate the Group 2 people. And Group 1 isn't "firm." Some of them are "every Worldcon, all the time," but that's fewer than 1000 people -- I've been one of them since 1989. Some are "every US Worldcon because I'm allergic to travel to Dangerous Foreign Lands, even that funny Canada place." Some are "same continent, close enough." Even I, one of the die-hards, is having difficult figuring out how to go to Australia next year, and we see Australian Worldcons are about the size that Westercon used to be before it went into a decline.

[barry-short.livejournal.com]

We may be interpreting Group 1 slightly differently, but I don't think we're that far apart. I think G1 is more two subgroups; roughly 1000 who will show up every time, and another 1000 out of a pool of 1500 or so that will show up almost every time (in the US). In other words, out of a core 2500 people you can count on 2000 of them pretty much anywhere.

But if that means that Denver drew those 2000, plus 1000 from group 2 and another 700 from group 3 - then LA, on a strict population basis, should have attracted 12 to 15,000 group 2 members. (If Group 1 is only 1000 and Denver attracted 2000 Group 2 people, then LACON should have had 25-30K G2 members!) So the populousness of a region doesn't directly result in memberships - unless Groups 2 & 3 are very small percentages of total membership.

(Numbers given are VERY round. It's late.)

I'm with you on Australia. Love to go, but the wallet is saying no (shouting down the credit card.) I'm thinking it'll be a fine year to visit Raleigh.

@Barry: taster memberships

[(Anonymous)]

Guess how many people got taster memberships at LAcon IV? A handful. The experiment was done to see if there was interest and there wasn't.

Re: @Barry: taster memberships

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

There were more than 400 tasters on the membership details I have here in front of me; around 8.5% of the total attendance.

[ceemage.livejournal.com]

Carpet bagger and proud, hence their logo...

[purpleranger.livejournal.com]

Wouldn't you agree that the amount of convention center space available is the main concern? If you think Reno's facilities have more than WSFS will require, that's enough to satisfy me. And maybe this will get other cities of similar size (or the fans therein) to think, "Hey, maybe we can put on a Worldcon, too."

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Wouldn't you agree that the amount of convention center space available is the main concern?

Not necessarily. It depends on who you think the convention is for and why we move it around. If the only important audience is the people who attend every year, then yes, merely having sufficient facilities is enough. (Since the regulars are the ones who vote, their opinion has plenty of weight.) If the purpose is to give lots of fans in different regions a chance to sample Worldcon, the population of the hosting metro area becomes relevant.

[querldox.livejournal.com]

The Bay Area is unusual (I want to say unique, but I'm not sure enough) in that it has three locally distinct major cities (including their effective suburbs) that blend together from an outside perspective.

And by major, I mean either having population over 500K and/or having a major pro sports franchise or three that can go by the name of the host locale rather than the metro area (i.e. Oakland As and Raiders, as compared to, say, the Auburn Hills Pistons in the Detroit suburb). I don't count things like "Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue", because Seattle's by far the significant city, and the others really do amount to somewhat overgrown suburbs.

The closest equivalent I can come up with would be Minneapolis/St. Paul, save that there's no third city involved, and it's my impression that the two are much closer to being a unit than SF/Oakland have ever been.


One can really argue that there are four, even five, significant submetro areas in the BA, as the Peninsula really doesn't link up overmuch with either SJ or SF for a considerable distance (but the sheer number of separate towns keeps it from being considered a single entity. In terms of the classic definition of "cityness", SJ's a lot closer to the Peninsula in any ways than it is to SF...although it keeps trying to become SF). The East Bay might be a similar situation between Oakland and SJ.

[drplokta]

Baltimore/Washington. No third city, again.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

SJ ... keeps trying to become SF

Actually, in my opinion San Jose wants to grow up to become Los Angeles.

[wild-patience.livejournal.com]

We plan to get memberships in it, despite its being the place where my two least favorite siblings, Maleficent and Reckless, live. We just won't tell them we're in town.