A Future For Worldcon

[kevin_standlee]

The article that Cheryl wrote a while back responding to Mike Resnick's complaints that the Worldcon is dying because it's not held in the USA enough and isn't more like Dragon*Con is now online at SFWA.

Edit, 20:00: For those who missed it the first time around, here's a link to my earlier thoughts on the subject, including some 90 comments, including some from Mike Resnick himself. The matter may have been triggered by the SF Signal Mind Meld on the subject of What Can Worldcon and Comic-Con Learn from Each Other.

Comments

[stevegreen.livejournal.com]

Not in the USA often enough? Was Mr Resnick being satirical?

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Not in the slightest. Go read it. Key excerpt:

We can call it “Worldcon” all we want, but the fact remains that most of the publishers, most of the writers, and most of the fans are in the United States. When Worldcon was held in other countries perhaps twice a decade, as it was for the last third of the 20th Century, attendance plummeted as expected, but it had little or no effect on subsequent Worldcons' attendance. But Worldcon has gone a little overboard lately: next year’s Worldcon (in Australia) will mark the fifth time in eight years that it has been out of the country.

My takeaway: Mike thinks Worldcon should stick to Major US Markets and should concentrate on growing since if you don't draw at least 40,000 people you're irrelevant. Oh, we can let the darn furriners have it "once or twice a decade," but certainly not more often than that, since the only people who really count are Americans and they're the only ones who can generate huge crowds.

Actually, for people like Mike, I think we should actually rent smaller spaces, to the extent of getting too little space and intentionally inducing lots of crowding and lots of queues. Long lines mean lots of "buzz" and are a sign you are successful, whereas actually planning for enough space and putting enough resources on things to keep queues to a minimum makes people like Mike claim that your attendance figures are lies. (As a director of last year's Worldcon, I'm particularly annoyed at being called a liar, which is what he means when he calls the attendance figures "inflated.")

I would think he would be delighted at the fact that the next three Worldcons after this year's are almost certainly going to be in the USA, but I suspect the fact that one is a small market (Reno) and another is only a medium-sized one (San Antonio) is still part of the problem. If we stuck with Boston, Chicago, and Los Angeles, hired a Professional Convention Running Company, and concentrated on selling lots and lots of tickets, generating huge queues, then it would be a Good Thing.

I get the impression that to Mike Resnick, the "World" in Worldcon is the same as it is in Baseball's "World Series," not as in the "FIFA World Cup."

[querldox.livejournal.com]

Like I've written in the past, I think part of the problem is the population of the places we've held Worldcon since 2000 have been severely skewed.

2000-2006: All in major metro areas, including twice in the BosWash corridor (Chicago, Philly, Bay Area, Toronto, Boston, Glasgow (which really equates to "Britain" and had a track record of good attendance), LA).

2007-2011: All abroad, in two cases *way* abroad, or in smallish relative to the above/isolated metro areas (Japan, Denver, Montreal. Australia, Reno), none on the Pacific Coast, BosWash corridor (Montreal's close, but the border problems cancel that out), or core Midwest.

Put Worldcon in "secondary-level attendance" sites based on known location/population issues for five years straight, and yeah, I think you're asking for a membership dropoff. And note that it'll be at least an 11 year gap between BosWash Worldcons, and depending on how Reno draws from the driving audience, possibly a 9-10 year or more gap between Pacific Coast Worldcons.

Btw, one factual error with Cheryl's piece; Reno is by no means "quite a large city"; its metro area population comes in at about 420K, #115 in the US. It's by far the smallest location for a US-based Worldcon in decades, both in terms of absolute and relative size (for the latter, it may well be the smallest ever).

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

The roots of this go back months ago. See my thoughts from last October, including some additional replies from Mike Resnick, who did a few hit-and-run replies. I've edited the post here to include a reference to that discussion so that anyone coming in late can go back and read it.

Future for Worldcon

[(Anonymous)]

WOW! What alot to think about. As I work in a foreign country and since we are about to host our own national SF convention, I am now rethinking alot of details.

Thank you again for giving us several starting points.

John M