kevin_standlee | Nova Albion and the Future of Fandom

Is there any way to work around the situation currently, or is it literally going to take funerals?

Well, I don't know. Chicon 7's management seems to me to be trying tap into that younger energy. We need future conrunners to be able to be perceived to be welcoming of new energy and drive without also throwing away the lessons learned. Nova Albion made some mechanical conrunning errors that would get Worldcon runners strung up nowadays, and I think it's just inexperience. They do seem at least able to learn from mistakes.

A big question to me includes a factor of convincing people that Worldcon remains relevant. To the newest generation of potential new fans, I get the impression that it doesn't matter, since they can always go to the Big Show (=DragonCon or ComicCon, or whatever).

Worldcons didn't always used to be the province of a bunch of rich semi-geriatric fans the way it's perceived to be by some of those with whom I talk at conventions. The irony is that most of those relatively wealthy older fans are the same people who were young and energetic troublemakers once upon a time.

Is it even possible to make them understand that the without a younger generation there is no Worldcon? Or do they really want to cede the win to Dragon/Comic/Anime con?

Maybe it needs to be presented that way? Because if the 20-somethings and the publishers don't think Worldcon is important, the pros have to go elsewhere and it all crashes in on itself.

If that's really the truth of it, we need to find a way to communicate that truth...

I don't think that convincing people of relevance is as big an issue as it's made out to be. Most of the people I know go to DragonCon or ComicCon or Name-Whatever-Big-Con because that's where their friends are, and there's some stuff to do they like. I know I've been saying for the last few years that DragonCon is really dragging on me, and if there wasn't a core of 20-30 people that I only see at DragonCon I wouldn't go anymore (and that number gets less and less every year because there are so many more people that I see less and less of the ones I like). They key would be attracting a core that finds things fun. They'd sell it to their friends. In my mind that means bringing authors relevant to younger people. This is probably scary, because some of these authors aren't *vetted* by the WorldCon crowd, but getting people that sell books to young people like YA authors or genre series authors or crossover media guests like Gaiman is the key (imo).

But there are right and wrong ways to go about it. You can't just throw the younger kids a guest and a panel and then say "now be quiet, stay out of our hair while us adults socialize and conduct business". There's got to be an adaptation of stuff for them to do that includes panels and parties and even kon suite slightly changing how they do things. I think this is a huge sticking point because to a lot of the older generations these changes would seem like *regression* because things would change to be more like they were 20-30 years ago. However, 20-30 years ago was when WorldCon had the demographic they want to have again . . .

I think the other real problem is that WorldCon fandom *seems to me* to be much less forgiving of ConRunners on the learning curve. They want the same old people because they don't screw up. New people screw up. Even with a great mentor new people will make mistakes. If a mentor is good they'll avoid the sinkholes but they'll let their protege find a puddle or two so that they not only learn not to do it again but also how to deal with bad situations when they arise. However, I don't think that the WorldCon fandom would be tolerant of this at all. It seems the WorldCon attitude is know everything or don't try, which is a great way to get stupidly-oblivious con workers but not a good way to get the kind that could actually make a WorldCon happen in 10 or 20 years when the people who don't make mistakes physically and mentally can't handle it anymore.

Edited 2011-03-28 05:16 (UTC)

Well, there is a fine line there. The last Worldcon where the organizers basically ignored the usual Worldcon suspects was Torcon in 2003. Which was flat out the worst Worldcon in the last 30 years minimum, and were it not for last minute troubleshooting would've been even worse (examples: Programming was being effectively done on the fly by Program Ops, there was a real danger of crowd related multiple injuries at the major events, and, save for the actual presentation of the entries, the Masquerade was pretty much a disaster (and even that was interrupted in the middle due to someone having had a hissy fit about their halftime show). See Cheryl Morgan's writeup at http://www.emcit.com/emcit097.shtml#Wheels). You want to both revitalize Worldcon and avoid having major meltdowns due to not listening to people who know what'll lead to such.

It sounds to me that the TorCon mistake is vastly different from what I'm proposing. I'd like to see new conrunners get mentors. Even announce them: Con X will be chaired by Robin Newbie, Con Chair mentor Alex Oldguy. A mentor should be around for all those questions and sidestepping the big problems, something it seems like TorCon actively avoided listening to. However, it seems to me that even a mentorship is something the Old Guard would protest, because if 'Alex Oldguy' was being involved why shouldn't he just run things so they go perfectly? I'd also venture that it seems a lot of people would hesitate to be 'Alex Oldguy' because it seems all the blame would fall on him even if the proteges decided to completely disregard his good advice. Even without this it seems that there are a lot of people in fandom who think that it's easier to do it themselves rather than teach someone new to do it. This is damaging to everyone, and not helping cons to grow in the future.

I don't go to many Worldcons, but perhaps on that account I'm more sensitive to detect changes, like the uncle who hasn't seen you since you were so high. And I don't see recent Worldcons as mummified or lacking energy and excitement compared to the mid-80s. Perhaps it's because in the mid-80s, you were a neo, ready to see excitement in anything, whereas I was already old and cynical.

So, no, I don't think Worldcons have decayed much in the last couple decades. Now Westercons, on the other hand ...

While the comparison to your own memories is fine, it's not really what

kevin_standlee is talking about here. That's to say, yes, we were all neos and everything was exciting then, but...

...we are talking about other cons that aren't Worldcon or gen SF cons, cons that stir that neo-like feeling of excitement in us still, cons that the 20-somethings are attending and having a blast at.

Furcon, Nova Albion (and other steampunk cons), cons where your creativity and craft (and ideally, but not always, competence) are what gets you recognition and respect (not just longevity).

Gallifrey One, the con that would have only been the children of the 60's and 70's but with the new series transformed into a vital and growing concern (and, at this point, my favorite con of the year bar none).

I'll put anime conventions at the opposite end of the failing continuum, too many being so youth-oriented that they end up driving away older fans of the medium, but that doesn't mean that they're not exciting and energetic, in ways that too many gen SF conventions have stopped being.

As someone who gafiated from anime conventions, I'll agree. It was a hoot when we were all starting and nobody was at all sure this 'anime convention' scheme really had any legs. By the time 30-somethings were being washed away by hordes of teenagers, I figured I could watch anime at home.

You want a very scary comment....

I friend (who in her 30s) attended the LA Worldcon (her first and only worldcon)and her over all assessment...

It was full of OLD people and they were NOT welcoming of younger folks. {emphasis mine}

Another issue is that many of the fans from "the list that shall not be named" who do not want Worldcon to ever change from what they remember is that they do not attend, haven't done so in years (for some, decades), and have stated that they have no intention of, or interest in, attending any time soon.

Srsly? Sounds like the CFG to me, ghods love 'em, but at least they've all said for decades they don't want to run another Worldcon. (It was in 1949, so you don't have to check.)

Hmmm; that sounds like me, except for the part about not wanting Worldcon to change. (Though I've been having slight urges to get to a Worldcon off and on for a bit now.)

However -- if Worldcon were mostly about TV and movie SF and comics, then I'd completely lose any interest I had; it would be dead to me. *Including* the good work being done in those areas is necessary and appropriate; but they're peripheral, they're not where the field advances (there's little theoretical reason they couldn't be, it's just my observation that so far they aren't; well, the cost of visual media does mean they have to serve a bigger market, and the collaborative nature of the production tends to interfere with consistency and clear visions). They're visually rich, but mostly do not have the real core of SF -- ideas, and thinking.

I see plenty of enthusiasm for future Worldcons in England, Japan, New Zealand among other places... I'm not overly worried about the aging of the PFWC.

Sorry, but enthusiasm in Japan and New Zealand is not going to save/change Worldcons. I'd see very few attendees from either going to other Worldcons not there (or perhaps for NZ, in Australia). In particular, should NZ get the Worldcon in 2020, I'd expect it to have the lowest attendance in quite a while; the NZ natcon last year, which was even promoted as a stopover for non-antipodial fen on the way to Worldcon, only drew a few hundred. Since NZ is a few hours plane flight from Melbourne, I'd expect fewer Aussies at such than at an Aussie Worldcon.

I still think a contributing factor in Worldcon falling off was bad scheduling of such in the 2000s (yes, I know it's "scheduled" by who bids and wins). 2000-2006 all Worldcons were in large metro areas with significant fannish communities (I count "Britain" as a metro area/community for this purpose, based on 2005 and previous British Worldcons). But 2007-2011 have had 2 Worldcons in very isolated from NA/Europe locations, an isolated and relatively small US location (Denver; no really significant other metro areas in driving distance), the smallest US metro area in decades, if not ever (Reno; we'll see how it draws from Portland and the Bay Area), and a Canadian site (which has problems with respect to non-Canadian artists and dealers).

That all means you still get Worldcon regulars, but aren't likely to get many repeating newbies. It also gets former semi-regulars out of the habit of attending when it's in the same time zone or so. Note that, given the current bids, Worldcon will only be in the Eastern Time Zone once in the ten years of 2005-2014 and not at all in the BosWash corridor.

Thomas Kuhn. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 1962.

The new guard always has to wait for the old guard to die, often literally, because the old guard hates change.

Ifs yous don'ts guards thes fishs Bears wills takes thems.

Bearz can takes alls he wantz.

I heart Kuhn, and you're right. Change doesn't happen at the top. And that means, quite honestly, that it won't happen because of

kevin_standlee.

You're saying I'm opposed to all change? I suppose I could be. But if you think I'm conservative, remember that I'm a flaming radical lunatic compared to the people who were old guard when I started attending conventions and are still there.

What I'm more likely to be is to try and point out the rather serious challenges facing anyone who wants to change things. You can, for instance, run Worldcons cheaply, but you have to throw away huge amounts of things that we've come to take for granted, and you have to be willing to accept a level of discomfort that the core audience has shown a propensity to bitterly complain about.

I don't mind people making changes. What troubles me is people changing things without understanding why things are the way they have been in the past. Deliberately changing things with your eyes open is completely different from charging into something and stepping on the same organizational landmines that others have previously triggered. See the difference?

See my comment below. I was commenting on your positionality with Kuhn. Kuhn's model says that the tenured -- the SMOFs -- are now the sources for new paradigms. Period. Within that context, Kuhn would predict that the overthrow of the existing Worldcon paradigm will not come from you or Cheryl or others who are consider to be within SMOFdom.

c/now the sources/ NOT the sources. Not. Gah.

Understood. Thanks for the clarification. I think I'm touchy about this precisely because within entrenched SMOFdom, I'm pretty liberal and yet get flagged as deeply conservative by "outsiders." If they think I'm bad, they should try talking to the real Old Guard — the ones who use the term "Wrong Sort of Fan" without any irony at all.

I AM the wrong sort of fan, so I know what you mean. :-) And of course, everyone is someone else's wrong sort -- I can't stand the D*C porn-star-adoring fans. They're *totally* the wrong sort of fan. *grin*

I also want to point out that Kuhn's model -- which applies to the overthrow of existing scientific and research paradigms for new ones -- makes it clear that part of what you've just written is exactly how those supporting the existing paradigm talk. :-) This is not an attack on you, Kevin; it's an application of Kuhn's model to the Worldcon issue. For Kuhn, you're part of the old paradigm, even if you don't think you are. :-)

It occurred to me that I need to clarify this statement. I appreciate the work being done to change Worldcon, and I've tried to participate in that. However, in Kuhn's model, the tenured don't make change; grad students and the untenured do. As much as I like and respect

kevin_standlee, his position as a former Worldcon chair and veteran con-runner (at this point) puts him in the tenured camp in Kuhn's model. So when I say that change won't happen because of him, I don't mean that he or Cheryl or others will block change, but that within Kuhn's model, the source of change lies with folks other than SMOFs, so to speak.

In my case, what I'm trying to do is encourage more people to nominate and vote on the Hugos, which will, I hope, create a more diverse voting body. I've also tried to propose different panel topics and other kinds of programming -- though I get a lot of resistance about that. I think that Reno appears to be creating a great model for new programming, by making the interests of panelists visible to each other, so that we can add interests we hadn't thought of previously.

Oh! That makes sense. You're right. I used to be an outsider. I worked very hard for many years to get myself into positions of influence and authority in a field which I love dearly and which has been the focus of my life, but yes, I'm entrenched now. I only hope that I can recognize good change and work to facilitate it.

Yup. And in his model, once the outsiders get into power, they get just as invested in their entrenched paradigm as the previous generation was about theirs. *grin* In your defense, Kuhn himself had issues with people applying his model -- which was about *scientific paradigms* -- to other fields, especially humanities. He said that in the humanities, people are used to a multiplicity of paradigms and schools of thought, which is simply not true in the sciences. (Once the humours were discredited as a source of illness, you can't go back to humours, and such ideas can't coexist with the new paradigm.) Therefore, it could be argued that Kuhn would say "This model doesn't apply to conrunning, duh."

This weekend I was at Anime Conji in San Diego having similar thoughts.

(While there was the brief thought that I'd be ecstatic if half the people at Conji showed up for ConJecture, until I heard that they'd past 1,500 members, and remembered that ConJecture ended up at a different hotel and has a much tighter space)

I do agree that there does seem to be a lot of the same people running Worldcon as there were around 1999-2000 when I started going, and have observed that the "young guard" there are already in our forties, or late thirties - except for a few in the n+1-th generation, and that includes a lot of the current Chicago crew.

From other discussions, I suspect that one thing that might help is to lower the costs of membership. I know of efforts to remove the tie between the supporting membership rate and the attending rate, but even that was fought fiercely. So I fear that (Worldcon) fandom may be beginning like the school district in Arizona I heard about years ago where residents of a seniors only development packed the school board with their only agenda being to keep their taxes as low as they could.

That's not a rhetorical question. What does any group of big city US convention runners get out of running a Worldcon that they wouldn't get by putting that energy into their local convention? And is it worth the enormous expense and logistical complexity that comes from having to use a convention center, and the loss of organizational (and especially budgeting) continuity they currently enjoy?

I see what the overseas conrunners get: access to attendees, participants, and organizers who would otherwise be unavailable. Maybe Denver and Reno and Texas get this too. And I see how even though there are far more interesting sercon conventions within an easy drive of Chicago, someone there might want to do it anyway, because they have a hotel that's big enough without a convention center so the cost is small. But the real loci of younger convention runners, places like Minneapolis and Boston and St Louis, lack such hotels, and stand to gain nothing by hanging a Worldcon tag on their efforts. As anyone who went to Tuckercon will be quite aware.

"What does any group of big city US convention runners get out of running a Worldcon that they wouldn't get by putting that energy into their local convention?" Egoboo

The first question should be "Why should any of these younger fans want to attend Worldcon?" What does it provide that the other cons don't--and would make these people WANT to attend?

And the second question should be "How in the hell do we make attending a Worldcon affordable?" Because I'm 51 and I sure as hell don't have that kind of coinage.

However, based on the comments here I would be inclined to guess that neither of these questions are ones the SMOFs in question are terribly interested in asking...or getting answers for.

Edited 2011-03-28 15:25 (UTC)

the second question should be "How in the hell do we make attending a Worldcon affordable?"

The answer to this has two parts. One: put it in a hotel (not a convention center), within easy driving distance of as many fen as possible. Chicago is doing this, and you could also do it in New York or Las Vegas. Then, and this is the scary part unless you have a lot of cash you're willing to lose, lower the price to the point where all those fen will actually come. A $0 conversion to attending from a $50 or possibly even $40 voting fee, an at door rate in the $80-$100 range, and $20 supporting memberships that come with the right to convert to attending at the price difference in effect at time of purchase, would all be good starts.

One thing that's in the way of a $0 conversion is the way bids operate. But in an age of mostly uncontested bids, they could probably operate some other way, that didn't saddle the winning convention with the bidding costs.

Putting Worldcon in a New York City hotel is *not* going to reduce costs. NYC costs and union-mandated expenses are insane.

You know, I thought so too. Then I got a very an interesting phone call from a salesman from one of the big New York hotels. The window of opportunity opened by the current recession might not stay open forever, but things are surprisingly affordable right now.

The zeroth question should be "Do any of these younger fans even know about Worldcon?"

If people know about Worldcon, it will always find that new audience. If they don't, any further discussion of what's attracting or repelling them is pointless.

And I find, going to conventions with a younger crowd, that is the biggest thing I run into there. "Worldcon, what's that?" Heck, most of them don't know about their local sf convention. Or even cons that specifically cater to their interests.

The first year I went to Kumoricon, the local anime convention here in Portland, one of the committee members told me about going to Sakura-Con in Seattle and running into other people from Portland who wished they had an anime con to go to closer to home... when Kumoricon had already existed for several years.

This is not to point the finger at Worldcon organizers and say they are doing nothing. SDCC has had the extraordinary good fortune of being selected as a publicity venue by Hollywood, which in turn has generated tons of free media coverage. Dragon*Con has had the extraordinary good fortune of being in the backyard of what was the one and only general-news channel most of the US knew about for years and years. Worldcon's never been thrown a break like that.

Oh, you can point the finger alright. Kevin and I are being actively preventing from promoting Worldcon by people who do not want "the wrong sort of fan" to find out about it.

Feel free to quote or sing as needed. (http://jeff-morris.livejournal.com/94285.html)

Thank you!

Sorry, I need a minute . . .

No, it's still there. I've got to say it.

WHAT THE FUCK?!?!?!?!

How do I join a movement to change this? It's crap, pure and simple.

Short answer: Come to the Business Meeting and vote into office people less likely to dig in their heels and fire the people who were actively promoting the Hugo Awards and repudiated their work.

Can I sit by you so you can tell me who to vote for?

There won't be much of a question as to who I support, as I intent to make a speech calling for people to vote for the candidates in question. Last year, I stood before the Business Meeting and said, in effect, "If you want more of the same things that I've been doing, and if you endorse how the Hugo Awards Marketing Committee has been run, vote for me and I'll work to continue it." I was (I'm told; the detailed results appear to have been suppressed, whether deliberately or because someone didn't think they were important) overwhelmingly returned to my seat on the MPC. The MPC then chose to ignore the results, did not return me to the MPC chairmanship, and imposed rules that made it impossible for Cheryl to accept re-appointment to the Hugo Awards Marketing Committee. In fact, I think the MPC has overstepped its authority and is trying to impose additional Hugo Award eligibility rules beyond those imposed by WSFS. I suggest that people who think this is so come to the Business Meeting and vote to order the MPC to recind the rule.

I've come to the conclusion that there are some people in WSFS for whom openness and transparency are something that other people have to do. I've done my best to actually live up to the same rules I expect others to abide by, but that perhaps just means I'm stupid.

A rather small number of people (five out of fifteen) were able to get their way in a classic example of a backroom deal. What they did was legal and within the rules. But two of those five people have terms coming up for re-election at Reno. Perhaps people looking for a change should take note. I'll write more on this subject as we get closer to the convention, because, frankly, if I make too much of an issue about it now, it will will have died out in a few weeks, as all of these things do. For now, I just think that people who are going to be at the Reno Worldcon and care about this need to be prepared to set aside the 1000-1300 period on the second, third, and maybe fourth days of the convention in order to actually make change happen. You have to be present to vote, and those people who show up are the ones who make a difference.

A given con will be much more exciting in a smaller space than a larger one, as Arisia found this year. pV=nRT. If you're not brave enough to shoot for a 10,000 person Worldcon and risk falling short, and you don't want to shrink to fit into a typical hotel, at least pick convention centers in which the con does not rattle around.

That's one of the issues we are dealing with. The accepted wisdom amongst SMOFdom is that a packed event is a *bad* event. That's in part because they are old, and don't like busy, noisy events.

What Cheryl said. In retrospect, I realized that we could have, for instance, improved the perception of parts of ConJose for the (not trivial) cost of enough pipe-and-drape to drape off the back half of the exhibit hall and squeeze everything in tighter. Nothing else would have changed, but many people would have perceived it as better just because of the density.

And the considerable resources that Worldcons have poured into minimizing registration queues has had the unexpected side effect of people saying, "It must not have been popular because I didn't have to wait long to get my badge" or "There was no line to get in to the Masquerade, so it can't have been good," when what happened is that we opened the doors very early to improve traffic flow. Talk about your unexpected consequences!

Can I ask a dumb question? What kind of numbers are you seeing in terms of people using assistance scooters, walkers, etc--things that enable older fans to get around? Because that unfortunately has a big impact on how wide/narrow your facility space can be.

When my wife and I went to WDW last November I was stunned by the number of people riding those scooters around the parks. I never noticed them on prior trips. And I've been seeing more and more of them at Archon.

I don't know, but I also know that I considered the aisles in the Nova Albion dealers room much too narrow. If people stood in front of facing tables, such as they would while looking at those dealers' stock, there was effectively no room to get by, and that's before considering people with hoop skirts or big jackets or what-have-you (not to mention the Tiki Dalek trying to make its way through the room). I'd say NA was lucky a Fire Marshall didn't happen into the room and shut them down.

A bit more buzz is a good thing, but sufficient aisle room so that people can stop and look at dealers' merchandise and not have to keep dodging traffic is good, too.

I'm surprised the *hotel* permitted that sort of tight layout, never mind a fire marshall inspection. They're going to get yelled at, decertificated etc. if a snap inspection calls them on it.

I was peripherally involved in the layout for the art show and dealer's room at Intersection in 2005 (Big Dave did all the AutoCAD juggling required). The fire lanes in the chosen hall were absolute and documented as such on the official convention centre plans, no encroachment by tables, fixed exhibits etc. permitted. They were wide enough for a fire truck to drive down if needed.

That resulted in big open spaces which we couldn't cram down to make the place more intimate if we had wanted to but that's the breaks.

In doing the most recent Arisia dealers room layout (which used 10 foot aisles instead of our usual 8 because we were trying to make the 20,000sf+ room look smaller), I checked what the fire codes require. Answer: 4 feet. This is of course absurd; my point is that the fire marshal is not always the limiting factor.

[the number of people using scooters] has a big impact on how wide/narrow your facility space can be

Quite the opposite, in fact. The more spread out your facility is, the more people need scooters. 3500 people at Anticipation needed 20 or so scooters between them. 1/3 of those same people at Boskone (and that's probably the con with the most overlap) needs two or three.

Money and travel are two issues that keep fans from Worldcons. In my younger days , I would go to Worldcon ony when it was on the East Coast or within reasonable travel distance. I couldn't afford airfares or taking a room by myself. Unlike SDCC or Dragon*Con, worldcon travels, so it's "permanent" crowd will always be smaller.

Yes, but not every person attending DragonCon or ComicCon lives within commuting distance of Atlanta or San Diego. Huge numbers of people are coming from far away, including other continents, to attend. So there's something attracting them enough to entice them to spend the money it would take you or me to attend a Worldcon in Europe or Australia or such.

Oh, I'm sure that it would be easy to find out what's bringing them. Getting a Worldcon to include them in the mix? Never gonna happen.

The difference however, is the costs are mostly known in advance and saved for. A Worldcon on the West Coast (x) is going to be substantively higher to travel from for a person on the East Coast than a worldcon on the East Coast. If I go to the same convention on the West Coast every year, I tend to know what the costs will be (airfare, hotel, meals, expenses). But if I never go to a Worldcon on the West Coast, or if I've only done it once or twice, it's harder to plan because it means changing the way I save for that convention. A person who goes to Dragon*Con knows the costs and probably plans for it each year.

If they usually go to Dragon*Con, from a far distance, the question becomes, how do I get them to change their habits? Conversely, has Dragon*Con (or SDCC, not to just pick on D*C), asked "how do I attract people away from Worldcon? Just curious here.

Is there any way to get some of those "significant Worldcon SMOFs" out of active convention/Worldcon running short of having them whacked?

This is one of the reasons I initially had no desire to go to Reno: it will (mostly) be a perfectly good, perfectly competent, perfectly unimaginative con, run by the Usual Suspects.

Reno is a weird experiment (I know, I'm inside it). It's mostly the usual suspects, but it's the usual suspects going in with the attitude of "Some things must be the same for the con to work, but we want to shake everything else up."

I think every bidded convention says that they're going to make everything new and interesting -- for example I hear that every time someone stands up to announce a British Eastercon bid. Mostly the new and interesting convention ends up with one or two GoHs, an art show, a dealer's room, some panels and a lot of beer drunk in the social spaces where most folks hang out with their friends. Step and repeat. I think it's the same with Worldcons, pretty much (although maybe not as much beer).

Like I said, I'm inside this bus.

There are things that always have to be the same. Registration, finance, ops, facilities, other admin functions should run in tried-and-true ways. Those are structural.

It's content where there's flexibility, and where things need a bit of shake-up. I'm a lit fan, but the dealers' room needs to be more than books, and that means recruiting and encouraging dealers of other sorts of fannish stuff. There are strong initiatives to raise the profile of F&SF art and artists and musicians (who didn't really get much major event focus at Worldcons in the past), to feature current popular genre trends, to make Worldcon more of the "big tent fandom" event it purports to be.

We're doing a lot in events to foster cross-pollination between different sorts of fanac. For the masquerade we've got Hugo-winning Phil & Kaja Foglio as MCs (old hat for the Comic-Con crowd, but that's not us, and they're good). Half-time is Hugo-nominated author, screenwriter and comic book writer Paul Cornell doing his version of "Just a Minute." Sharon is working to make the Hugo Award Ceremony entertaining. The film, anime and dance crews are bringing their own hometown innovations to Worldcon.

Actual people are doing actual work to ensure that the convention isn't just the same old same-old.

finance

Actually, this is one that the Old Guard do wrong. There are better ways, and they scale up. Anticipation's treasury staff was 1/3 the size of Reno's -- and that was with having two primary currencies in addition to the usual Worldcon oddballs.

What is your point? Finance 99% of the members never see nor care about. They will play mahjong and have fun together. Treasury Fandom at its best.

Do you know anything about there internal systems? O r just guessing looking at staff numbers.

My point was that they have 24 people listed on staff including a lot of people who could be doing something else useful. Two or three of them know how lean treasury works because they've worked for me, either at Anticipation (Alexis, Sydnie) or Arisia (Dave). Most of them, and all of the ones in charge, I am quite confident will be doing the same inefficient old guard thing as always, because that's what they've done every time I have either worked for them or interacted with a treasury they were running.

Not included in my point but possibly relevant: to run a treasury operation that big you need a big room. Lean treasury fit into a tiny little office at Anticipation. Just one more thing that takes up more space, making the con more spread out and diffuse.

I've seen the finance office planned for Reno. It's not big. Not broom-closet small, but not even "let's have small programming in here" big.

While I know that Just A Minute is fun (I've run it myself, as well as played it), and that Paul does well with it (both seen from an audience and been a panelist for him), I do think you'll need to do some promotion for it. It didn't fill up a small-to-medium room in Montreal, and most non-Brits/Gallifrey attendees won't be familiar with the game. If possible, I'd suggest getting some significant name panelists for it as a start, along with a pre-Masq writeup/plug in the newsletter.

We've been pimping Just a Minute and Paul ("Hugo-Nominated" gets thrown around a lot, particularly noting how many categories he has nominations in) in the progress reports, and will be doing so in the program book and the 'zine.

Paul has carte blanche for his panel (well, he can't have masquerade judges, they're doing something else then), but he's being encouraged to pick famous fans and pros who happen to have the right sort of personality to be on the panel.

The other thing that occurs to me is that maybe doing a quick example of it both at opening ceremonies and just before the Masquerade starts would help. Quick rule explanation, one topic to demo, and that's it.

Take a look at FogCon. It was literary convention with a decidedly younger committee and membership. I felt like an old foggy. I'm not sure what they did, but it would be worth a long conversation with Debbie Notkin to find out.

Good point. SFSFC did some minor support for FOGCon, but I wasn't able to go. Sounded like they had enthusiasm.

FOGcon was precisely who I had in mind when I asked "why bother". A geographically diverse group of people who were interested in serious intellectual discourse with people from around the world could have bid for a Worldcon, but instead decided to start something entirely new. In so doing, they got away from the ossification and the expense of Worldcon, and gave up, by all reports, exactly nothing.

And that's fine if all you want is a local gathering with a small number of local fans. But if you want to have an event with a broader scope, attracting a larger number of important people in the field, you need something bigger than that.

if you want to have an event with a broader scope, attracting a larger number of important people in the field, you need something bigger than that

No, you really don't, that's my point. I don't have figures for FOGcon but I do know that the crowd there is the crowd from Wiscon -- and Wiscon is a more worldwide event than Worldcon is. 15% of the attendees at Wiscon are from the state of Wisconsin -- and that includes concom members. They get Aussies by the dozen, and enough foreigners overall that the Pocket Program has to explain US style tipping. Heavyweights like Samuel Delaney attend every year. They do things with their publications that I did not think were possible. They take awards seriously and the entire convention attends. If FOGcon accomplished a quarter of this, and there's reason to think they did considering how many people not from the state of California I know who attended, then the organizers got as much egoboo out of it as they would have from bidding for a Worldcon.

And here's what I think you are missing: Wiscon is always in Madison. It's just great for the people who travel to it. Worldcon could do something exactly the same: permanently locate itself in one city (I'd pick Anaheim, actually, but you could make a good argument for several others), organize the same way every year by an ongoing group (which BTW would probably cut the attendance price by at least one-third right away and maybe more; economies of scale and not having to pay start-up costs every year), and concentrate on Growth. It would get Big. And it would be come utterly unreachable by most fans.

One of the key things about Worldcon is that it comes to people who can't come to it. Look at all of the Australian fans who are highly unlikely to ever attend a Worldcon outside of Australia. Repeat this for every region that's ever hosted a Worldcon.

You can grow Worldcon and lose many of the things that make it difficult to run, but in doing so you probably make it just another permanent-site convention like DC or ComicCon. It would be just as much the "World" con as the self-named World Steampunk Convention is the "world" gathering of steampunk culture.

But that's probably just dandy for people who can afford to travel a long distance every year or who happen to live within commuting distance of the Permanent Worldcon Site.

I'm not trying to ring the death knell for Worldcon here, just point out why I think holding it in a convention center in a big American city is not in the interest of the conrunners in the big American city in question. Conrunners outside the US certainly benefit, and seem willing to run 40-50% of the Worldcons (if the PNW people bid and win Vancouver for 2015 it will be 6 out of 11 and 7 of 13 outside the US). That leaves the question of where to hold the other 50%, and maybe the answer is big hotels and little convention centers, but it won't (or shouldn't) be in places like the Hynes or the Moscone Center or Anaheim.

There's an argument been made (by Mike Resnick) that the number of non-US Worldcons is hurting Worldcon, because the largest number of potential attendees are in the USA, and with Worldcons going here and there (and not to large US cities), the core audience has simply forgotten the convention exists. (Considering the number of fans I meet at every convention where I sit at a table who have never heard of Worldcon, there may be merit to this argument.)

But let's see what happens if you deliberately aim your Worldcon at a hotel and not a convention center. Okay, your costs go down by at least a quarter of a million dollars. (That's how much the San Jose Convention Center cost to rent and to decorate in 2002.) That means you can significantly reduce your membership cost. That probably means demand will shoot up because it's more affordable. Except that because you're no longer in a building big enough to hold your convention, you either will suffer enormous overcrowding (making people very unhappy with you) or else you'll have to impose a membership cap, and that just means the actual cost of the memberships will go up anyway as people will re-sell their memberships on the secondary market.

I don't really see a good way out of this. Hotels are not infinitely expandable. Sure, we could hold conventions of up to maybe 2,000 people in hotels we have around here in the Bay Area (the Fairmont and the Doubletree immediately spring to mind, and there are others). But 5,000? The number of hotels in the USA that can host such an event without a convention center can be counted on not more than two hands. And such facilities likely would impose high fixed costs equivalent to a convention center; that was our experience negotiating with the San Francisco Marriott, which could probably hold 5K with some noticeable crowding, but wanted about a half-million in revenue guarantees — worse than renting Moscone Center!

So what should we do? Impose a 2,000-person membership cap on Worldcon the way World Fantasy has a more or less 800-person cap (with holes in it)? That would certainly push Worldcon down the road of being a "business literary conference," which someone at Aussiecon 4 told me she assumed Worldcon was, much to my surprise.

enormous overcrowding
I don't see it. You're probably right that the number of 100ksf+ hotels in the US is not that much more than a dozen; I came up with the Hyatt Regency Chicago, a couple of hotels in in Las Vegas, the Peabody Orlando (which is now much larger than it was in '92), three in New York, multiple sites in Atlanta, the Hershey Lodge in PA, the Moody Gardens in Galveston, the (under construction, but totally bookable) Washington Marriott Marquis in DC, the San Francisco Marriott. And you're also right that some of those facilities won't want to deal with us. But we should be talking to the big hotels in New York, and to the Washington Marriott Marquis. And to the smaller convention centers, like Buffalo and Ocean City. I'd rather see 8,000 people in a 100,000 square foot facility than 4,000 rattling around in a facility that's too big. And while it depends a lot on how efficient the space is, 12 square feet per attendee for a large 4-5 day con is a totally doable number in my experience.

San Francisco Marriott: The last time we dealt with them (for 2002), they made it incredibly clear that they didn't really want our business, but if we'd give them at least half a million dollars, hold a bunch of food functions, prohibit costumes in all areas, and forbid room parties (except parties catered by the convention in their space with the $5 cans of soda and $1 per chip costs), they might consider us. Maybe.

New York would be worse, by all accounts. There's a reason we haven't been back to New York since 1969. The costs are out of the stratosphere.

Even Chicon 7's memberships aren't going to be perceived as cheap, and they're not in a convention center.

I'd rather have 10,000 people in the space we've currently been taking than limiting attendance to 2,000 so we can cram them into smaller, cheaper space.

But maybe I'm all wet. Someone who is convinced that the members won't complain about crowding should try it. I expect, based on the queue-tolerance of anime cons, that maybe younger fans don't think overcrowding is a bad thing.

New York would be worse

As I mentioned above, I thought this too until I got a very interesting phone call from a salesman for one of the big New York hotels.

San Francisco Marriott: The last time we dealt with them (for 2002), they made it incredibly clear that they didn't really want our business

Nine years is a long time. It was only six years from when the Sheraton told MCFI they weren't welcome to bid for the '98 Worldcon there to when MCFI won their bid (and negotiated quite favorable rates, forkage policies, and so on) for 2004.

I admit that I could be wrong, but I suspect that they — like your contact in New York — would initially say, "great!" and then when they got into what we actually wanted, say, "Uh, maybe not," or "Sure, but it will cost you a million dollars," and I mean that literally, not figuratively.

The $250K it cost to rent/decorate the San Jose Convention Center is actually a bargain, it appears. Not as much as the relative pittance that Winnipeg was charged in 1994, but still a very good deal.

I understand that Anticipation's rental and decorator expense came to under CA$150,000. Yet another reason to hope for Vancouver in 2015, I suppose.

I also thought Calgary had some very nice facilities.

Winnipeg was among the five best Worldcons I've attended, and I'm not saying that just because I was Deputy Chairman. It's pretty much the only Worldcon where I got to Day 5 thinking, "I could stand a couple more days just like this."

Alas, all Canadian sites share a common problem: vast numbers of Americans who are allergic to border crossings. Montreal and Toronto, both major metropolitan areas within an easy one-day's driving distances of a large portion of the US population, had lower attendance than would an equivalent US city in the same general area. That's probably not something that can be fixed; it's American isolationism in action, and the actions of the US government in demonizing everyone isn't helping.

Ah, I found a list. I missed the Sheraton Dallas and the Hilton San Francisco Union Square. I missed that the two Gaylord convention centers (in Nashville and DC) are both technically also hotels (both of them are too large for a Worldcon). And I undercounted the number of Las Vegas hotels with 100,000+ square feet of function space.

It's vaguely possible that we might find a hungry enough hotel in Las Vegas, but we'd have the same issue as we're going to have in Reno. Also, the room rates won't be any good — look what the Atlantis/Peppermill did to Renovation. (For details, go to the Atlantis hotel's web site and quote room rates for the week before and after Worldcon.)

I'm not saying it can't be done; I'm saying it's not as easy as you are suggesting it is. I'd admire anyone capable of talking these hotels into deals that don't end up costing as much as any given convention center and wouldn't change the nature of the convention entirely (say by prohibiting costumes and parties).

Maybe what Mike Resnick wants is a big (4-5000 person) annual American national SF convention. It could be anchored in a particular city, benefitting from reduced rental and operational costs like Dragon*Con or the Comicon in San Diego enjoys -- part of the price gouging the convention centres exact on a given Worldcon committee is that they're only going to make a single purchase of a given timeslot and then vanish like the morning mist the day after. If they can sign up for five timeslots in advance then discounts start appearing on the table. Logistics are also improved as storage of major decorating items such as artshow kit can be arranged locally without the dreadful shipping problems of moving heavy bundles of stuff three thousand miles from one side of the country to the other as the convention shifts around.

Nothing (other than the INS and the US State Department) would stop SF fans from other countries joining up and attending a regular "Americon" or even working on staff or committee; it's one of the joys of SF conventions anywhere and everywhere that some of the fans you meet aren't from around these parts.

Twenty or thirty years ago this would have been unthinkable -- the Worldcon was automatically the American national SF convention with a poor drab substitute NaSFiC on the very few occasions it left the CONUS. Back in the 70s Colin Fine wrote a filksong about this (in the days of the old three-zone system):

"Around and around and around goes the Worldcon,
East coast and West coast and central and all,
Sometimes the rest of the world gets a look-in,
The kind-hearted Yanks let us play with their ball."

Those days are dead and gone with the wider spread of fandom and cheap(ish) airfares and enough connectivity for inexperienced non-US committees to be able to tap a widespread network of Brains in Jars to get over the bumps.

An annual ASFC would probably mean is that fewer American fans would attend the Worldcon, whether held in the US or outside its shores as their mad money and free time would be used up attending the regular Big One wherever it might be held. At that point it might well be possible to fit even a US Worldcon into one of the big hotel spaces available as the numbers fall.

This is exactly the argument we get from the old-time SMOFs in WSFS. "Why of course Worldcon is an international event. I know a couple of dozen foreigners who attend. And all of the people *I* think are important go. There's no point in attracting anyone else because they are not part of *MY* fandom." But at least they are doing it for a con that is much bigger that Wiscon.

Worldcon in Melbourne last year attracted around 2000 people, including Aussies and Kiwis by the hundred. That's what we want out of Worldcon, not a few dozen who can afford the flight to the USA every year.

Aussies by the dozen in a 1000-person con underrepresents Aussies as a fraction of the English speaking world population by about a factor of two. That's pretty damn good for a convention that's nowhere near Australia.

So do you think that anchoring the Worldcon into a large US metro area would be a good thing?

Too much thread depth. I was still describing Wiscon in this thread, in support of my thesis that conrunners in a large US metro area are better off *without* the Worldcon.

Wiscon differs from Worldcon in many ways, some of which you mention in detail later. But it's very much NOT a local gathering, and does not consist only of a "small number of local fans".

Even Fourth Street Fantasy, which barely hit 200 people one year, routinely had people from both coasts, sometimes from overseas (not counting guests), and did have rather a lot of the top people in fantasy through over the years.

You can start a new "thing" which is very much not a small local relaxacon. I'm sure you can also fail to; that is, not all attempts succeed by any definition. (The Fourth Street running now is a second edition, with very different concom and a many-year gap; and it's fun too.)

Nova Albion and the Future of Fandom

no subject

no subject

no subject

Preachin' to the Choir . . .

Re: Preachin' to the Choir . . .

Re: Preachin' to the Choir . . .

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

why bother?

Re: why bother?

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

also

Re: also

Re: also

Re: also

Re: also

Re: also

Re: also

Re: also

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject