kevin_standlee (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
kevin_standlee) wrote2011-03-27 08:10 pm
kevin_standlee) wrote2011-03-27 08:10 pm
Entry tags:
Nova Albion and the Future of Fandom
I didn't hang around after the main convention ended around 5 PM. Too tired, too hungry again. Going to try to get to sleep early.
I had someone ask me yesterday, "How can we inject the energy and spirit at this steampunk convention back into Worldcons?" He's right about the issue. I remember Worldcons, when I started attending in them in 1984, as high-energy, high-excitement events. Now they're much less so.
I gave the person as long-winded answer to his question, but I think it boils down to a single, cold-hearted answer: "Some significant Worldcon SMOFS are going to have to die." Or at least retire from the field of active convention running and participation in Worldcon organization.
Don't misunderstand me. I'm not wishing death on anyone, neither literally nor figuratively. But to a great extent our collective conrunning brains at the Worldcon level are suffering from calcification of the neurons as we continue to keep things frozen into the form that we consider ideal, and in some individual cases, effectively working toward mummification, with a stated opinion that amounts to, "I want Worldcon and fandom to die when I do, and it must not change in the slightest until then, either."
It's not that we don't need experience. We do. What we need to do is not be straightjacketed by it. We need people who have the energy and drive to make events like Nova Albion and the other steampunk events and like the anime conventions want to work on general-SF/F events rather than getting discouraged by the entrenched interests who are more concerned with making sure that the Wrong Sort of Fan doesn't actually get involved. We certainly don't need the people making the decisions passing rules that effectively preclude those who actually are willing and able to get things done from even participating. (And that's not an academic, theoretical statement, as the WSFS Mark Protection Committee did exactly that this past year, even in the face of evidence that the members of the WSFS Business Meeting wanted something different.
I had someone ask me yesterday, "How can we inject the energy and spirit at this steampunk convention back into Worldcons?" He's right about the issue. I remember Worldcons, when I started attending in them in 1984, as high-energy, high-excitement events. Now they're much less so.
I gave the person as long-winded answer to his question, but I think it boils down to a single, cold-hearted answer: "Some significant Worldcon SMOFS are going to have to die." Or at least retire from the field of active convention running and participation in Worldcon organization.
Don't misunderstand me. I'm not wishing death on anyone, neither literally nor figuratively. But to a great extent our collective conrunning brains at the Worldcon level are suffering from calcification of the neurons as we continue to keep things frozen into the form that we consider ideal, and in some individual cases, effectively working toward mummification, with a stated opinion that amounts to, "I want Worldcon and fandom to die when I do, and it must not change in the slightest until then, either."
It's not that we don't need experience. We do. What we need to do is not be straightjacketed by it. We need people who have the energy and drive to make events like Nova Albion and the other steampunk events and like the anime conventions want to work on general-SF/F events rather than getting discouraged by the entrenched interests who are more concerned with making sure that the Wrong Sort of Fan doesn't actually get involved. We certainly don't need the people making the decisions passing rules that effectively preclude those who actually are willing and able to get things done from even participating. (And that's not an academic, theoretical statement, as the WSFS Mark Protection Committee did exactly that this past year, even in the face of evidence that the members of the WSFS Business Meeting wanted something different.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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).
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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.