Nova Albion and the Future of Fandom

[kevin_standlee]

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.

Comments

[bovil.livejournal.com]

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."

[nojay.livejournal.com]

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).

[bovil.livejournal.com]

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.

[totient]

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.

[mrshirt.livejournal.com]

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.

[totient]

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.

[bovil.livejournal.com]

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.

[querldox.livejournal.com]

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.

[bovil.livejournal.com]

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.

[querldox.livejournal.com]

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.