Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

Because I'm a little tired of giving the full explanation of my WSFS uniform and because most people don't really want to hear the whole thing, I've written up the long version as a really-back-dated entry in my LJ. It's actually dated to the first day of Interaction, before I started writing regularly in this journal.

I intend to print business cards pointing at that entry. I can then give people the cards and say, "Go look at this web site if you want the long version of what the uniform means."

Actually, I'm a little annoyed at an attitude some people seem to have that all costumes have to be re-creations of some specific TV/movie. I've encountered blank looks from people who don't understand the concept of creating a costume that isn't from a TV show or movie. Show some imagination, people!

While searching for something else, I stumbled across this Interaction review that I don't recall seeing the first time around. I added some of my own comments to it, particularly the sections that personally mentioned me or over which I had some management control. I don't mind people saying that I talked too much -- I usually do. However, in the case cited, if it hadn't been me making the announcements, then someone else would have needed to do so.

The posting and the discussion of it, however, reinforces what should be obvious that it is utterly impossible to satisfy everyone with a Worldcon. Interaction was, in my opinion, one of the best-planned, best-organized Worldcons I've ever attended, and I'm not just saying that because I was a division manager. Actually, being a DM means that I could see how well organized it was from the inside. Yet we still have people saying how badly organized it was for this reason or that. And I'm convinced that if we'd made the areas about which there were complaints better, it would have caused something else to fail.

The specific example over which I had some control was the "care and feeding of your Hugo Award trophy" speech that is a fairly common part of the pre-Hugo Award reception. The complaint was that "only about fourteen people in the room need to know this anyway" and "just give us a handout after the ceremony if we win and we can read about it." My response was, "People don't read handouts, and much of this was stuff you needed to know before you held the trophy." Hugo trophies are heavier than they look. The rockets are not, as some people think, hollow, but are solid zinc castings with a chrome plating. Zinc is heavy. We don't want a winner to drop the trophy or do anything foolish that could possibly break it. Most of the trophies are not that fragile (some have been), but grabbing it by the rocket and swinging it around over your head, for example, is probably not a good idea -- there's too much lever action going on between the trophy and its base. And this is about the only time we'll get to talk to the Hugo Award winners as a group, and while, yes, they're mixed in with a larger crowd of people who will never hold one, we need to take this opportunity to tell them because otherwise we're not doing our jobs as planners.

And if we repeated a few of the messages multiple times, that's because the messages were sufficiently important that we couldn't afford not to saturate people with them. In particular, I was worried that we'd get at least one Hugo winner who would wander off after the ceremony instead of coming to the Forth Room for the photo session. Therefore, we needed to be absolutely certain that not only did the potential winners know what was happening, but also everyone else around them, so that none of them would allow the dazed winner to wander away.

Unfortunately, some of this knowledge has been gained over time and painful experience. If you've never been involved in a Hugo Awards ceremony or the pre-ceremony reception, you're unlikely to know any of this. But if we did not take these precautions and someone broke their trophy (or their toes), then we the organizers would be chastised for not taking proper precautions. Once again, you can't win. You can only do the best you know how, and hope that nothing goes wrong.

Evelyn Leeper has posted her Humongous Interaction Worldcon Report. (Due to Geocities' bandwidth restrictions, it may not be available when you try to click through to it. I had to try about half a dozen times until I finally got through late last night.)

As is Evelyn's wont, she concentrates heavily on Programming, only lightly touching on any of the other aspects of the convention. She does, however, say that she plans to nominate the opening speech of the Hugo Award Ceremony for Best Short Form Dramatic Presentation, which I plan to do as well as nominating Ready!Steady!Sew! -- but I am of course heavily biased, being the de facto Producer (or possibly Executive Producer) of both shows.

Evelyn's main knock on the convention was that there were not a lot of convenient places to eat immediately adjacent to the convention centre, which is true. By her standards, it would appear that one of the most important features of a Worldcon is that there be a food court attached to it, so that you can get a complete meal by missing only one programming block. While this is convenient, I wouldn't say it was my highest priority. And for that matter, I recall that in San Antonio (where there was indeed a food court and other restaurants adjacent to the convention center/hotel complex), I heard people complaining about having the shopping mall/food court so close, because it meant there were too many mundanes too close to us fans. So you really can't win. Also, it's unrealistic to expect every Worldcon to be in Boston.