The Business Meeting agenda for this year’s Worldcon has just been published (see here: PDF). There are a couple of interesting motions. This will be a little long so I’ll put the rest behind a cut.
The first motion is a resolution. Here’s the whole thing:
4.1.2 Short Title: Promoting Worldcon
Resolved, That WSFS convention committees (Worldcons and NASFiCs) are encouraged to be more proactive in marketing their conventions, including having a prominent and positive presence at Dragon*Con, Comic-Con International, and other major events of a similar nature such as the Chicago and New York Comic Cons; and
Resolved, That WSFS convention committees are encouraged to market their conventions to younger book readers who may not be aware of the existence of their conventions by organizing book giveaways and other targeted marketing within their local area.
Proposed by: James Bacon, Vincent Docherty
I’m very pleased that people are actually taking marketing Worldcon seriously for once. However, I doubt that this will have much effect. Firstly resolutions don’t force Worldcons to do anything. It is a message of encouragement, nothing more. Secondly it would be easy for a Worldcon to excuse itself by claiming that it didn’t have the resources to do these things. But most importantly there is no point in marketing yourself if you don’t have a good package to sell. Before Worldcons do any extra marketing they should do the following:
- Advertise major events at least 6 months in advance;
- Advertise other name attendees (an “also attending” list doesn’t cut it); and
- Provide a regular stream of event and attendee-related news.
If they don’t do that, people at Comic-Con and Dragon*Con are just going to say, “why should I pay so much money for such a lame event?”
The other motion, also by Bacon and Docherty, seeks to mandate a series of age-related discounts in various bands for people 25 and under. I suspect this one too is doomed to failure, because Worldcons hate having their hands tied in any way. However, I’m delighted to see someone taking the idea of reaching out to younger fans seriously. Maybe we are at last starting to break out of the cycle of managed decline that assumes that Worldcon will die along with its rapidly aging group of regular attendees.
Update: Further to Perry’s comment below, I gather that the text of the resolution about visiting major conventions has been changed as follows:
Resolved, That WSFS convention committees (Worldcons and NASFiCs) are encouraged to be more proactive in marketing their conventions, including having a prominent and positive presence at Dragon*Con, Comic-Con International, and other major events of a similar nature such as the Chicago and New York Comic Cons; and for non North American Worldcons, similar events where there is potential to attract new book readers to Worldcon.
(My italics)
I thought the same thing when I read the resolutions, though it’s an absolute right step forward to get it out in the minds of folks.
Advertising name attendees is an absolutely must, but it can backfire. No shows hurt a lot more if you push them hard. While most no-shows (and untimely passings) haven’t hurt the cons they occur for too badly, if it becomes a prevalent thing to push specific attendees and have them not show up, it can be very painful to the long-term prospects. For an excellent example of this, look at World Championship Wrestling in the early 1990s! There’s a lot of ties between the growth and contraction of fandom and the similar paths of wrestling. The ultimate one being the saying: you pay your mortgage with the hard cores, but you buy your boat with the casuals. Increasing the casuals is what makes it thrive.
But there’s another idea that is seldom mentioned: pushing WorldCon ‘culture’ for lack of a better word. You can draw people many ways, and one of them is showing that a certain event has something special about it beyond the names and so on. Some events draw on the name of the event alone, and others require hard pushes of the people and events associated. If WorldCon can become the place for major public book launches, perhaps a serious location for independent SF film, promote the party scene and push WorldCon as an Event that can’t be missed as opposed to having people who can’t be missed being the draw, that’s better for the long-term WorldCon growth.
And sadly, that’s even harder to get out there.
Chris
Chris:
Understood about no shows, but I don’t worry about it for two reasons. Firstly you do this in collaboration with the author. Fans will soon learn that if an author doesn’t show it will be because he pulled out, not because the con flaked. And cons will learn which authors are likely to flake. Genuine excuses will be understood.
More importantly, however, “something may go wrong” is the standard excuse that the SMOFs use to prevent any change in how Worldcon is run. They trot it out every time. For them, and risk, no matter how infinitesimal, is too much, and indeed certain to occur.
Your other point is interesting, but as we’ve discussed here before Worldcon won’t become a venue for anything interesting that is industry-related unless it first gets the attendance up to a level where the industry thinks it is worth attending. (And I mean industry marketing people, not just a few fan-friendly editors.)
I agree about upping the multi-media content of Worldcons to attract a wider and younger audience. I’ve been trying for years to get one of the several local community theaters to do a play based on a Terry Pratchett novel. Heck, the play book is even published! They could do previews at local SF conventions to advertise it. But sadly, the local theater people don’t know about Pratchett’s avid fanbase. The plays themselves have too many people and are too complicated, they say. It’s a losing battle, without having a video to show them.
But why can’t a Worldcon do the same? A local community theater can be contacted well in advance to do a play based on one of the GoH’s books. Play preview…or a reading…is presented for 10 minutes as a teaser at various venues, both SF/F and for local younger fans. Full play is presented in town and also at the con. A videotape of the play can then be shown at Worldcons in the future.
Amy:
We did stage a play in 2005. It wasn’t a Pratchett – though it was a lot of fun. There’s certainly a possibility for a major event on Friday night.
good stuff indeed.
An issue with mandating certain actions on a Worldcon is that WSFS has no real power to enforce such. So, perhaps incorporating WSFS?
While lawsuits of WSFS, Inc are long in the past, it still haunts the actions of the current WSFS (not Inc). Here’s a brief history of WSFS, Inc: http://fancyclopedia.editme.com/WSFS
Of course, fans suing fans would never happen now ….
Anyway, much is done by consensus and drinks in the bar.
Michael:
You are absolutely right that the specter of WSFS, Inc haunts everything that happens in the Business Meeting. There are still many people who will yell, “To the barricades, over my dead body!” at the mere mention of such a thing. However, WSFS can and does mandate Worldcons to conduct site selection and the Hugo Awards in very precise ways. I therefor submit that WSFS, Inc is neither a necessary nor even a sensible pre-requisite for change.
So an Australian worldcon would be mandated to attend and promote WSFS at a San Diego Comic-Con? For me that would entail the outlay of approximately $A5000 in personal expenses plus loss of time, etc etc. And that’s just the one convention.
If this was a compulsory outcome of bidding for and running a Worldcon I doubt whether many Australian bids would be interested. I understand the sentiment and agree with it, but practicalities mean it’s too difficult and expensive to contemplate.
How is it that the conventions listed are all North American? Just asking…
Perry:
Indeed, which is doubtless why it is just a resolution with no binding force, and probably won’t get passed anyway.
On the other hand, any serious Worldcon bid does have to turn up at conventions such as Boskone, and that’s even further for you to travel. Somehow Australian bids manage to find people based in the US to do that sort of thing.
You are dead right on the North American thing though. I was impressed that Anticipation made the effort to visit Finncon and Imaginales. Possibly the resolution could have mentioned some of the French and Japanese comics conventions that dwarf Comic-Con.
Perry:
Please see the update in the main post.