My Google Alert on Worldcon turned up a poll about SF conventions on the LiveJournal of someone called ArtVixn. It asks a number of questions about conventions, including the following:
- If you haven’t attended Worldcon, what factor was the most important in stopping you?
- If you found out there was going to be one near you, would you be interested?
I was interested to see that at present the clear winner on the “what’s stopping you attending Worldcon” question is the air fare (53%, compared to only 9% for membership price). Also the “would you be interested” question was running at 67% for “Yes!”.
Now of course, human beings being what they are, I suspect if you took a poll of people who lived near a Worldcon then the most common reason for not attending would be the membership price, But it is good to see that people have an interest in attending. It is also a good argument for why Worldcon needs to travel around.
If you have the time, please go and participate, especially those of you who are not Worldcon regulars.
Update: Oops, forgot to mention that you have to have a LiveJournal account to vote. Sorry.
I note that Seattle’s Worldcon bid attractiveness in its local area may have been hurt, rather than helped, by the NASFiC they hosted in 2005. Rather than being “Norwescon Plus Plus,” CascadiaCon was more like an overside Westercon, and that was probably disappointing to local fans.
(Having been their Fan GoH, I’m undoubtedly biased in some way, so my comments should probably be taken with this in mind.)
I’m not being overly critical of, for lack of a better term, “casual” fans. It’s unrealistic of us to expect every person with an interest in SF/F to dedicate their lives to it like a small percentage of us do. Moreover, a lot of those “casual” fans are the ones whose participation in SF/F genre conventions pays the bills, so we should be thinking of our membership here.
Yes, I know I’m only posing questions, not answers.
That is an interesting thought Kevin, and perhaps because I chaired it I am also jaded. I do however still get comments about Cascadiacon, most of them positive. I had not heard from the casual fan that they thought of it as a Westercon on steroids but I can’t say that is bad, in fact we seem to like Westercon’s here in the PNW so perhaps that will be a good thing when they see and understand how much more a Worldcon has to offer.
I think for a new area/non Worldcon going fan base, you have to sort of ease them up the ladder a bit. Help them understand why a traveling con is better then the 800 pound gorilla they already have and then why it should cost so much more. That is a hard battle to fight when you can’t load them all in a bus and just take them to a Worldcon and show them.
I am trying to do the next best thing – loading some of them into an RV and a Van then driving them to Denver. Hopefully we will have even more in the vehicles going to Montreal.
Bobbie