One of the things you may have seen talked about during recent discussions of Worldcon is SMOFcon, a convention where people who run SF conventions get together to talk about how things might be done better. This does tend to be a fairly hardcore event, and therefore dominated by the usual greying fraternity. It badly needs new blood. But conventions are expensive, so a while back SFSFC started offering scholarships to help people attend. We don’t have the money to do that this year, but CANsmof, the parent organization of the Montréal Worldcon, is offering two scholarships of CA$500.00 to people wanting to attend this year’s SMOFcon in Philadelpia (Nov 30 – Dec 2). Details are here.
What you need to do is send an application explaining why your attendance at the event will be good for your local fan group. Preference will be given to Canadians, but as time is short (the deadline is Oct 7th) there’s a good chance that a non-Canadian might get in. Kevin, being a director of CANsmof, is one of the people adjudicating the applications. The other people on the selection committee are Diane Lacey and Terry Fong.
I might be tempted to apply, since even though I could only go for Friday-Saturday at most (working on Sunday in NYC), I wouldn’t need that much money to get there. But the application page does say, even for the one open to non-Canadians, that “Applicants should be able to demonstrate that their attendance at SMOFCon will benefit their local fandom and Canadian fandom” and I honestly can’t think of any reason at all why me going to SMOFcon would be of any benefit at all to Canadian fandom. 🙂
Gosh, I LOVE this.
After a panel on moderation at Chicon Laurie Mann actually asked me (I totally swooned, I have to say, and walked on clouds for the rest of the day. and some more days afterwards, too.) to come, but since it is expensive I said it was very doubtful. And I have been racking my brain since in an effort to see if there is any way I could come up with the money to attend.
Although I face the same problem like you – how I could be useful to Canadian fandom…
I suggest that you argue that contact with fans from other countries will widen the horizons of Canadian fandom and lead to enhanced international prestige. That’s more or less what Eemeli said when he applied for an SFSFC grant. I think we gave it to him too.
Actually only one of the two scholarships is earmarked for a Canadian, the second is open to all and in the past two years has gone to Norman Cates (in Australia) and Meg Totusek (in the US). So it’s more than a good chance a non-Canadian may get in, it’s pretty much a slam dunk. As for international candidates and usefulness to Canadian fandom, it’s pretty much as Eemili said in the SFSFC grant you mentioned. I’d encourage anybody not to be overly concerned with that and to go ahead and apply.