Lou Anders has posted a report of his visit to Dragon*Con. Go take a look. See all those authors, artists and editors that he saw there, who were not at Worldcon? Still think we don’t have a problem?
41 thoughts on “Lou at Dragon*Con”
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Angling remains a considerably more popular “sport” than cricket, even though the two are very similar, involving mostly sitting around doing nothing for days on end, usually with beer. What do you think cricket is doing wrong?
If Andrew Flintoff, Ricky Ponting and Chris Gayle suddenly quit cricket and took up angling I would say that cricket had a problem.
Alas, the comment thread quickly devolved to “stay in the same place to build attendance.”
I’d like to see — insofar as I can “see” people at a convention I can’t afford to attend — as many writers, publishers, artists, editors, and other professionals, and other interesting people of all sorts, at Worldcons.
But if the primary interest of any of these folks is to show up where they’ll make the most money, and publicize themselves to the most readers, it’s not clear to me how much Worldcon could do to compete with venues that will always be vastly larger in attendance, and it’s unclear to me how high a priority Worldcon should put on any commercial benefit to any of its members.
To put it another way: I’m for doing things that are of commercial benefit to the members of the SF community that aren’t in conflict with the other values of Worldcon, but if there are conflicts, I think the conflicting values need to be weighed when we — or “you,” of that’s a more appropriate term — consider the Problems.
On the flip side, if people take a largely mercenary attitude towards what convention they prefer to prioritize, that’s a perfectly valid choice, but, again, one I’m unclear as to how far Worldcon should encourage or support. If Worldcon loses its spirit of mutual community, it ceases being Worldcon. If people of any sort don’t value or feel that community, there’s only so much Worldcon can do.
Which isn’t to say Worldcon should be indifferent to, or reject change; not at all. Simply: conflicting values must be weighed, not merely pointed to as the end of an argument; the conflicts are simply a beginning to, or middle of, a discussion.
As I noted in that Mind Meld discussion, the fact that Lou Anders says “And many more I didn’t run into, such as Peter S Beagle, JF Lewis, Jody Lynn Nye, Christopher Golden, Diana Gabaldon, Charlaine Harris, Cherie Priest, Susan Sizemore, CL Wilson, Janny Wurts, Timothy Zahn, and Lois McMaster Bujold” is something that seems worthy of note to me.
If a pro, or anyone, falls in the forest of a huge convention, and you’re not near enough to hear them, see them, speak to them, or ever encounter them, what’s the benefit to you?
Gary, there are always people that I miss at WorldCon, and even at World Fantasy Convention, and only hear about their attendance after the fact. And, for that matter, I was able to spend an hour with the charming Mur Lafferty at Dragon*Con this year, whereas we were completely unable to find any real time together at WorldCon. So I think what I described is something that is true of any well-attended con, and even of some small ones.
Further, I love WorldCon for its community, and relish being a part of it. But the reason that I, or any other publisher, attends conventions are to do business with our authors and perspective authors, and (most importantly to me) to connect books with readers who will love them. I love books, and I love talking about the books I love, and I love talking about loving books with other book lovers. I felt a bit lost at Comic Con, in the ways that you describe, but felt that the business I was able to get done there, despite being a tiny fish in a vast ocean, made it an important con for reason number one. What surprised me about Dragon*Con was that it proved to be an important con for the second reason. I was very surprised by the excitement for books and authors that I saw expressed both from the attendees and from the programming directors. And the unexpected presence of so many publishing professionals at Dragon*Con meant that it had the same sense of community there that I am used to experiencing elsewhere. I spent Sunday afternoon in the bar with Tor and Tor.com, doing what can only be described building community (and getting slightly drunk). In that regard, it was very similar to World*Con.
And I don’t mean to say that you implied this, but when you refer to mercenary decisions, I don’t think there is anything shameful about making decisions about where best to go to connect with book lovers when I am traveling on my employer’s dime. In fact, I think that for me to make decisions about someone else’s money based on only personal reasons would be shameful. But what impressed me about Dragon*Con is that it was both valuable and personally rewarding and seemed the best of both worlds.
For the record, I am not one for the idea that WorldCon shouldn’t travel. I agree it would not be “World” Con if it remained in one place. But likewise, if it shrinks down to only a thousand or two thousand people, it also seems very silly, and somewhat hubristic, to call it “World” Con as well, given the scope and scale that something with World in the title should imply. I heard recently of an anime con that hit 3,500 attendees in its second year, and I wondered what they did that we could learn from.
Growth curves are difficult things.
I’ve worked on anime conventions. Anime conventions often follow parabolic growth curves. They start, they grow fast, they outgrow their facilities and their organizing committees. This turns into a bad case of staff burn-out/churn and attendee churn, and sometimes collapse. The demand is high enough, though, that attendee churn is survivable; there are always new people to buy the tickets that folks who won’t return won’t be buying.
I’ve watched one small anime convention successfully manage its growth curve to something like 30%/year (except in years with a facilities change where overall capacity can be expanded greatly). It was a lot of work to keep the growth down to a reasonable level, but it’s taken over the lives of many of the volunteers and cut back on their other convention attendance.
It looks like a summer weekend before both SDCC and DragonCon would be better, serving as a lead in to both.
Worldcon either needs to grow by bringing in new programming streams like anime and media or scaling back on the formal programming and concentrate on the informal and social programming like parties, meet and greets, kaffeeklatches dances and consuites.
The big worldcons of the 60’s and 70’s managed with smaller formal programs that did not need convention centres.
Anticipation showed that except for the last night versus the Hugos you can run programming until 11PM.
Basically a worldcon should and will reflect its host city, a non US worldcon will feature the SF of its country and a US worldcon the nature of its local fandom and pros. Worldcons close to NYC may have more of a publishers’ presence and Midwest worldcons may have a more social emphasis.
Whereas SDCC will mainly reflect Hollywood and Dragoncon seems to be being an eclectic all things to all people but not too many people.
“So I think what I described is something that is true of any well-attended con, and even of some small ones.”
Yes, that’s, of course, true, and I didn’t mean to imply otherwise. I merely meant to emphasize that it’s a problem that grows with size, and that’s all. My point was simply that there are trade-offs when weighing benefits, and one needs to do a cost-benefit analysis of the trade-offs, rather than simply point to a benefit of one side of the trade. That’s all.
“But the reason that I, or any other publisher, attends conventions are to do business with our authors and perspective authors, and (most importantly to me)”
Yes, I’m aware; it was long before your time, but I used to work inhouse for John Douglas at Avon Books, started in professional sf as an “Assistant Editor,” i.e., slush reader, for Amazing and Fantastic in the Ted White days, under Lou Stathis, back in the mid-Seventies, worked for the Pacific Northwest Review of Books, and did endless freelance work in the Seventies and Eighties, as a proofreader, copyeditor, copywriter, and all around dogbody, as well as consulting reader, for a long list of publishers, including Ace, Tor, SFBC, Dell, Bluejay, Baen, and others both within the genre and without. I spent a couple of years under John representing Avon at various conventions, both with John and solo, as well as at other times doing my own professional networking, though I’m retired from publishing, to all effect and purpose, now.
“…I don’t think there is anything shameful about making decisions about where best to go to connect with book lovers when I am traveling on my employer’s dime.”
So, no, neither do I think there’s anything the faintest bit shameful about it. I’d like to see as much convergence as possible between the interests of all the parties concerned: writers, publishers, editors, fans, Worldcon-runners, artists, readers, etc., etc., etc. Ideally there should be as much of that over-used buzzword, synergy, as possible.
“But what impressed me about Dragon*Con is that it was both valuable and personally rewarding and seemed the best of both worlds.”
I’m glad to hear it.
“But likewise, if it shrinks down to only a thousand or two thousand people, it also seems very silly, and somewhat hubristic, to call it ‘World’ Con as well, given the scope and scale that something with World in the title should imply.”
Fair point, and I agree.
“I heard recently of an anime con that hit 3,500 attendees in its second year, and I wondered what they did that we could learn from.”
My only concern about growing Worldcon again is that it not, in the process, lose the values that make it Worldcon. It’s a tricky balancing act, and one that no matter what is done will never satisfy everyone’s desires, given how many conflicting desires there are as to what different people seek from Worldcon.
My own desire is that Worldcon grow to some degree again, but without losing its values (which would require an essay to outline again), and within its ability to assimilate growth and new members and perpetuate and communicate those values to new members, and without having those values overwhelmed by sheer bulk of new people, as would be the case if somehow a Worldcon could be put on that suddenly, say, jumped up to 20,000 attendeees in one year, by waving a wand.
Going back up to to 10,000 seems less problematic, and then seeing how it looks at that point, should that happen again.
And, meanwhile, Worldcon by its nature can’t have a steady membership from year to year; the location dramatically affects how many people it can realistically draw. Worldcons in California, the BosWash corridor, and Chicago, are always going to be far better positioned to draw much larger numbers than almost anywhere else, and there’s only so much that can be done about that.
Digressively, the most effective way to ever change a Worldcon, for better or worse, is to volunteer to work on one; not everyone is in a position to do this, of course; for endlessly varying reasons, most people are not. And making use of a bully pulpit to lobby others is a perfectly legitimate and reasonable thing to do. But it can also only go so far to actually make change happen.
This, of course, applies no less to me than to anyone else, and as I said in comments on that Mind Meld, I haven’t even attended a Worldcon since 1989, so please don’t take my comment as implying any sort of chastisement; I’m just describing fact. Meanwhile, carry on lobbying for LouCon. 🙂
Hi Gary,
I agree with you that at this point a magic wand is what would be required to get Worldcon attendance up to 20k levels, even if such a thing were seen as desirable by those in power to affect such a change. At this point, I think we’re talking about simply trying to stop more folks migrating away. I talked at Comiccon with a senior editor from a major house who wasn’t bothering to attend WorldCon and at Dragoncon with another senior editor from another major house who was also not interested in Worldcon. I think there’s something wrong when something that bills itself as “the World Science Fiction Convention” isn’t seen as essential by those in the science fiction industry. I would like WorldCon to be seen as the “pulse” of science fiction and fantasy literature, a relevant expression of same.
Thanks for mentioning LouCon. One reason I wanted to frame my response to the SF Signal question this way is that I enjoyed the recent Comiccon and Worldcon conventions as much as any time I’ve ever been to either, but I wanted to enumerate what it is that brings me, as a publishing professional with similar needs to others in my business, to any con; and a fictitious con was a good way to do that. You do make a point about the limits of a “bully pulpit,” but as someone responsible for running an entire imprint that publishes just under 30 books a year, I don’t have the luxury (nor responsibility) to volunteer for convention running. I can merely call attention to the problems that I see causing more and more of my colleagues to migrate elsewhere, and which I hope do not exacerbate to the point where I will have to do the same. However, the number of people who have contacted me via phone, email and in person to say they want to attend LouCon is impressive. Certainly indicative that there is a need out there for something like LouCon. What I did not expect going in was how much of my LouCon criteria Dragon*Con ended up satisfying.
You do make a point about the limits of a “bully pulpit,†but as someone responsible for running an entire imprint that publishes just under 30 books a year, I don’t have the luxury (nor responsibility) to volunteer for convention running.
Herein lies a problem.
How many other industries rely almost exclusively on external volunteer organizations to run their conferences for them?
IT, science, food and manufacturing depend on promoter-operated conventions organized by trade groups, professional societies and corporations. Yep, the industry fronts the money and foots the bill (and it’s a big bill).
Worldcon is a DIY event that serves a broad community. We all have to put into it in order to get what we want out of it. Publishers, even small publishers, have to step up and help build it.
It might be easier if the publishing and entertainment industries could come to a consensus and just throw money at it, but that wouldn’t be Worldcon.
Dragon*Con had an attendance circa 45,000, I believe, which is 10 times the turnout at Anticipation. I may be misinformed, but I believe Dragon*Con also underwrites the attendance of many of its professional guests, something no worldcon could afford. In any case, do you really believe fans would have more chance of connecting with their favourite writers and artists amongst a crowd in the tens of thousands, rather than one in the low thousands?
Steve:
Let me ask you a different question. If you were an author and you had the chance of paying your own way to go to Worldcon and meet 5 of your fans, or having some of your expenses paid to go to Dragon*Con and meet 50 of your fans, which would you choose?
Andrew, I’ve actually couched my arguments around a hypothetical convention rather than address Worldcon directly, because I’m aware of the constraints specific to Worldcon’s nature and the impediments to change such an organization faces. However, as all of this discussion here, on SF Signal, and on the floor of Comiccon and Worldcon and Dragoncon proves, a) there is clearly a problem that many people see and b) folks are dividing into those who would like a convention that addressed these problems and those who explain why Worldcon shouldn’t, wouldn’t, or couldn’t be this con. Fair enough; Worldcon doesn’t *have* to do anything.
Steve, your argument would hold up if all Dragon*Con was was a literary con, but there are many different tracks. Would that all 45,000 were there for books. However, a larger percentage was there for that reason that I expected. I spoke to rooms of 60 to 120 people, as opposed to the crowds I spoke to at WorldCon of 25 to 80 people. And I had plenty of private conversations with readers and fans. It felt very similar to Worldcon, with the difference being that there was a real energy to the convention that I think Worldcon is starting to miss, and a broader spectrum of ages and races than I saw in recent Worldcons. At its broadest expression, a lot of this dialogue revolves around how to recapture this energy. The much touted Stross-Krugman talk at Anticipation was the best application of Worldcon’s potential I’ve seen in a long time. More like this, please.
One function of the North American Science Fiction Convention is to allow conrunners who work on the worldcon every year but cannot afford overseas travel to meet up and network and work on their skills.
Cheryl, Lou:
Please don’t get the impression I’m all that wowed by worldcons, either. I find them sprawling and, in the main, unfocussed. However, the idea of attending an event with the population of a small town leaves me even colder.
As for your question, Cheryl, it hinges upon an assumption that authors only attend conventions to meet their fans. That may be the case in the USA, but not in the UK.
Steve:
You are right. Authors also go to conventions to meet their friends (mostly other authors) and have a good time. If all of their friends start going to another convention, what do you think they will do?
“I talked at Comiccon with a senior editor from a major house who wasn’t bothering to attend WorldCon and at Dragoncon with another senior editor from another major house who was also not interested in Worldcon.”
Pray tell, do any of these editors proudly announce when their books are Hugo Award winners? Maybe the problem is not just with Worldcons but also with the publishers not caring so much about the community. From here it looks like they’re willing to take but are unwilling to give.
(and from what I hear, this is the case for many other events, I recently heard an interview with the fundraiser for a small classical orchestra and she bemoaned the fact that “in the past you felt sponsors had our cause at heart, but now it’s all about getting more eyeballs”)
Whenever people talk about good things with Worldcons, they mention particular talks/panels/activities/exhibits. With DragonCon and Comic Con all I hear is “they’re big”, which is pretty much why I haven’t been, if all I want is to be part of a big crowd, it’s easier (and cheaper!) for me to go to a rock concert in my city.
Jeff @15:
That’s what SMOFCon is for. And that’s why SFSFC offers scholarships to attend it.
Steve Green @16:
Quibble: I wouldn’t call 40,000 a “small” town. My home town of Challenge CA — population under 300 — is a small town. I guess it’s a matter of one’s perspective on size of towns and cities. But I get your underlying point. I just think Worldcon would work better as a city of 8-12K than 3-5K residents.
joephan:
Most people in publishing I talk to say that being a Hugo winner does very little for a book commercially. And if Worldcon represents a really small part of the total science fiction reading market then they can quite happily ignore it because it does nothing for them.
Steve:
Authors also go to do business with agents and publishers. Publishers are now leaving in droves. Authors will follow. (And incidentally, the last time we had a Hugo nominated novel, we threw a party at Worldcon in honor of it. The reason I am talking here is that I want to keep *doing* that in future.)
Joephan:
1. The editor in question said of Worldcon “I love Worldcon but none of my authors want to go anymore.” It’s not that they don’t care about the community. But, and this hasn’t been said outright before, Worldcon doesn’t have an exclusive on “community.” In fact, because I had a lighter panel load at Dragon*Con than I did at Worldcon, I had a lot more time to socialize with fans and friends there, whereas most people saw me at Worldcon as a blur racing from one panel to the next.
As to panels – I was on two writing/editing panels that were both very well attended, in which smart questions were asked and (hopefully) valuable answers were given. I was on a live podcast in which the future of Worldcon as relates to this discussion was the topic. And I was on a writing panel in which the rest of us sat in awe of the anecdotes that came out of Gene Wolfe’s mouth. All great panels. All very relevant. All well attended. After each one, I talked with a lot of the attendees, several of whom thanked me for coming and expressed interest in having me back, and a few of whom have now emailed me. Others I have made plans to see at Con*Stellation.
So, interesting panels and community. Worldcon doesn’t have any kind of lock on this. There is community whenever authors and readers get together. I’d like to find ways to ensure they keep choosing to do this at Worldcon.
I think “lowering” the standards for how many panels programming puts people on would be a good thing. Even the Guests of Honor should only be doing 2 program items a day. They’re there to be honored, not scheduled to death. They should have plenty of time to just be at the con, out in public, having an opportunity to meet attendees and colleagues in unstructured manner.
I’m not sure how we get across to Worldcon program heads and budgeting people, though, that it’s better to have a larger pool of program participants doing fewer panels each.
@Cheryl
Then why are Hugo winners always prominently announced on the cover? Actions speak louder than words.
@Lou
I didn’t say Worldcon had a monopoly on interesting panels or on community. I said:
1) No one ever seems to use interesting events or exhibits at either DraconCon or ComicCon to highlight why it is a must attend event. Instead the reason given is “because it’s big” which isn’t enough to cause me to hop on a plane. Speaking of panels, my small local con also has panels, so does every other con I’ve ever been to, you’ll need more than just “we have panels” to get me to fly somewhere.
2) What I told Cheryl about Hugos. The day a publisher stops touting it on the cover is the day I believe winning a Hugo has no impact on sales. I can hear the cries of outrage now, should there be no more Hugos (look at what happened with semi-pro zines). What your editor did not say is _why_ his writers are not interested in Worldcon. That would be useful information.
Community is not just time to hang out at the bar, ComicCon and DragonCon paying for writers and other folks to attend (even if they’re not GoHs) hurts smaller cons all over since they can’t afford to do so and it means some local writers just won’t show up even they are within commuting distance. They also suck most of the marketing budget of a lot of publishers, again hurting smaller events (see comment about eyeballs in my previous post) And ultimately, you need these smaller events, they are often the gateway drug to those larger cons. Worldcons recognize this should go both ways and many help smaller events with grants from the surplus money they have.
Anyways, I will be part of those fans who go to Worldcon because they know they get value for their money there. And until someone comes up with a good incentive for me to spend just as much money to go, I don’t think I will attend either ComicCon or DragonCon, I’m open to it, but you’ve got to convince me.
joephan:
You are living in fantasyland. We wouldn’t have put so much effort into getting a logo for the Hugos if we weren’t keen to find ways to encourage publishers to make use of the fact that their books had won Hugos. US publishers are better – Lou’s people and Tor in particular. Some of the UK publishers I dealt with in 2005 regarded the Hugos with contempt, if they had heard of them at all. You can stick your head in the sand all you like, but it won’t make what you say true.
Joephan
I’m not trying to convince you to ever go to either. All I’m doing is calling attention to the reasons increasing numbers of publishing professionals are choosing to skip Worldcon altogether. It would be nice if Worldcon could be seen as important/relevant enough for them to come back. I went to Comiccon “because its big” and because I have some work that is comics-related coming out in 2010. I was surprised at how much book-related business I did without intending to. I went to Dragoncon because I realized my opinion of it was misinformed. I was surprised at how much it felt like a literary con to me. I will be at Comicon again in 2010, but maybe not in years when I don’t have comic-related work out. I will be at Dragoncon every year henceforth. That’s my decision, as both a fan and a pro. But convincing you to do the same is the last thing on my mind. Rather, I’d like to see Worldcon grow to a convention that pulls in 8,000 to 10,000 people and is seen as being central to the pulse of SF&F literature. I don’t want to see it marginalized, and fear that it is heading that way rapidly.
I think the problem is that there are some SMOFs who still insist that Worldcons should be run a certain way “because that’s the way we have always run them.” If adopting some of the practices that have made DragonCon successful would improve Worldcon, why not do it?
“I think the problem is that there are some SMOFs who still insist that Worldcons should be run a certain way ‘because that’s the way we have always run them.’ If adopting some of the practices that have made DragonCon successful would improve Worldcon, why not do it?”
This is a comment that is so vague as to be completely useless. Some nameless people are allegedly insisting on nameless practices, based on a made-up, unsourced, quote, and we’re asked why unnamed practices that have made another con “successful” in an unspecified way shouldn’t be adopted.
Could this be any less meaningful a set of assertions and a question?
Try sourcing your quote, naming the people, naming the practices you advocate be adopted, describing what your metrics for “success” are, and then maybe you’ll be asking a question that can be answered.
As phrased, it’s a variant of “when will Worldcon stop beating its spouse?,” and there’s no useful response possible.
And, to be clear, I think Worldcon should be doing a lot to try to attract some of the people who are instead flocking to all the tangential conventions that have sprung up in recent years, as well as doing a lot to increase diversity in its membership in all sorts of areas. But I don’t think my uttering such a vague thought is particularly useful, without specific recommendations, either.
Lou…
I’m not one of the people who thinks Worldcon should be frozen in time forever. I do think there are a few things that are important, though, for Worldcon to maintain its character.
Worldcon must travel. If it didn’t travel, it wouldn’t be Worldcon.
Worldcon must be volunteer-run from the top down. I’ve watched for-profit and promoter-run conventions destroy the sense of community within the volunteers, or create a strong separation between the staff and the attendees. Neither is good.
The rest?
There are a lot of good ideas in the mind meld. Your and John Picacio’s entries were great. I would love to see Worldcon committees think more seriously about marketing and branding (and I would love to see more cooperation between committees towards this). I would love to see the GoH slate expanded in the ways you suggested.
On the mercenary side, I would love to see a genre publishers’ trade association form (I live in the Bay Area, so I know how quickly an industry trade group can form if there’s interest), one that could focus on working with concoms (not just Worldcon) to support exhibits and programming and provide continuity that changing committees can’t.
The lesson that Worldcon needs to learn from Comiccon and Dragoncon is that it needs to stay relevant to people like Lou and others in the publishing industry if it is to retain of the features that most people would recognize as being core to Worldcon.
But how to stay relevant are probably not lesson to be learned from them as most people would also agree that for Worldcon to stay locked into one city would also loose features that are essential to the very nature of Worldcon.
But Lou and Cheryl are both right in that the answer for Worldcon is not to stay unchanged, and no matter how much some people might wish it Dragoncon and Comiccon are not going to go away.
Worldcon must learn to live and thrive in this landscape. It needs to make itself more available to a younger generation, who to be honest just can’t afford to pay $80-$250 at the door, and don’t have the stability in their life to purchase a membership 2 years out. It needs to provide unique (or at least near unique) opportunities for publishers, that they cannot get elsewhere, Worldcon can never be the mass marketing opportunity of Comiccon, so it needs to find another reason for Authors and Publishers to come to it. (why do so many still go to World Fantasy, which is after all a fraction the size of Worldcon).
Bury our heads in the sand will kill Worldcon, but so would making the wrong decisions for its future, The world does not need another Dragoncon or Comiccon clone, what it needs is a thriving Worldcon that offers the fans and the pros something different but equally of value to them.
Andrew, Steve – both good thoughts.
I agree that Worldcon must travel, and must be volunteer run.
I’d like to see a YA Guest of Honor, or, as Cheryl suggested elsewhere, “Special Guest.” I’d like to see a lower price point, or, failing that, day passes to students. I’d like to see us maximize our larger pool of attendees to reach out to other communities. I’d like to see us do more to make use of and promote our artists. I’d like for the event that bills itself as “the World Science Fiction convention” to be as impressive and important as its name implies. I’d like it to be a place that someone coming to for the first time, especially someone in their teens or twenties, felt was vibrant and exciting.
Publicists and marketing people will take anything they can get, so putting “Hugo Award Winner” on a book doesn’t mean they think it sells a lot of books, just that it doesn’t hurt to put it on there. One editor in NYC I talked to a couple of years ago basically said they put it on there to mollify the author most times–writers being as little more naive than most as to what actually makes a difference. But a book is more than just a sale, it’s an advertisement for a writer, and even a book unbought is still potentially *seen* and thus more valuable to the author if there’s branding info on it, like “Hugo Winner”.
Jeff
How many other industries rely almost exclusively on external volunteer organizations to run their conferences for them?
One reason Worldcons charge so much at door is because of the cost of facilities for an event of its current size . . . and because of the amenities (like a consuite) traditionally expected of it, at least in North America.
Perhaps a new model for Worldcon should have as much to do with considering how people might modify their expectations and conrunners might differently apportion resources (especially in times like these), and also focus on how and why Worldcons have trouble getting and assigning volunteers and staff. People and money are the two big feasibility issue. A very early start to work by the Sponsorship team may help too, perhaps some sort of continuing committee that advises Worldcons wherever they are…
Ultimately the challenge to Worldcon isn’t to reach out to industry but to reach out to people who look at the door cost and gulp. Those are the people who industry wants to get the interest of, that’s why the movie companies go to ComicCon. Taster memberships make a difference, weekend memberships make a difference, day memberships make a difference.
To some extent, yes, people have to decide what they will spend their money on.
The industry is to the side, really. The top-end editorial side of publishing may be about relationships, but relationships can happen over email as much as they can over a bar, can happen at BEA and Frankfurt. Publishing companies consolidate, and ultimately make decisions to reach the largest number of people in the same place, or the strategic people. And how things work in the anglophone publishing world isn’t necessarily how they work outside of it all the time. The same is true of fandom.
I realize this is thorny detail level, but has anyone done a recent pie-chart of membership cost break-down, including the line-item for refunded memberships?
Andy: Not that I know of. It’s really difficult to get the necessary information necessary to do such analysis. Every Worldcon keeps their figures differently, let alone their finances. And pretty much they like it that way — even the efforts of the FOLLE committee to standardize membership counting are met with great resentment.
V:
Value is a two-sided business. Yes, it would be much better if membership of Worldcon cost less. However, if the industry abandons the convention entirely, and there are very few authors, artists and the like attending, then the perceived value of the convention will go down yet further.
Gary Farber:
I was being deliberately vague, because I was trying to speak in the abstract. Obviously, I was less than successful in getting this point across. At the time, I felt that if I spoke about Point ABC, someone would immediately react as though I had just stomped on their toes while wearing steel-toed boots, and whine, “But what about Point DEF?”
But I will take something that Kevin mentioned as an example. If doing something as simple as standardizing the membership counting would lead to an improvement in the way Worldcons are run, why would there be resistance to that?
Because anything that compromises in the independence of Worldcon committees in any way whatsoever is Evil, that’s why.
If you value committee independence over everything else, it makes sense.
The “resistance” to standardizing membership counting is perceived as “outside interference” — besides, it obliges committees to collect information that isn’t of immediate use to that individual convention committee.
“If doing something as simple as standardizing the membership counting would lead to an improvement in the way Worldcons are run, why would there be resistance to that?”
It’s an excellent question.
It’s a question that lots of us with past multiple worldcon-running experience would always ask.
But the problem still built into the Worldcon structure is that each commitee is independent, and specifically bids as an independent committee; it’s built into the history, and the history goes back to 1940 and the second Worldcon, and the rest of the history would take a novel to explain, save to mention that highlights include the move to create a “WSFS, Inc.” in the late fifties, that was ruled out of order at the 1958 Business Meeting when Anna Moffat banged the gavel and declared it not the business of that Worldcon, and the short-lived attempt at a WSFS, Inc collapsed, and left scars that last to this day.
No commitee ever since has wanted to fully let go of their autonomy. And there are always a bunch of local people involved with no prior Worldcon experience, some of whom inevitably wind up being paranoid that the “outsiders” and “smofs” are Trying To Take Over Their Worldcon.
And this has sometimes led to unbelievable extremes that if you didn’t witness it for yourself, you couldn’t believe how crazy some people can be about some of this stuff.
At least one Worldcon came within one vote of its Board to completely collapsing and not happening over these issues, and that was in 1978, and I was at the heart of it as the guy pulled in six weeks before the con to suddenly — after I had no prior connection to the committee beyond being good friends with some members of the Board of Directors and major Division heads — be made Director of Operations, and retroactively voted by the Board to be recognized as Vice-Chair.
So I could tell you novels about this stuff, and lots of other years (particularly crucial stuff about 1976 and 1977, and also a lot of earlier history that I intensely studied second-hand), although Kevin would have to fill you in on more recent years after, say, 1986, when I quit working on Worldcons, myself, but since he’s still involved, he’ll never be so indiscreet.
Me, I can say what I want, and not care who I offend.
But the problem is that, to one degree or another, these crazy dynamics remain built into the Worldcon structure, and only two things can possibly change it (well, short of the Singularity finally occurring, or the sun exploding, or that sort of thing):
a) a major change of heart by the regular Business Meeting attendees — and that won’t happen absent such a huge public crisis as to force them to recognize that drastic change is necessary — which is to say that probably unless a Worldcon does implode and not happen, or maybe several in a row, this will never happen; or:
b) a con committee with a commitment to radically changing their approach manages to win the bid, and have a successful convention, and somehow a successive committee decides to form a bid on the same basis, and also wins, and then it happens a third time, and then maybe it — for whatever value of “it” we want to define as the relevant radical change — could become regularized.
I’m not holding my breath on either of these things coming to pass. Although I think “b” is probably more likely than “a.” Which is to say, not much.
I’d still say that the structure of the 1977 Worldcon bid — that a bunch of expert Worldcon runners from all over join together, and pick a location, and run it without being a geographically based committee — is a perfectly workable structure, and that I think it should be tried again, as it can avoid the local-jealousy problem.
(Though it doesn’t eliminate the possibility of the “experts” fighting badly amongst themselves, if they don’t make sure they’re really of compatible philosophies and personalities before they bid.)
But what do I know?
(And, hell, no, I’m in no position to either form such a committee, or win a bid.)
I’ll make one more point: if you’re going to be a serious and major part of a Worldcon bid and committee — and one doesn’t at all necessarily imply or mean you have to be part of the other; it’s not uncommon for people to just work on the bid, and do little on the convention, or have little to do with the bid, but have a huge role in planning and running the convention — but if you’re going to commit to both, or even just one, you’re taking on a huge responsibility and a gigantic commitment of time and energy for several years of your life.
In particular, many major jobs at a senior level of running a Worldcon can suck up all available free time in your life, and more, for a couple of years, or at least a year.
And when you put that much of your life into something, and you’re one of those people doing it for the first time, and it’s your local convention/bid, and it’s likely that’s the only time in your life you’ll be doing this, and you’re all wrapped up in the “prestige” you feel it will bring to you and your friends and your committee, and maybe your local fandom, or fan group, or set of fan groups, it’s not completely abnormal psychology to not want to see others come in and get — you might feel “snatch” is the appropriate verb — the “glory” part, or what you might see as undue credit, given how hard you’ve worked.
So that’s a big part of the psychology of the dynamic that typically takes place to one degree or another. It’s not entirely crazy: it just too often can play out that way for some individuals, and some segments of some groups.
Cue a long discussion of the psychology of group dynamics here, with particular attention to how paranoia can be infections, and the way groupthink can develop.
“how paranoia can be infections,”
I meant to write “infectious” there, but the above might also be correct.