Those of you in the UK may be aware of a new convention starting up in London. Nine Worlds has been running a Kickstarter appeal, and has now been fully funded. It is a very interesting project. I love some of the things that they are hoping to do. They are trying to appeal to a very wide range of fannish interests, and there is a strong streak of geek feminism running through what they do. However, I’ve kept quiet about them up until now because I’ve been quite worried about them.

You see, Kevin and I have seen lots of conventions with very big plans fall flat on their faces, and often leave the people running them owing a lot of money. When we started BristolCon we started very small and grew in a sustainable way. Nine Worlds started off with the ambition to be the UK’s answer to Dragon*Con, and the first email I had from them talked about expecting 20,000 members. It sounded like, for their own good, it would be better if they didn’t get funded.

Since then they seem to have scaled their ambitions back a bit. More importantly they have got funded. That should mean that they can pay their basic hotel bills, and bring in some guests. And it shows that they have ability. Of course that’s not all there is to running a convention. Nine Worlds is promising 28 tracks of programming. There are also complicated things like handling room bookings for members. They have apparently got a block of rooms available at £90, which is pretty good for a Heathrow location in August. They’ll need to sell those, and right now they have a little over 200 members, some of whom will doubtless commute in from London each day. Con running isn’t easy.

However, now that the Kickstarter is funded, the con has to happen. If anything goes wrong now it will be a serious disaster. It’s a bit like Worldcon. You may not be enamored of all of the bids, but once one wins it has to happen, and everyone mucks in to help. And I do hope that they make a success of it. Not too much of a success, because if they start attracting huge numbers of people it will soon become a commercial event and the fannish focus will disappear. But a regular convention in London with an interest in costuming, comics, gaming, feminist and LGBT issues would be a very good thing to have.

The Kickstarter appeal ends on Sunday. Memberships are available at £65 through that. Once the appeal is over, the price will go up, so if you want to go you should sign up now.