Back when the Readercon harassment incident was in full flow, many people were saying variations on, “that’s it for ReaderCon, I’m never going again.” Rose Fox, whom one might normally expect to be in the forefront of any feminist campaign, stood by the convention. They liked the event, and wanted it to be fixed rather than destroyed. The results were spectacular. I was very pleased by that.
Now Rose has waded into the discussion again on the back of ongoing discussions, sparked in part by René Walling’s appearance at Worldcon. The point that Rose makes, and I think it is a very important one, is that most people are still talking about how creepers should be punished, and whether the punishment René has received has been too lenient, too strict, or just what mother bear likes. Far fewer people are talking about how we can make conventions safer to attend, and that’s really the important issue.
Well, back up there a minute. Some of the people busily yelling at Worldcon appear to despise fandom and would be very happy if conventions simply stopped happening. They have every right to have that opinion, but from my point of view they are irrelevant because I happen to think that conventions are good things that I would like to see continue. Within my worldview, what Rose has to say is very welcome.
I occasionally get abuse at conventions. Not sexual harassment, of course. But people do sometimes come up to me and tell me what a bad person I am because I am “trying to destroy all that they hold dear”, or some variation on that. What they mean is that I want conventions (or fanzines) to change. People are naturally protective of things they love. Ultimately, however, you don’t preserve an institution by encasing it in amber so that it can never change, you preserve an institution by encouraging it to move with the times so that it is always relevant to new people.
Where I am sure that SMOFdom will recoil from the post is where Rose talks about conventions needing to be customer-focused. There is a long tradition of SF conventions not being something where you buy a ticket and get a service in return. Conventions are fannish activity. The people who run them are all volunteers. And when convention attendees complain, the reaction of con-runners is often to say, “well if you don’t like it, you run the next one and see how well you do.”
However, unless a convention is being run for the con-runners themselves, and their close friends, the need to provide a good con-attending experience is very real. Just because an event is community-focused and volunteer-run, that doesn’t mean that it can provide crap service. You wouldn’t expect, say, The Samaritans to provide poor support to callers and, if challenged on that, complain that they were only volunteers. The same goes for conventions.
Now of course there are people who think that Worldcon is staged for the sole benefit of that relatively small group of people who attend every year (most of whom help to stage the event). I have been arguing with those people for well over a decade. As far as I’m concerned, if you want to put on an event the size of Worldcon, and attract large numbers of members from outside traditional con-running fandom, then you have to make the event enjoyable to attend.
So thank you, Rose, for standing up for conventions. I want to see them continue as well. But that means that I want to see conversations about how to make them better, not conversations about how much punishment needs to be handed out.
Update: post edited to reflect Rose’s pronoun preferences.
Oh dear. We had this argument in the UK back in the 70s when media fans began invading SF conventions, despite the contempt and derision of some skiffy fan groups and the bafflement of others. The idea of women in fandom (as opposed to just coming along with their husbands or partners) was pretty revolutionary then. Female media fans were sometimes greeted by turned backs, people muttering into their pints, walls of tweeds at the bar, the whole Slaughtered Lamb experience, but that didn’t last long, so I thought we’d moved on.
To paraphrase the Great Ghod Pratchett and all human experience, what don’t change can’t live. Keeping things justified and ancient and fending off aliens is a pretty odd attitude for a literature about change, isn’t it?
Let’s simplify this.
Convention running is a non-profit business about creating a community space.
Without the business we don’t have the space. Without the community, we don’t have the reason.
As you might expect, I agree with my husband. We’re running Westercon 66 together, after all.
If you want your community to be vital and your community space to buzz and be interesting enough to continue for another generation, you need to make sure the next generation thinks it’s worth visiting.
Which means your non-profit business needs to identify its market(s), and properly promote and reach out to those demographics, including (but not limited to) advertising to your target market.
We have observed there is entrenched disgust on the part of a certain segment of long-time conrunning fans at the very idea that marketing and promotion might apply to fannish activities.
I concur that there is an unreasonable fannish reaction to marketing and promotion within aspects of fandom which is outdated and frankly kinda silly.
My ‘but’ comes from what we expect when we use words like professional, because we can’t really get away from a convention being a volunteer run, non-profit event that is, frankly, a fraction of the cost of a professionally run event.
I have an issue with creating a them and us view of fandom, which I’ve seen in some of the batsh1t crazy feedback the Chicon team have had to deal with.
The “them and us” attitude is an inevitable result of conventions attracting far more attendees than can reasonably be involved in the organization. Ask Kevin about the ConJose Kaffeklatches if you want an example of crazy feedback. The only difference these days is that the feedback happens on Facebook rather than in feedback sessions.
Hmmm… I’m not sure it’s just about numbers attending. What I’m seeing is more, I have paid $X, $X is a $BIGNUM for me, therefore I expect the convention will be providing me with a Sparkly Pony AND a Unicorn.
The problem is, as a regular attendee of conferences of all kinds, even if you buy your membership at the last minute, you’re paying about half what comparably sized events would be charging with the early bird discounts.
I also still have the creeping horrors of the move to ‘professional security’ at one of the Adelphi conventions and the problems that led to. And while I accept that the Adelphi was an exception to many rules, some of the stuff I’ve seen in relation to Chicon has left me feeling distinctly WTF?
The reason that people complain like that is because they have no stake in the organization. They regard us as being just like any other commercial company supplying services to them. Often they are unreasonable. Look at the number of people who think that ebooks should be free.
Someone complained bitterly about last year’s BristolCon because we had been unable to attract George Martin and Neil Gaiman. To a 250 person convention. She’d paid £20 to get in. I saw people on Twitter yelling about what a rip-off this year’s Bristol Comics Expo was at £5 for entry. The echo chamber of social media amplifies this sort of behavior significantly.
The only way you can stop people doing that is by getting them involved and giving them a stake in the process, but you can’t do that for a 5,000 person convention.
Fans trying to do “professional security” frighten me too, as do Liverpool bouncers. Actual professional security people are very good.