Wise words

[dalekboy]

"...they don’t think they need saving. I mean, they haven’t changed for years, have they? They’re not designed to be wanted because they don’t want to be wanted, not really. They want to be left alone to do their thing, and they don’t want any loud new people in the room. They serve a dwindling audience, and they have to be aware of that — so they have to be in it to simply serve that audience, to provide that presumably cosy experience to their people until the last light goes out. Otherwise they would have done something different years ago."

That's Warren Ellis talking about sf magazines, but he could be talking about the majority of sf fan clubs and conventions in Australia.

Just because your friends turn up, doesn't mean it's good.
Just because it breaks even, doesn't mean it's a success.
Just because something runs, that doesn't mean it's still relevant.

More on this later...

Comments

[mynxii.livejournal.com]

Being someone that is very much in favour of trying some new things - up to and including of the fact that some of it is sure to be less successful than others, I can see what you mean.

But I also believe that the capacity for change is out there.

The obstacles of getting through the 'but its tradition' and 'you can't do that because it didn't work last time' or 'you'll alienate everyone who currently goes'

I dont' think any of those things is any reason to not try something - and while the result may not work, it may also be a wild success.

I am hopeful of the idea that we are doing when we get dates from someone - heard from them lately?

As far as conventions in Perth go, they need to change to either be the kind of conference that can afford to utilise hotels properly, and the kind of conference that hotels /want/ OR they need to NOT be in a hotel. That's the biggest change I forsee over the next x amount of years - depending on opposition.

There's this myth that things should be cheaper function wise in Perth, and it's just blatently untrue. The hotels have the monopoly on what little function space is available across Perth for everyone to use for all the reasons people want function space. They can run things the way they like, at a price that suits them - and they do. They all almost have come to run the same way wanting a certain amount of guaranteed revenue in the $$ figure that would make you blanch at the very least.

At least in Perth it's got to be Change or Die really.

[dalekboy.livejournal.com]

Sometimes tradition is good and important, sometimes it's staid old wankers holding onto a past or joke that's no longer relevant.

The two traditional misspellings of friend in a particular form for WorldCon. It's cute within the community, but that the joke has to be explained every year kind of makes it pointless. It's that "I know the secret, so I belong here and you don't" attitude that helps keep people away.

Plus the general public and community are going are looking at this traditional mistake and going - They didn't even bother to spell check this! How unprofessional.

General comedy rule-of-thumb = If you have to explain the joke, it's not worth telling.

[sonictail.livejournal.com]

In terms of conventions I have two half words that bucked the trend against the standard conventions.

Wai-Con.

I just love that what WASFF and several people in the SF thought wouldn't succeed has managed to run beyond expectations. If anyone wants to put forward "change or die" they're a prime example.

[mynxii.livejournal.com]

Well said :)

Honestly the amount of history behind something like Swancon does make it more of a massive beast to change, but it's still possible.

I'm currently thinking my way through it on that score, things that I can do that won't take me months to wrangle through wasff and such, things that will give me intelligent information on where change is likely best received... things like that.

Not to mention, Hotels, still a big issue. Has been for ages, and somehow we manage to keep ignoring this, but really - we need to start solving now if it's to make a real difference.

[dalekboy.livejournal.com]

If the Continuums get running again, one of my eventual hopes is that ConFound will build up enough funds to seriously offset the cost of one of the cons as a one-off.

Do something like actually pay for the hotel, or a substantial portion of it, with no expectation of recouping the money, on the proviso that they have suitably low prices and advertise the fuck out of the convention. Given what I've seen over the last few years, an addition to that would be 'take some risks/try new things.'

All of that is geared towards the idea of getting new people into fandom, which has always been the secondary goal of the Continuums. Primary is that the majority of people have fun. Tertiary is that people learn how to run cons.

I can think of a number of Foundations and similar groups that have become more about maintaining the status quo, or making money, than servicing the very people for whom the things were formed.

[angriest.livejournal.com]

To be honest, there's precious little chance of any decent idea needing months of wrangling through WASFF - we're a pretty positive bunch these days.

I also don't think that the hotels problem is being ignored - it's been a major topic of conversation in con committees and the WASFF board since at least 2000. But each year we manage to find a venue OK, so the tough choices haven't yet had to be made.

[mynxii.livejournal.com]

True - call it a pessimist moment from me.


*love*

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

The problem isn't that we keep ignoring hotels as an issue - the problem is we keep discovering that its still a hard problem to solve, and every time we take steps to tackle it the next year its got a little bit worse.

(I'm off the opinion that the only *real* solution is to grow swancon as a customer, which means growing attendence both in size and probably spending power. But that just replaces one big issue with another)

[angriest.livejournal.com]

Wai-Con is a weird beast. It's huge and monolithic, and also bizarrely unwelcoming and standoffish. It was an odd experience going last year. I felt it was how an "average joe" would feel coming to a Swancon, which I'm ridiculously familiar with, and then suddenly I was trying to wrap my head around 97 hour costume parades.

I didn't realise WASFF had said it wouldn't succeed. I always figured a big anime con was always a good bet - although admittedly I didn't predict it would be *that* big. If anyone in Perth was clever enough to do a comics/pop culture con, I suspect you'd get similar numbers.

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

I don't recall anyone saying Wai-Con wouldn't succeed at a WASFF meeting. I think some people thought Wai-Con might run into some issues with committee structure etc, but as far as running a successful event, I think everyone knew the audience was there. Don't confuse something one individual WASFF member might have said. FWIW, I've been on WASFF for ages, and I was well aware of the success of overseas anime conventions before Wai-Con existed.

I can promise you this - if Wai-Con had approached WASFF wanting funding and advice at any point, including prior to the first con when the size of the audience was unknown, it would have got a positive reception. Whether Wai-Con and/or WASFF are better off now that the con is established without WASFF we'll never have an answer to.

And also - WASFFs role isn't to be the *source* of new ideas. Its supposed to be a boring organisation, because its role is largely to ensure that attention is paid to boring things like insurance, budgets, contracts, etc. I think its lost track of how to do that *well* in recent years, but WASFF already has a process to deal with that problem (its called 'annual elections').

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

The problem with being "The sort of conference that hotels want" is what they want is one that pays a lot. And not just for function space, but hotel markup coffee prices, catered meals, etc.