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

[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.