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

[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').