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

[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.