My first con was Aussiecon 2, huge by Australian standards, I didn't know anyone, or even that fandom existed. I met a lot of Americans, I still had such a good time that I signed up and went to Swancon (1986) where I met some Australians. Some of these people were running a con in my home city Melbourne. They invited me to help out, hey it sounded like a great idea at the time. I was then involved in fandom.
Fan Guests I have always thought of as a thread of history of fandom, I could listen to their stories, I could see the people they talked to and build my understanding of this new group of people.
Mundanes, muggles, non-IBMers, whatever group you are in human kind seems to need to have a category name for people who are not in that group. I have not attended that many cons in recent years but if I ever did hear people discussing mundanes it was used to identify the group of people, not to "Slag off" at them. The only group of people I ever heard being slagged off were the network TV schedulers who decide ahead of time that an SF programme will not rate so lets show it at 11:30 out of order, unless we can bump it for something else, but then they deserve to be slagged off.
It's nice to see that the problems people perceive to be there are not political (Fannish).
Cons have always been on the expensive side of things but if this years swancon was only $150, I would be hugely impressed as it would not be much different from what I paid in '86.
If you are going to change the way a con runs for the sake of newbies, then ensure that you aren't cutting off your nose to spite your face, the reason I turn up to cons is to catch up with my friends that I made when I first started going to cons, I wouldn't like to think that doing that is not kosher anymore.
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Date: 2008-03-27 02:24 am (UTC)Fan Guests I have always thought of as a thread of history of fandom, I could listen to their stories, I could see the people they talked to and build my understanding of this new group of people.
Mundanes, muggles, non-IBMers, whatever group you are in human kind seems to need to have a category name for people who are not in that group. I have not attended that many cons in recent years but if I ever did hear people discussing mundanes it was used to identify the group of people, not to "Slag off" at them. The only group of people I ever heard being slagged off were the network TV schedulers who decide ahead of time that an SF programme will not rate so lets show it at 11:30 out of order, unless we can bump it for something else, but then they deserve to be slagged off.
It's nice to see that the problems people perceive to be there are not political (Fannish).
Cons have always been on the expensive side of things but if this years swancon was only $150, I would be hugely impressed as it would not be much different from what I paid in '86.
If you are going to change the way a con runs for the sake of newbies, then ensure that you aren't cutting off your nose to spite your face, the reason I turn up to cons is to catch up with my friends that I made when I first started going to cons, I wouldn't like to think that doing that is not kosher anymore.