...I had had Melbourne fans try strenuously disabuse me of this notion.
And I'm one of them, because I lived there. One con a year in a city that used to hold as many as three to five a year does not count as a resurgence. Especially when ConVergence 1 had to be saved by the same group of us (mortonhall, mireille21, Greg Clarke) that then went on to run the first Continuum. Though that rarely gets a mention, while we have never been shy of mentioning that the seed money for Continuum 1 came from ConV1.
I had the idea for Continuum in 1995, then my father died in '96, which gutted me and derailed my fan life. And then Gunny died! I still have the scraps of paper with the original ideas on them for logos, awards, and stuff. It's what made getting C1 off the ground so easy - the plans already existed.
And Continuum owes it's 1995 inception to the fact that I could see we needed to get people trained up pre-A3, and a yearly con was a good way to do that. Even before it won the bid, A3 was then presenting itself as if it was going to be completely run by the old guard, many of whom had not been on a con committee in years. That's the problem with event fandom, it rarely seems to plan well for the future.
I can tell you without trying that a lot more cons ran in Melbourne between 1990 and 1996 than have run between 1997 and 2009. If I could be bothered going out to the garage, I'd go through all my old con books and give you the list. I am not exaggerating when I say you used to have to really seriously look for an empty long weekend if you wanted to run a con in Melbourne.
The first time I heard the concerns that a worldcon would wipe out Perth fandom, it came from well-known Perth fans. And their arguments were pretty sound. Aussiecon 2 did wipe people out. A lot of folks dropped out of active fandom for a long while or permanently after A2. And Perth fandom had a much smaller base group to work from.
But A2 was so very, very successful at bringing in tonnes of new folks, that the gain was far greater than the loss, and we suddenly had a lot of new fresh people wanting to do stuff.
And I do think that Perth is more or less at the point now where it could do it.
More Ranty History!
And I'm one of them, because I lived there. One con a year in a city that used to hold as many as three to five a year does not count as a resurgence. Especially when ConVergence 1 had to be saved by the same group of us (
I had the idea for Continuum in 1995, then my father died in '96, which gutted me and derailed my fan life. And then Gunny died!
I still have the scraps of paper with the original ideas on them for logos, awards, and stuff. It's what made getting C1 off the ground so easy - the plans already existed.
And Continuum owes it's 1995 inception to the fact that I could see we needed to get people trained up pre-A3, and a yearly con was a good way to do that. Even before it won the bid, A3 was then presenting itself as if it was going to be completely run by the old guard, many of whom had not been on a con committee in years. That's the problem with event fandom, it rarely seems to plan well for the future.
I can tell you without trying that a lot more cons ran in Melbourne between 1990 and 1996 than have run between 1997 and 2009. If I could be bothered going out to the garage, I'd go through all my old con books and give you the list. I am not exaggerating when I say you used to have to really seriously look for an empty long weekend if you wanted to run a con in Melbourne.
The first time I heard the concerns that a worldcon would wipe out Perth fandom, it came from well-known Perth fans. And their arguments were pretty sound. Aussiecon 2 did wipe people out. A lot of folks dropped out of active fandom for a long while or permanently after A2. And Perth fandom had a much smaller base group to work from.
But A2 was so very, very successful at bringing in tonnes of new folks, that the gain was far greater than the loss, and we suddenly had a lot of new fresh people wanting to do stuff.
And I do think that Perth is more or less at the point now where it could do it.
/ranty history lesson