I always said, "Never ever a Continuum Natcon," and in fact have things set up in such a way that while not impossible, it's not easy. You'd basically need to convince two committees to back you up.
I'm only going to talk about the one time it nearly happened.
We very nearly bidded against a Natcon at the last minute. I actually got phoned up by the Chair of a Continuum and told, "Talk me out of bidding for the Natcon."
I asked what had happened, and it seemed that the Natcon bid was pushing itself as being run by people with 'lots of recent experience in running conventions' and allowing people to draw their own conclusions.
As it wasn't a Perth or Canberra bid, naturally people thought of Continuum. Nothing was said by the runners to clarify which group was running. The first we knew was people approaching the then current Continuum Chair and saying, "Continuum's bidding for the Natcon! That's great!"
On top of this, the Chair had previously been approached by the bid organiser and asked if we minded if they ran a 'small' event around the time we normally ran our cons. We said no problem, go for it. At no time was the Natcon bid mentioned.
This is the same person who came up to me personally and congratulated me on nailing that middle of the year slot as the 'Continuum slot.' She said it was good because people knew it was on around that time and wouldn't go up against it. Then she snuck in and grabbed it!
Other cons were asking us when we were running, they didn't want to be up against us. In one case, we didn't have a date set, so we told the con, "You tell us the dates you want to run, and we'll stay as far away from them as we can." We didn't see it was fair to make them wait on us while we ummed and ahhed.
We treat fandom as a community, not a power game.
Of course history has been rewritten, so I've since heard how she told us all about her plans for a Natcon and we said it was fine. Apparently, we're the ones rewriting history.
Why would we rewrite history in such a way as to make ourselves look bad? It doesn't make sense.
Thing is, if instead of sneaking around, she'd just asked us outright, it would have been fine. Oh we would have grumbled a bit, but we would have said yes, take the weekend.
The Continuum Chair and I talked about it at length. Eventually we decided not to go for it. But we were very, very unhappy about the game-playing.
Given where we were at at the time, do you think another Natcon would have got the bid over what would have been a Continuum Natcon if we had actively gone for it? I don't.
And needless to say, that ended up being the Natcon where the chair turned up to Swancon, and totally failed to spruik her Natcon at the closing. Nor was there any hint that she had arranged for anyone else to do it.
So I stood up and did it at the very last second because I felt it had to be done, because people would want to know about it. I didn't have all the info, so then you saved things when you chimed in with the guest list. And people were impressed. And wanted to go.
Part of me still says I should have let the Natcon go unmentioned at Swancon. If she didn't care about it, why should I? But I would have regretted it if I hadn't spruiked it, because all those people who then decided to go would have missed out.
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Date: 2009-06-02 10:38 am (UTC)I always said, "Never ever a Continuum Natcon," and in fact have things set up in such a way that while not impossible, it's not easy. You'd basically need to convince two committees to back you up.
I'm only going to talk about the one time it nearly happened.
We very nearly bidded against a Natcon at the last minute. I actually got phoned up by the Chair of a Continuum and told, "Talk me out of bidding for the Natcon."
I asked what had happened, and it seemed that the Natcon bid was pushing itself as being run by people with 'lots of recent experience in running conventions' and allowing people to draw their own conclusions.
As it wasn't a Perth or Canberra bid, naturally people thought of Continuum. Nothing was said by the runners to clarify which group was running. The first we knew was people approaching the then current Continuum Chair and saying, "Continuum's bidding for the Natcon! That's great!"
On top of this, the Chair had previously been approached by the bid organiser and asked if we minded if they ran a 'small' event around the time we normally ran our cons. We said no problem, go for it. At no time was the Natcon bid mentioned.
This is the same person who came up to me personally and congratulated me on nailing that middle of the year slot as the 'Continuum slot.' She said it was good because people knew it was on around that time and wouldn't go up against it. Then she snuck in and grabbed it!
Other cons were asking us when we were running, they didn't want to be up against us. In one case, we didn't have a date set, so we told the con, "You tell us the dates you want to run, and we'll stay as far away from them as we can." We didn't see it was fair to make them wait on us while we ummed and ahhed.
We treat fandom as a community, not a power game.
Of course history has been rewritten, so I've since heard how she told us all about her plans for a Natcon and we said it was fine. Apparently, we're the ones rewriting history.
Why would we rewrite history in such a way as to make ourselves look bad? It doesn't make sense.
Thing is, if instead of sneaking around, she'd just asked us outright, it would have been fine. Oh we would have grumbled a bit, but we would have said yes, take the weekend.
The Continuum Chair and I talked about it at length. Eventually we decided not to go for it. But we were very, very unhappy about the game-playing.
Given where we were at at the time, do you think another Natcon would have got the bid over what would have been a Continuum Natcon if we had actively gone for it? I don't.
And needless to say, that ended up being the Natcon where the chair turned up to Swancon, and totally failed to spruik her Natcon at the closing. Nor was there any hint that she had arranged for anyone else to do it.
So I stood up and did it at the very last second because I felt it had to be done, because people would want to know about it. I didn't have all the info, so then you saved things when you chimed in with the guest list. And people were impressed. And wanted to go.
Part of me still says I should have let the Natcon go unmentioned at Swancon. If she didn't care about it, why should I? But I would have regretted it if I hadn't spruiked it, because all those people who then decided to go would have missed out.