Regarding a) How many eastern eastern states media conventions did you go to in the nineties, and so are in a position to be able to see the difference between then and now?
All cons were better when we were young. And VB was a real beer back then,the music was real music, and the girls had sunshine flecked eyes and valued brains over bodies, back in the halcyon days of our youth.
Rose tinted glasses, dude.
WA has had the media/lit issues, but never to the degree of the east.
And, while I may not have been at those Melbourne media cons, the noise of bitching and moaning and wank and drama at that time, about those cons, was pretty audible even on this side of the Nullarbor - fixing those problems was one of the major reasons that SwanCon became the template for the way NatCons should be run.
Media fandom in the east is more marginalised now than at any time I can remember since 1979, which is when I joined fandom.
I haven't seen any concrete evidence that that this is the case - I would argue that (leaving the awards aside) many of those things that were then associated with media fandom have disappeared because the technology and the world has changed.
Video rooms being the most obvious example, but certainly more broadly than that.
If people are focussing on the awards, it's because there's been no articulation of anything outside of that.
There are more lit guests than media guests, yep - they're cheaper, and easier to get. Plenty of recent cons have tried to get media guests, but have failed on issues of scheduling and cost - SwanCon '07 was lucky to wind up with a guest of the quality of Rob Shearman, for example, after its initial pick fell through.
And programming is always at the direction of the committee, and is always subject to criticism of those people who didn't see their specific interests represented well enough (in their view) during the con.
no subject
All cons were better when we were young. And VB was a real beer back then,the music was real music, and the girls had sunshine flecked eyes and valued brains over bodies, back in the halcyon days of our youth.
Rose tinted glasses, dude.
WA has had the media/lit issues, but never to the degree of the east.
And, while I may not have been at those Melbourne media cons, the noise of bitching and moaning and wank and drama at that time, about those cons, was pretty audible even on this side of the Nullarbor - fixing those problems was one of the major reasons that SwanCon became the template for the way NatCons should be run.
Media fandom in the east is more marginalised now than at any time I can remember since 1979, which is when I joined fandom.
I haven't seen any concrete evidence that that this is the case - I would argue that (leaving the awards aside) many of those things that were then associated with media fandom have disappeared because the technology and the world has changed.
Video rooms being the most obvious example, but certainly more broadly than that.
If people are focussing on the awards, it's because there's been no articulation of anything outside of that.
There are more lit guests than media guests, yep - they're cheaper, and easier to get. Plenty of recent cons have tried to get media guests, but have failed on issues of scheduling and cost - SwanCon '07 was lucky to wind up with a guest of the quality of Rob Shearman, for example, after its initial pick fell through.
And programming is always at the direction of the committee, and is always subject to criticism of those people who didn't see their specific interests represented well enough (in their view) during the con.
Cont.