A Tale of Two Natcons
In the early 90's the media Natcon was going gangbusters (300-400+ attendees), the lit Natcon was dying with a slowly decreasing (around 200) and aging membership. With the success of a couple of joint media/lit Natcons, it was suggested that Australia's population was so small the two cons should be joined
( Read more... )
Multiverse disbanded as a con-running entity for two reasons.
One was that they had a hard time finding people willing to take it on. This is one of the reason I tried to build in my own obsolescence with Continuum. I didn't want people saying, "Only such-and-such can do XYZ."
The other of the reasons is also part of why they had a hard time finding people to take it on. Serious changes would have had to be made to the running due to public liability issues. Around that time we had the chair-lift disaster and a number of other things happen that meant for a large volunteer group to get insurance was difficult in Victoria. Some people would have needed to take on running Multiverse as a full-time job to meet the requirements of insurance at the level they were operating.
Multiverse still exists as an entity, and every year raises money for the Good Friday appeal. To date they have raised over $350,000 for charity.
I can't say how many would have been willing to participate in A3 after they had already been told they weren't needed, but you of all people know how that program came together. Even if they did submit ideas and panels, it doesn't mean the programmer followed through on them. However there may have been significantly fewer items submitted simply because they didn't feel welcome.
I do know that Multiverse did a hell of a lot of advertising for A3 off their own bat and out of their own pocket. Sending out flyers to their fairly huge membership list, other cons and clubs, etc. They got dragged over the coals for referring to JMS as a Guest of Honour on flyers. While this may have been an issue for the WorldCon committee with regards to woldcon politics, it could probably have been handled more graciously at the local level.
As I mentioned, media fandom was also having its own issues at the time which hurt things. Media fandom was having a meltdown, and the Natcon wasn't catering to them, so they weren't going to it, and therefore weren't likely to be involved in its politics, committees, program, etc.
And while you can say, well they did nothing to change things, the Natcons didn't do anything to draw them in, either.
Reply
Leave a comment