Meeting Time

[kevin_standlee]

Today was a 2009 World Fantasy Convention meeting up in Oakland at the home of Sarah Goodman. Sarah has a wireless internet connection, so I was able to stay online during the meeting and even made a couple of simple corrections to the WFC2009 web site on the spot. For instance, we set the deadline for the current $125 memberships to be the end

Comments

[redneckotaku]

WFC memberships sell out before the con amazes me. Otakon and Katuscon (the two cons I know that had to have caps) sold out before the convention. It must be a convention worth going to for Fantasy Fans.

[kevin_standlee]

WFC is in some respects more like a trade show than a typical convention. Attending membership sales to the public (not including guests of honor, staff, and the like) are limited to 850 people. Memberships are quite expensive (currently $125 and going up from there) and the convention typically does very little in the way of local publicity or marketing of itself. We won't be running a table at BayCon next weekend, for example, although SFSFC will have a table promoting our Westercon bid.

Back in 1993, we internally established a membership limit of 10,000 for ConFrancisco, our Worldcon in San Francisco, but we didn't say anything about it because we were certain we'd never come near it, which we did not. That was the practical cut-off, however, being the number of publications and badge blanks we'd ordered.

[k6rfm]

I don't think WFC memberships are "quite expensive" at $125 when Anticipation is already $195.

I do agree that WFC ought to be more expensive than Worldcon, but it seems to be getting harder and harder to do that.

Oh, add WisCon to the list of conventions that usually sell out. It's space considerations there, of course; they could move from the Madison Concourse Hotel to the convention center, but I don't think they'd get enough more memberships to cover the vastly increased cost, plus it would completely change the tenor of the con.

[redneckotaku]

World Fantasy Convention is in a hotel and runs only four days instead of five Days for Worldcon. Wouldn't that naturally make it cheaper than Anticipation?

[redneckotaku]

It depends on what you want for your money. Worldcon and World Fantasy are geared for two different audiences

[redneckotaku]

That makes sense as to why World Fantasy con is capped. I understand why organizations like SFSFC would want to do something like that. I would rather bring a Nebula Awards Ceremony to my area over a World Fantasy Con, but that is where my fannish energies lie.

[kevin_standlee]

World Fantasy Conventions are deliberately priced high, by rule. Groups who bid to host the event are carefully informed about this. (Unlike popularly-voted bids like Worldcon and Westercon, WFC's are awarded to groups by vote of the World Fantasy Convention's board of directors.) It's part of the trade-show/professional conference aspect of the event. As a conrunner, I will say that it does make planning a whole lot easier when you can buy things you ordinarily have to make yourself or do without.

[kevin_standlee]

I'm talking about perception. To most fans, Worldcon memberships are too expensive already, and that's for a convention that's five times larger and 25 longer. In fact, any convention that costs more than what a membership to BayCon, DragonCon, or ComicCon costs is likely to be perceived as "too expensive." By that yardstick, both Worldcon and WFC cost too much. If someone thinks a Worldcon membership is too expensive at more than $100, they're certainly not going to spend more than that for a much smaller, shorter convention.

I know better than most people why they cost what they do, but that doesn't mean I don't also understand that they are perceived as too expensive by a whole lot of fans.