Convention Budgeting

FantasyCon 2009 has published its budget. You can see it here (PDF).

It is a relatively small event – maybe 300 people, but the numbers are still instructive. Here’s what I noticed.

Just like a Worldcon, their major expense was hotel function space.

You can lose money on a banquet if you don’t sell enough seats (though thankfully their loss was quite small).

The cost of your program book can be covered by selling advertising (though it isn’t clear where all of ad sales appeared).

Insurance is Very Expensive (but essential).

And no, I don’t understand why sale of books is only an expense, not a source of income.

Crazy People

On Monday evening I caught up with Jeff and Ann VanderMeer to check that they had enjoyed the convention and let Jeff know I’d be at his reading in San Francisco on the 14th. Jeff mentioned, with some amusement, that he had overheard people at the convention talking about me as someone who could make or break writing careers.

*splutter!*

No. Just, no.

Whoever those people are, they are crazy. But sadly this is very similar to the nonsense that I got over Octocon, so I guess I should make another attempt to stomp on the meme.

To start with, I write very few reviews these days. Also I have nothing to do with the selection of fiction for Clarkesworld. I repeat: nothing, zero input. I don’t even see the stories before they are published. Indeed, I read very little short fiction, and as that’s the area in which careers tend to be made or broken I don’t see how I can have any influence over such things.

If you wanted to know how important I am in the SF&F industry all you needed to do was keep your eyes open at World Fantasy. You will have noticed that when Kevin and I went out for dinner we generally did so alone. And our table at the banquet comprised us plus Ron and Val Ontell who wanted to pick our brains because they are running the 2011 World Fantasy in San Diego. No one else wanted to sit with us. That’s how low in the pecking order we are.

So please, if you hear anyone spreading this nonsense, stop them. I have quite enough problems in my life as it is without having people afraid of me because they think I have influence over publishers.

Back to Reality

Kevin and I are back home from World Fantasy. We are both busy on the day job. In addition I appear to have contracted some sort of Con Crud because my sinuses are complaining at me. If I have this may explain why I am so desperately tired. It seems unwise of me to attend a mass signing event at Borderlands under the circumstances, so I am not going. Apologies to everyone who will be there.

The Trouble with Token Panels #wfc2009

So this year we have had an LGBT panel at Worldcon and an LG panel at World Fantasy. In both cases the write-up of the panel was all about whether the subgroup in question is now fully accepted by society, with the underlying premise that the answer to that question was “yes”. In both cases the people on the panel answered the question with a resounding “NO”.

Yeah, sure, President Obama has just signed the Hate Crimes Act, and lifted the ban on HIV positive people entering the USA. But you know, if queer people were fully accepted by mainstream society they wouldn’t need hate crimes legislation, would they?

So do you think that maybe next year we could not have any more of those panels, and maybe talk about something else with LGBT themes instead?

It all comes down to tokenism in the end. Having a token gay character in a book might be progress from not having at characters at all, but having just one gay character who appears to stand for all gay people, and whose portrayal is heavy on the stereotypes, and whose function in the story is to highlight the problems of gay people in society, is still all about gay people being a problem. And so are panels like this.

Sadly they are still necessary, because one of the first comments from the audience was someone going on about how as a reader if he discovers that a character is gay he immediately wonders why the author has chosen to make that character gay. And that means that in his mind being gay is somehow exceptional, not “normal”. Being white and male heterosexual is “normal”. Anything else the author is expected to justify in some way. -sigh-

But we did have a good panel today. One comment of Malindo Lo’s that I tweeted got a lot of notice. She said she has got a lot of questions about how realistic it was to have a fantasy world in which there is no homophobia, because didn’t she know that in medieval times people were really homophobic. And she tends to answer those questions by pointing out that her book has fairies in it too. Is it really easier to believe in fairies than in a society that is free from homophobia? Apparently it is.

I also discovered the Doselle Young is a really awesome panelist, so if he’s coming to a convention you are running make sure that you use him.

And finally, to get back to the question of tokenism, I got in a comment about how a single L, G, B or T person tends to get seen as standing for the entire group, which makes writing that character quite difficult. I think it was Grá Linnaea who said, “You know, it is really odd for a gay character not to have any gay friends.”

In Full Swing

Here at World Fantasy the Press Office is rather busy. We have a number of in-community journalists here for the whole event, but what really makes me happy is getting in people from outside of the community. Today we have a number of people in from the local media, and that’s keeping me busy. Thankfully I have Kevin and Jean Martin here to help out.

I have also managed to spend some time in the dealers’ room and have come away with one bag of swag. There’s still a lot more I’m looking for, though. I have been away from the US for around 9 months, and a lot of books can get published in that time.

Today is, of course, Halloween. There are people in costumes. Some of them are well known authors. The Blue Meanies are doubtless none too happy, but that’s their problem.

Convention in Progress #wfc2009

World Fantasy has now started (though opening ceremonies are not for another hour). My office here is vast, and the Internet connection is good. Kevin has been out putting up signs to Registration because we sited it at the top of the escalators and anyone using the elevators will find themselves on the wrong side of the hotel and having to walk to the opposite side of a large square, around the outside. We were strongly tempted to put signs pointing both ways from the elevators.

Most of the tweetage has been about the size of the freebie book bag. Well, this is World Fantasy, a large book bag is expected. I weighed mine. It is 13 lbs. Members who complain about the weight will be reminded that someone had to get the books here and do bag stuffing (that’s a Hero of the Convention Medal for you, Rina!)

Blue Meanies have been sighted in the Dealers’ Room.

I’ve just seen Kevin tweeting which means he has managed to get the in-room Internet (free to President’s Club members) working. That means we should be fine for the live coverage of the Last Drink Bird Head Awards tonight. Hope to see you there.

Arrived

Travel yesterday as largely uneventful, thank goodness, so I am now safely in Sunny California where I hope the weather will stay good for a few more days so that all our foreign visitors can experience how lovely it is.

Talking of foreign visitors, tonight I get to meet Zoran and Mia Živković at SFO, and I’ll be spending Wednesday acting as tourist guide for them in San Francisco.

Tomorrow evening we’ll be at Borderlands Books from 6:30 to 8:00 for a mass signing event by WFC Members. The current guest list is as follows: David Drake, Kate Elliot, Graham Joyce, Patricia McKillip, Garth Nix, Ken Scholes, Michael Swanwick, James Anderson, Carol Berg, Marie Brennan, Gail Carriger, David B. Coe, Steven Erikson, David Farland, David Lunde, L.E. Modesitt, Jr., John Picacio, Barbara and Christopher Roden, Mark Sebanc, S.M. Stirling, Mark Van Name, Bill Willingham, Zoran Živković, Kari Sperring, Chaz Brenchley. There may be others. There will be a similar event with different people on the Monday.

Thursday through Sunday I’ll be busy at World Fantasy, and will probably be blogging quite a bit on the convention web site and at ConReporter.com. In particular don’t miss the live coverage of the World Fantasy Awards on Sunday.

And given how busy I’ll be for the next week, today needs to be spend being domesticated. I have to pack for the convention. And there is an enormous amount of mail for me, because I haven’t been here since January.

Kevin on Resnick

For the benefit of those people who think that Kevin is my sock puppet, or vice versa, here is his take on the Mike Resnick Worldcon article. Kevin chose to zero in on some of the wilder accusations in the article, especially the one about Anticipation padding their membership figures. As a Director of Anticipation’s parent organization, and a member of the WSFS committee responsible for auditing historical membership data, he obviously took that one fairly personally.

Resnick on Worldcon

Gary Farber points me to this article by Mike Resnick called Pros and Cons — meaning Professionals and Conventions. Guess what Mike has to say:

I think what the Worldcon movers and shakers haven’t yet figured out, or possibly don’t particularly care about, is that if the publishers stop supporting Worldcon and support other conventions instead, their editors will show up at those other cons.

And like it or not, writers will go where the editors are. This is, after all, a business.

And eventually — and it’s clearly happening; all you have to do is look at the attendance figures for the last few Worldcons — the fans will follow the writers.

My, where have I heard that before? Not all of Mike’s article is sensible — in particular he’s flat wrong about pointing fans at World Fantasy because most fans would find it very poor value. However, the gist of what he’s saying is just what Lou Anders and I have been saying. SMOFdom cannot rely on writers and editors coming to Worldcon out of a sense of loyalty to a community. And if the SMOFs turn up their noses and say, “Well we don’t want you then,” Worldcon will die.

World Fantasy Plans

The next week or so is going to be fairly light on the blogging here, partly because I will be traveling, and partly because I will be busy blogging elsewhere. Here’s a rough schedule.

  • Saturday: Write Fantastic signing at Forbidden Planet in Bristol
  • Sunday: Travel to London, stay with Clutes
  • Monday: Fly to California
  • Tuesday: Recover from jet lag and answer email backlog
  • Wednesday: Tour guide for Zoran & Mia Živković in San Francisco
  • Thursday – Sunday: Convention

Kevin and I are running the web site for the convention so we’ll be doing a lot of reporting over there. That will include the live coverage of the World Fantasy Awards. However, you should also keep an eye on ConReporter.com because we can’t be everywhere and there are at least 9 other people who will be tweeting and/or blogging from the event. Also there are things that we can’t put on the official WFC web site because the convention suffers from a bad case of these guys.

Blue Meanies

Yes, I’m sorry to say that there are Blue Meanies: people for whom the very idea of wearing costumes on Halloween is anathema. Fear not, though, good people. We will sing. And we will spread joy, happiness and good old-fashioned fun throughout San José. Not to mention we’ll be talking about some very good books.

There may be a sekrit projekt or two announced as well. Stay tuned.

A Convention Experiment

Kevin and I are running the web site for this year’s World Fantasy Con, this gives us an opportunity to experiment a little. We’ve done a couple of simple things that any convention could do, because they require nothing more than WordPress and a few plugins.

The first is the online restaurant guide, complete with Google Maps showing how to find each venue. Here’s the index.

The other, which I have just finished, is a filterable program schedule. It is just a simple blog with an entry for each program item, but I have used categories to allow you to select sub-sets of the data. The program participants are in as tags as well, and on the mobile interface those are selectable too. You can find the schedule here.

The are obvious short-cuts with the schedule. Most obviously I have dated everything in 2008 because WordPress doesn’t allow you to publish something with a date in the future. It would also be good to be able to select a combination of categories – say “readings on Thursday”. But the point is that this required no programming – I just created a new WordPress blog and spent a few hours doing data entry. With a little bit more thought and time, and maybe a custom plugin or two, I could do something a lot better.

Anyway, take a look, especially if you have an iPhone, and tell me what you think.

How To Make Hugo Voting Cheaper

Many people have complained to me over the years that voting in the Hugo Awards is too expensive. We have tried hard of late (thank you, Mr. Scalzi) to make Supporting Memberships worth the money, but what would be really good is if we could make them cheaper.

Unfortunately, as Kevin explains here, the cost of a Supporting Membership is tied in to other prices that Worldcons are allowed to set for memberships in a complicated way that gives conventions an incentive to set the cost of Supporting Memberships much higher than is justified by the cost of providing services to those members.

If we can cut through that tangle then we ought to be able to reduce the cost of a Supporting Membership, and hence the cost of Hugo Voting, to maybe $25. Kevin thinks we may be able to get sufficient support to make this happen.

Comments for preference on Kevin’s LiveJournal, please.

Octocon Reactions Thread

This year’s Octocon is now over and I have been seeing some very nice things being said on Twitter about it. So I thought I would create a thread where those people who attended the convention can talk about how it went. After all of the negativity last week I’m hoping we can hear something positive about the con for a change.

Octocon Settlement

I received the following in an email from James Bacon earlier today. I am delighted that the matter is now settled and am very grateful to James for his work in bringing the two sides together. In view of the wishes of both sides that the matter end here I have closed comments on this post, and on the two earlier posts about this subject.

Joint release from Octocon and Pádraig Ó Mealoid

To whom it may concern:

Following some mediation and frank communication Octocon and Pádraig have resolved their issues thus:

Nichola Hannigan, Co- Chair of Octocon, recognised that the banning of Pádraig may not have been the best way to deal with the situation they faced.

The committee regrets that better wording was not used in the communication of Pádraig’s ban and realises that the closing of communication lines was an error.

Pádraig recognised that online and other criticism should be tempered and that his enthusiasm for SF activities may be perceived as aggressive. He is sorry that he upset or hurt anyone, and regrets that he did not communicate his criticisms more appropriately.

Both parties regret that previous private communication opportunities were missed.

Given this understanding between parties, Octocon have rescinded the Ban on Pádraig.

The Octocon committee will continue to welcome criticism in a measured manner and try to deal with it as best they can. They make it their duty to continue to deal promptly with queries which are submitted in the normal way.

The committee are considering setting up an online public forum, which may be a better way for people to raise and discuss queries.

Pádraig understands all con committees are free to run their own convention.

Octocon understand that con members may have expectations.

On behalf of Octocon, Nichola has apologised to Pádraig. Pádraig unreservedly accepted this and has apologised to the committee for his part in these events.

Both parties wish to draw a line under this now. No further discussion online or in person will be entered into in this matter by either party, as both parties want to move on and put this whole matter behind them.

Both parties request that everyone else who was affected by or had interest in this dispute also move on and look forward to positive future events.

Padraig and The Octocon committee would like to thank James Bacon for his timely intervention and are grateful for his mediation in this matter.

Signed

Nichola Hannigan and the Octocon Committee

Pádraig Ó Méalóid

Yes, But It Will Cost You…

Over at Con-news.com Petrea Mitchell explains the economics of convention centers and makes some very interesting points about how Dragon*Con keeps down costs at the expense of making program harder to attend (and probably effectively segregating different sub-groups of attendees). One of the reasons that Worldcon is expensive is that it has a commitment to keeping as much as possible under one roof. It also has a commitment to trying to avoid queues, which is something that comes back to bite us on a regular basis.

Octocon Update

As per my latest comment on the previous post, I have decided not to attend Octocon this weekend. I’ll be out an air fare, but I think I’m in time to cancel the hotel room. I will certainly miss meeting a bunch of Irish friends, but given how busy I am right now, and how keen some people in Irish fandom are to involve everyone possible in their feud, I’m going to spend the weekend doing something less stressful instead.

Octocon News

The program schedule for Octocon is now online here (PDF). It looks like the LGBTQ panel is still on, though I’m not sure whether I’m actually on it. The panel on the Bechdel Test looks interesting too. Hopefully a good weekend is in store.

In less good news my email is currently buzzing with the news that my good friend Pádraig Ó Méalóid has apparently been banned from the convention. I know that Pádraig has been rather critical of the Octocon committee this year, and perhaps rather more aggressive about it than he should have been, but I know my fan history well enough to remember that banning people from conventions rarely ends well. The right way to deal with one’s critics is to prove them wrong by running a great event.

Unfortunately, as another Irishman has just pointed out to me, as a nation they do have a tendency for a bit of hot-headedness. Here’s hoping that this doesn’t degenerate into a legendary feud carried on unto the nth generation.