My letter to the Utah 2014 Westercon Bid

[trinsf]

Dear Utah 2014 Bid,

I'm writing as a member of the 2011 Westercon in San Jose to give you some insight into the "hearts and minds" of the voters this past weekend and to make some suggestions about your bid, bids in general, and how you can ensure your bid is strong and appealing to the electorate.

Comments

Westercon Business Meeting redux

[pingback_bot]

User ceemage referenced to your post from Westercon Business Meeting redux saying: [...] summarises the lessons to be learned [...]

Thanks for writing this

[ext_446260]

Thanks for writing this. It summarized a lot of my thoughts very succinctly.

I was unfortunately not able to vote at the business meeting because of the motion to carry the discussions over into the next time slot--when I had my reading, and as a professional, I'm not going to blow that off just so I can cast a vote. But thankfully, Kevin and Andy won.

I found the business about the "energetic young fans" pretty bad--How energetic can they be if they can't just roadtrip down to San Jose and host a party for a weekend? And I say this as someone who road-tripped his first Westercon 25 years ago when it was in San Diego, and in fact helped run one of the parties then. I blew of the masquerade to carve a watermelon boat for the SFWA suite (and because party staff got to stay for the party and I wanted to do author networking before I'd made my first sale).

I'd like to see Westercon brought back to what it was in the 80s at least.

Re: Thanks for writing this

[darrius26]

Ummmm lets see, one vice chair in the hospital, the other lost her job so couldn't afford to. Most of the bid commitee are struggling right now with real life issues or they would have been down there

Re: Thanks for writing this

[trinsf]

I think it's unfortunate that the Portland bid members and supporters are still taking this tone. That said, let me suggest some things

Re: Thanks for writing this

[ext_446260]

I've done Orycon before. It's a very nice con with a good literary focus. I'd like to make it back for another one some time. Last time I went, I stayed with a friend who lives in Portland

[paradoox]

I have to say that it was all the mis-steps over the course of the weekend the caused me to vote for Olive Country in the Business Meeting.

As one of the people working Site Selection, I voted No Preference. (You'll just have to trust me on that.)

I did pre-support Portland on Friday or Saturday.

The lack of a presence of Portland fans was disturbing. There were some phone calls Saturday night which were even more disturbing and led me to believe that the lack of Portland fans (and thus implied lack of support) was a serious issue. But, during the business meeting when Gene said he couldn't recruit from the current Worldcon committee / staff / whatever until January, I totally lost faith in what was going to happen.

[kevin_standlee]

Actually, to me that last point could surely have been spun positively rather than negatively. But I guess I have too much experience of our bidding exercises at SMOFCon where we discover that our bid for The Moon got such cheap rates because oxygen wasn't included in the resort fee and such.

[paradoox]

Yes, as I said on smofs, it would have helped if they hand carried ballots from Portland. But without doing that (which would have presumably won them the vote), I don't see how you can positively spin the lack of Portland presence.

[galtine1]

:this: (handcarry) -- If you couldn't muster the 20 or votes to carry from your committee, OSFIS (or whatever their name is...which we never heard referenced), or the Old Guard (which all they ever reffered to was Patty Wells) -- then how excited was Portland for their own event?

[darrius26]

I thank all of you for your input and will take all of it to heart if I am ever involved in a westercon bid.

This discussion has been very enlightening to me

[trinsf]

I apologize if we seem harsh; all of that emotion and energy comes from a place of positive intentions and devotion to Westercon and other "travelling" cons. Part of the big overarching concern to take with you to future possible bids is that Westercon *is* a regional con, and should have regional involvement and buy-in. Running a Westercon is not like running a local con, any more than running a Worldcon is. There is an expectation from the Westercon community that a bid committee will travel extensively and put effort into building up the Westercon "brand" through regional publicity and recruiting. Any Westercon bid needs to be prepared to do that. If bid committee members are not available to travel or reach out constantly to the wider market, then they may not be a good "fit" for bidding a Westercon

[galtine1]

As one of the two key people on the traveling promotion team for the San Diego Westercon for 2006...you have to have at least one person hitting conventions within the 8hr drive/1hr fly zone and then the 16hr drive/3hr flyzone rather regularly

[kevin_standlee]

Indeed: some of the bid parties for the Calgary Westercon were run by me and my wife in places like San Jose. Lisa and I decorated the room with red and white, handed out Canadian flag stickers, and said, "Welcome to Canada!" at the door. I had people saying to me, "I didn't know you were a Canadian, Kevin."

I said, "I'm not. I was born and have lived my entire life in California."

"Then why are you promoting a convention that isn't right in your back yard."

"Because they're my friends and because I think it would make a good convention."

Some folks still couldn't wrap their heads around that. But then again, I think some of them are the ones who didn't go to ConFrancisco in 1993 because San Francisco was much too far away from San Jose. [About 50 miles, for those who don't know it.]

[galtine1]

Every "local" area has the "50-miles is too far" crowd: PHX, LA, SD are ones I've heard that comment from...because some Fans are vehicle challenged and choose to use mass transit.

and it is because of those that I do my best to be aware of alt means of getting to the Con Site.

And yes, I have thrown parties for distant events in my backyard: Denver, Japan, UK, and when living in NY for CA.