Yet Another Theory About Convention Running

[billroper]

If there is no one on your concom who loves a particular aspect of the convention, it will get short shrift.

Conversely, if someone on your convention loves and nurtures a particular aspect of the convention, it will tend to do well.

For my filking friends, general interest cons with a filker on the committee tend to treat filk better on average than those that don't. :)

Comments

[starmalachite.livejournal.com]

Yup, noticed that by my 2nd or 3rd year of attending cons (back when I only got to 1 a year).

There was once (within the last 15 years, IIRC) a programming head at a major regional con who declined to allocate any programming time or space to filking because "they can just do it in someone's room & what's it got to do with SF anyway?" Gratifyingly, he was jumped on immediately by most of the rest of the concom. Due perhaps to enlightened self-interest, hotel liaison seems to have landed 1st & hardest.

[katyhh.livejournal.com]

That is entirely true; we had proof pf that in Germany, as well. Ok, replace "filker on the committee" with "person who really likes to listen to some filkers" in our case, but still :) I was very surprised when we were asked to come to that con a few years ago - filk had been a no go there, before. Now we are regulars who even pay ;) (We were even comped the first time!)

[madfilkentist]

In general, yes, but it depends on how well that person does in working with the committee, and how entrenched the opposition to that aspect is. Sometimes it takes several years of patient effort to get results. Some cons just don't see filk as part of their style, no matter what.

Then there's the story about

[sffilk.livejournal.com]

how someone on a concom back in the early 1990's said that there would be no filking at this particular convention because, as far as he was concerned, there was no filking at this con or at that con or at the other con, so there would be no filking at the con on which he was on concom. Well, suffice it to say that 34 days out, a local filker was contacted by the concom to put together a filk track for this convention and it ended up being highly attended; the concom member who said there would never be filk at the con became the subject of a filksong by Leslie.

[sexybass.livejournal.com]

Yep been there. Let 's put the Filk guest of honour's concert on Sunday at 3:00 pm when everyone has checked out of the hotel :-/ Oh and let's not mention Filk or Filk programming anywhere in the program book.

[ericcoleman]

The guy who ran games at Windy before I did hated games and hated gamers, but he loved having the Concom badge so he could bully people.

There were a lot of doubts about what I was doing, until the Chair and a couple other Concom members came into my game room on Saturday afternoon and saw 70+ people packed in. They let me do what I wanted after that. As far as I know Alex continues that. I need to stop off and see how he is doing this weekend.

[drzarron.livejournal.com]

A good con is always about good people running it. There is nothing worse than a con where you can tell that the concom is just going through the motions or doing their jobs on inertia.

[stevemb.livejournal.com]

Sometimes, it's simple ignorance. The Capclave concom had the impression that filkers were staying away because they didn't like the con for some reason -- the actual problem was that for several years in a row they were on the same weekend as OVFF.

[madrona.livejournal.com]

True dat. And if the same person who loves that aspect has to work alone with no support on the rest of the committee, that aspect will wither. We learned that about our local con the hard way. Fortunately, filk is like fairies. It doesn't stay dead if enough people clap for it.