Conventional Wisdom Pros and Cons

We go to a lot of conventions. We go to all kinds of conventions from the large for profit to the fan run media conventions to literary conventions that have been going on for many years.

If he wanted to, Peter could go every weekend to a convention. But that would be all that he was pretty much doing since a convention takes time to get ready for, get to, participate in, come home, and putting everything away. So we pick and chose our shots.

With a few exceptions for people we know really well and trust, Peter does not go to first time conventions. He has done so in the past and most of his stories about how not to run a convention tend to come from those conventions. Not to say that there are not a lot of conventions that do it right the first year, but the chances of something going wrong are much greater.

There are a couple of conventions we attend every year. There were four but now there are three since one shut down. We have a standing invitation to attend and the attendees would probably find it odd if we didn’t show up and go ask someone why we weren’t there.

When Peter is asked to go to a convention he asks for transport, hotel room, speaker’s fee and, if possible, a table for him to sell books and the like at. This makes it much more worth his while to go. We also try to not go to one area too often so the convention gets more bang for their buck that they can say he will be there. Depending on the time of year and the like, he may increase the ask to bring Caroline and me along with him for the convention which can be a deal breaker if we have some event that we want to be together as a family like our wedding anniversary.

Recently I have been reading a number of stories of conventions either not delivering on what the promised or promising too much and finding themselves back peddling on what they offered to the point it went from transport, hotel room, and badge to badge.

The merits of the people they invited for guests is not up for discussion. The con committee invited them to participate in the convention and gave them promises for what would be expected of the guest and what would be expected of the convention. Some of these are formal contracts and agreements and others are basically e-mails and handshakes.

One story reads like a comedy or tragedy of errors that compounded the guest’s discomfort about how the convention was run. They were told that they were paying for the room by the hotel where they had been told by the committee that the convention would be paying for the room and they would pick up incidentals. They were shunted from the guest of honor table where they hoped to talk to some of the other guests at the convention to a staff table. Now I put this one on the committee solidly. It is better to spread your GoHs around the room rather than have the cool kids table and then everyone else. Oh and they were asked to pay for the meal that they were invited to by the convention. That got sorted out right then and there and once they got back to the hotel, the room issue was sorted out.

Then some panels were spectacularly wrong for them. Not what the panels were about however there was serious drift but the people on the panels and what they said and did made the guests uncomfortable. And how by this point can you even have a panel about a subject like women in comics and not have any women on the panel? (that’s a rant from another convention).

After the convention, they used the forms and format for filing complaints about the behavior of others towards them as the convention stated should be done in the program guide. There was a new non-harassment policy in place and the structure of how a compliant should be filed was also new. So they did so only to find out that nothing was done to address their complaints at all so they went public with something they have kept bottled up for almost a year and, along with that, all the feelings they had and have about the situation, which was not too good.

There is another convention that invited a lot of guests to their convention. They had an Indigogo campaign to support the convention that didn’t do well. They had to go back to the people who they invited and promised transport, room and badge and inform them that they could offer them a badge only. They apologize and said they were not expecting everyone they invited said yes making it a problem for the convention. So now they had to come back and tell the guests that they would not be honoring their original commitment. So it is apparent that the con committee is cherry picking the people they think will put butts in the seats even if the convention is limiting the number of people who can attend.

Agreeing to go to a convention is a commitment. It means that you have blocked that weekend or week out for that group of people so you can’t take any other offers. And there are times that a better one comes up but we made the commitment and going with the agreement with the group we committed to first. The exceptions are those that are stated in the agreement including work related commitments and the like. I know people get upset that a certain individual cancels coming to a convention and it seems at the last minute but that happens because work comes up or some personal issue that needs to be dealt with. Frankly I am happy when I hear an actor I like has had to cancel because they are working on some new project. It means they are working as an actor, which is what they should be doing. I am a little disappointed that I won’t be seeing them but I would rather have new work of theirs to be seen at a later date.

It is also a commitment for the convention to live up to what they promised the guests when the guests agreed to come to the convention.

I am grateful for all the wonderful conventions I have gone to over the years.