Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2002 10:13:27 -0800 (PST)
From: Cathy Green <dalek_cag at yahoo.com>
Subject: [WSFA] re: capclave etc.
To: WSFAlist at keithlynch.net
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>

Sorry to be jumping on the bandwagon late, but my home
computer is having some problems, so I wasn't able to
view the weekend messages until work today.

I think I too would have to take issue with the
description of a significant number of SF con goers as
"losers."  While I'll certainly admit lots of fen
aren't the world's snappiest dressers or the most
socially ept (or whatever the opposite of inept is)
people in the world, as a general rule, I've found
them to be a friendly and welcoming bunch.  When I was
going to cons in NYC as a kid (mostly the creation
cons, which don't really count), I always found my
fellow whovians to be very friendly and worth getting
to know.  They were people who had no objection to a
stranger joining the conversation and they were
willing to treat a kid as an equal and not talk down
to him or her. I welcome the opportunity to meet
people I don't already know through my current
somewhat limited SF activities.

One of the benefits of growing a con is that it
results hopefully, in meeting more people.  I think
this is preferable to it being the same small "in
crowd" every year. I think at the moment we probably
need to keep Capclave somewhat small/simple in terms
of programming because it's a somewhat new venture and
having programming all over the map may not be easy to
manage.  however, if the capclaves future have
organizers who want particular lines of programming
other than the sort of panels we had at Capclave past
and are willing to properly organize said programming,
more power to them.  For instance, I went cold turkey
on my comicbook buying during my last bout of
unemployment, but if I were still really into comics,
I could definitely see volunteering to organize a
comic book panel or trivia contest or something. I
think this is different from having a large number of
different tracksjust because we feel it is necessary
to try to make everyone happy.

--cathy

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