Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2004 00:41:08 -0500 To: WSFA List <wsfalist at wsfa.org>, capclave2004 at yahoogroups.com From: Elspeth Kovar <ekovar at worldnet.att.net> Subject: [WSFA] Aliens Ate My Baby! Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org> Okay, well . . . no, actually they didn't. Both my 'babies' are cats. And since I can hear one chomping away in the kitchen and I really hope that it's the tail of the other that is tickling my ankles both are probably alive and well. But I got your attention, didn't I? What I wanted it for is this: WSFA has this convention, which got started because we were broke and needed a source of income. Then a bunch of people, some WSFA members and some not, put on a World Fantasy Convention and the money that came from that got donated to WSFA. It was a lot of money, which means that WSFA isn't broke anymore. So we don't need to keep holding a regular convention for financial reasons. There are other reasons for WSFA running a convention which include individuals wanting the egoboo; wanting there to be something other than Balticon locally; wanting to give something back to people who love SF and thinking that this is a good way of doing so; a number of other things; and simply habit. But none of those matter unless a sufficient number of people in the club *want* us to have a convention enough that the care, work, and attention are shared enough that things don't slip and no one gets burned out. My question is this: do people care enough about our holding a con that they are -- and this is a question to individuals, not "Does WSFA care . . . ?" -- willing to: Work on the convention. Learn more about putting one on. Participate in publicity. Put in your time and money doing those things even if you're short on both. Pay enough attention that one asks questions and cares about what's going on. In short, be proactive rather than passive. We have two opportunities coming up. One is SMOFcon, the annual convention focused on working on conventions, which is for once local. The other is Philcon, where we could use people not only staffing the table but also ideas for making it more interesting and people willing to do some of the work on specific things concerning that. What, you want specific ideas for each of you?!? - Go to SMOFcon. This is especially true for our post-Bujold folks who never had a chance to be involved in a Disclave. Y'all did a terrific job this year so of course you're being asked to do more! - Keith, if you could make copies of WSFA Journals that you find most interesting -- they can be from yesterday or 50 years ago -- and at SMOFcon give them to one of us going to Philcon. - Bob, I think that you have the most complete collection of Disclave and Capclave memorabilia. Those are colorful. - Ernest and/or Michael, what about getting some of the Waldrop stuff that's online, or something for Patrick and Teresa? - Elspeth, staff the table and bring laptop . . . this time knowing that it should have a browser rather than being assured that only the laptop is needed. Most of those are for Philcon and yeah, none will make a lot of difference but all are needed. But it's a start. If we want Capclave to continue what we need most is for folks to make that start and then to continue paying that sort of attention to the con. But a start would be pretty fine indeed. Elspeth ------------------ Recently someone gently pointed out to me that I was setting myself up for disappointment, which I think was a gentle way of telling me that I was beating my head against a brick wall. That what I wanted was for people to share my passion for working on conventions. I had to think about that and realized that he was almost right: I was setting myself up for disappointment because I want people to share my passion for a *WSFA* convention. But a couple of years ago Alexis said to me, and I paraphrase, "If people don't care enough about the convention to do the work then let it die." The later comment reminded me of the first, and made me realize that Alexis is right. No, Sam, this doesn't mean that I'm resigning as Capclave chair! But my correspondent is correct: I have been beating my head against a brick wall, with the result of being so worn out that the prospect of spending most of a day calling hotels . . . well, folks have noticed that I haven't done it yet. But it will get done. I started getting Capclave going in 2000 and owe it to try to get it on solid ground. E.