Date: Sat, 06 Oct 2007 11:50:43 -0400 To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net> From: "Mike B." <omni at omniphile.com> Subject: [WSFA] Re: Gaylaxicon gets a hotel Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net> At 10/6/2007 10:43 AM, Keith F. Lynch wrote: >Mike Bartman wrote: > >I don't think cons have a high enough attendance that they can afford >to write off all non-motorist attendees. Not being near a subway means non-motorists can't get there? What about friends, cabs, airport shuttles, hitch-hiking, bikes, and rentals? Filthy Pierre once got to the Hunt Valley Inn from Alexandria on a moped...with a trailer full of computer equipment. > That's pretty much what >killed Evecon and Castlecon. They moved out of town, and found they >got fewer people, and *way* fewer volunteers. I went to an Evecon out near Dulles once...there were lots of folks there. I don't know how many drove and how many used other methods, but attendance seemed to be fine. Most of them were young folks too. I read that Evecon and Castecon ended because the main organizing force decided not to do it anymore for personal reasons. >Note that the Hunt Valley Inn is convenient to Baltimore Light Rail. Ok. > > Making it too easy to get too and from the hotel might also eat into > > room-night numbers, either by encouraging commuting from home for > > locals, or letting out-of-towners stay at other hotels. > >If people can't afford to stay in the hotel, ensuring that they can't >attend the con if they don't will simply reduce the number of people >at the con. Especially young people new to fandom, who seldom have >massive amounts of disposable income that they're willing to spend >trying something they've never done before. My first Disclave was as a young person, new to fandom without massive amounts of disposable income for any purpose. By driving up from Va. Beach with a friend, in a VW Bug, and getting a room with 17 other people (it was a big one in Wardman Towers, with a kitchen...only slept a couple of hours a night anyway), and having the con charge only $6 or something like that for at the door registration, the $50 I left home with was still $18 when I got home again. I didn't eat in restaurants...there was a small grocery store within walking distance...or buy stuff in the dealer's room or art show...but I had a great time at the con and went back every year for the next 16 years. Some things seem to be costing about 10 times what they did back then these days (at the door registration cost, cars), while other things are only 3 or 4 times as much (gas, food, hotel rooms). Minimum wage is 3 times what it was back then. Whether you could do a con for $150 these days or not I don't know...but I'm about to find out...though having the con be only 8 miles from by house will sure help! >In addition to being convenient to transportation, restaurants, and >shopping, and being centrally located, urban cons are highly visible >to more passers-by, some of whom will be interested and join. "Convenient to transportation" is very subjective. I, as a driver, find urban cons highly inconvenient. There is either no parking or expensive parking, there's a lot of traffic to get through, and things like one-way streets don't help a bit. These factors alone have made me decide not to attend lots of cons...like Philcon since they moved back into a downtown area from the Adams Mark. So long as I can find food of some sort, even a grocery store, I don't care much about restaurants, and I don't shop at cons at all...other than the dealer's room. How many passers-by join cons? >If cons become accessible only to wealthy motorists, and are hidden >away where passers-by won't see them, cons will soon cease to exist. They are doing that anyway. It used to be normal for cons to have 1000-2000 attendees. Disclave, Balticon, Scicon....now the only ones that see those numbers are Balticon and "media cons" (Shore Leave, Katsucon, etc.). It used to be that clubs had a high percentage of college age, or recently college age, members...now most are middle-aged or getting close to that. The Age of Reading may be ending... -- Mike B. -- Confidence is the feeling you have before you understand the situation.