I sympathize with the plight of Scifi/Fantasy cons. At the con, we had a long chat with the head of my city's primary SF/F con, mostly because, uh, I was rude to her. She was handing out fliers while I was walking past her table, and I told her "We've tried your con, and we'll pass." Because she's awesome, she stopped by our table later and politely asked why we weren't buying table space again and what the planners could have done to improve our experience. I apologized profusely, and explained that it was purely financial - that is still one of only two cons where we've lost money - but it turned into a bigger discussion about audience and the fate of SF/F cons in general.
SF/F cons have a genre focus that is increasingly mainstream and a greying audience. The younger generation of SF/F fans were raised in a world where The X-Files was always on and Harry Potter was the most popular series on the face of the earth. We never needed cons to find new worlds, never needed that tribe to feel normal - we just had to turn on the TV or go to Borders or Barnes' and Noble's. When we tried to break into that world, the preexisting structures didn't really speak to our experiences. It's hard for institutional memories to change - when they've been running panels on how to make miniatures for 20 years, sometimes the con planners don't realize that an Iron Lolita competition might be a bigger draw. The good con heads try to diversify their programming - but a lot of the time, they're just too stressed out by the demands of running a con to do so.
Clearly the solution is to start your own con. (This is on A and I's schedule in the future, as soon as we get someone to give us money.)
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malionette
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Date: 2011-06-02 07:12 pm (UTC)SF/F cons have a genre focus that is increasingly mainstream and a greying audience. The younger generation of SF/F fans were raised in a world where The X-Files was always on and Harry Potter was the most popular series on the face of the earth. We never needed cons to find new worlds, never needed that tribe to feel normal - we just had to turn on the TV or go to Borders or Barnes' and Noble's. When we tried to break into that world, the preexisting structures didn't really speak to our experiences. It's hard for institutional memories to change - when they've been running panels on how to make miniatures for 20 years, sometimes the con planners don't realize that an Iron Lolita competition might be a bigger draw. The good con heads try to diversify their programming - but a lot of the time, they're just too stressed out by the demands of running a con to do so.
Clearly the solution is to start your own con. (This is on A and I's schedule in the future, as soon as we get someone to give us money.)