Bloody hell

[heidi]

Accio has decideded not to do an 07.
So this bunch - http://elanor-isolda.livejournal.com/96332.html - is. But where the hell nwere they when we were taking bids for an 07 event in london?

ETA: The above wasn't supposed to be public, as I said here. I am sorry that it was, because it was something I said in frustration, as I explain in the comments, here.
But to make it perfectly clear, here's a longer version of how I've been feeling about the incomprehensible hugeness of fandom these days, and the fact that it's now blindingly clear to everyone that most people have no idea what anyone else not in their corner of fandom are doing, unless they make an incredibly time-consuming effort to do so:

I am very, very frustrated, though, at a fandom that is so divided that people who have the exact same interests, ideas, thoughts, project-plans, etc., don't seem to know what, if anything, others are doing about the exact same thing(s).

There have been at least three occasions this spring where people have brought forward the idea of having a fandom wiki, which includes fandom concepts, trends, discussions, archives, etc - and none of the people proposing the idea, or, in fact, anyone commenting on the LJs in question, realised, until I mentioed it, that there actually already was a wiki which included fandom topics/discussion. Or look at the plethora of vidding communities here on LJ - there's at least five, and while some are slash-themed and others host everything, again, there's a tonne of overlap in what they do.

Personally, and I may be unique in this, I find it frustrating that there are so many people who would do well working together, but they don't know who else is out there, and honestly? It's not as easy as it should be to *find* who else is out there. I mean, what can you google for? Harry Potter conference London isn't going to catch everything, or in this case, given the wording in the bid announcement, it wouldn't catch that at all. And also, even if you read the newsletters a lot, if you miss a day, you'll completely miss out on an announcement like this, so a calendar, or another sort of listing service, like FA has tried to do with our Knight Bus forum, is handy in this way* but hardly anyone outside of FictionAlley knows about it, so it's not as useful a resource as, theoretically, it could be. And it's not because it's a resource that I am involved in that I think it's so handy - it's because of the content it contains, and what it could contain - like, if someone is having a full-day RPG in Australia, or a meetup in Los Angeles, or a conference in Copenhagen, why shouldn't it all be listed on a fandom calendar, where people who have even things that are just in the early planning stages can get their things tentatively calendared as well?

I think my RL experience plays a part in here - I'm very active with my synogogue's annual fundraising event. and last year, we had to change it because the local Chamber of Commerce, which has a lot of attendee-overlap, wanted to be the same day. But we knew before we got too far along the planning process. Of course, if anyone created such a calendaring thing, then they'd have to make sure everyone knew about it, because without knowledge, how can you know you need to use something? And sites like TLC and HPANA and MN are showcasing fandom things a lot less than they used to even a year ago, and because of that, thngs are just not hitting the radar screens of those who could and should know about it.

Comments

[heidi8.livejournal.com]

Okay, now have gone to your LJ, and clearly, none of you were thinking of this back in January and February when fandom discussions were taking place about the HPEF bid-process, which explains a lot. And, btw, Hijja's post was the first I heard that Accio was going to be cancelled. HPEF was initially going to work with them, and the reason we didn't strongly push for a UK 2007 bid was because they said they were planning to do a UK 2007 event capped at 300 people, which is smaller than HPEF was interested in being involved with (I mean, given Lumos's sell-out months ago, we thought the interest would be more like a 700+ attendee thing).

[wildfyre.livejournal.com]

OK, in that case the whole issue's pretty redundant, because there's no way we can cater for even 300 people. Accio only managed about 250 IIRC, and we're not even looking at being that big, especially since we don't (expect to) have a book release to push interest. You just can't get that many people at a weekend event in the UK.

[heidi8.livejournal.com]

But I know the attendence/signups for the Beyond Boundries UK tours, and I think that it definitely could get more attendees than that - look at Patronus in copenhagen this summer, for example. I'll betcha you hit 200 registrants three months before the event, and I'll toss an HP t-shirt in to seal the deal. ;)

[wildfyre.livejournal.com]

Well, that would be rather nice if it happened, but I'm not going to stake too much on it. Patronus is only a small (100 or so?) con, after all. We shall see :-)

[annephoenix.livejournal.com]

Considering Patronus is in two weeks and we're at about 100 now, I doubt this will happen. I think only 12 or so people are going to the residential course ...

[quasi-hayley.livejournal.com]

Why not? The Discworld convention is nearly sold out at 800 for this August.

[lexin.livejournal.com]

Oh, I don't think that's strictly fair - Trek conventions are still running AFAIK at 500+ people (when I was first involved with them we used to get over 1000) and I used to be involved in a Dr Who/Blake's 7 event which ran at 500 people on average. redemption_con is also quite large (300+ I think) and for two non-current shows (Babylon 5 and Blake's 7).

I think a well advertised general-interest adults-only HP convention in Britain in (say) 2008-9 could generate 700 memberships. From my experience running slash conventions, I reckon a well advertised HP slash con in the UK in the same years could probably generate 70-150 memberships depending on where and when. General slash cons get 50-70 memberships depending on the weekend and the level of advertising in the right circles (ladies of a certain age with spare money).

[wildfyre.livejournal.com]

Well, we'll have to see. We got 700+ people at Tolkien 2005, but Oxonmoot is around the 200 mark. Things like DW have the draw of Terry Pratchett attending. We will see what we can do, though :-)