July 14th, 2001
Renfrew Public Library
Present: Clint Budd (VCON Society President), Doug Finnerty, Chris Sturges (VCON 26 Chair and VCON Rep.), Palle Hoffstein (former VCON chair, contemplating a bid for VCON 27), Sean Szwaba, and (eventually) Garth Spencer (Secretary) and Chilam.
Meeting called to order at 1:37 p.m.
Clint said that our purpose today was to discuss recommendations for VCON 27.
Chris asked, have we considered more non-scientist guests? Palle thought this would not be a great attraction to attendees. Garth mentioned the varying terms "guests" and "professionals" for program participants, and lo, there came to pass much confusion thereat, and more than once withal. Palle actually likes the term "professionals."
Clint raised the possibility of different themes, e.g. widening our gaming programming, giving the game room more floor space, and giving dealers an opportunity to focus on gaming. Some directed invitations were also suggested.
Returning to the subject of guests, with a view to a possible gaming theme, the question was posed, why not invite Gary Gygax? Clint suggested more possible guests to invite, including Julie Hoverson. Sean suggested even more, including Steve Jackson. Chris suggested a guest from Mission Games. An additional dealer was suggested, Hyperlight (now on Renfrew.)
Clint also suggested we could have more emphasis on comics.
We could also stand to direct publicity to senior high schools. Clint also suggests we involve artists, as by announcing an amateur art competition that senior high school students might join; and that we invite English teachers to send some of their students' work as submissions to the writers' workshop, or a juried contest, with a prize such as a gift certificate good in the dealers' room. Clint asked: "Assuming we can get people to do it, what is the general feeling about approaching schools?"
He also asked: "What is your feeling about Fran (Skene) just doing the writers' workshop?" Palle said something else, about also inviting Don DeBrandt to work on the writers' workshop.
Publicity
Clint compared his experience, sending VCON announcements to papers and getting ignored, with the treatment given Graeme's lectures at the Macmillan Planetarium; and gave us the conclusion he came to, that it takes regular, frequent, repeated press releases to hit the papers when they've got an open space in upcoming events sections. Chris thought this meant that one person had to be dedicated to constantly approaching the newspapers, and radio stations. Clint thinks the publicity effort requires dedicating at least three people.
Incidentally Clint will be speaking on Michael Walsh's co-op radio show, "Radio-Active" next Thursday. It would be a Good Thing to have some hard news about VCON for Clint to broadcast.
Clint raised the point that a good many convention departments don't become active until about two months before the convention date. If we designated everyone on the ConCom as members of the Publicity department, we could employ them to reach a lot of people.
Chris pointed out that this requires someone to be in charge who knows what to do.
Palle added that you can roughly break down the magnitude of workload, by time period and by department, to let you know which people are available to lend their manpower to advance publicity.
Palle went on to talk about Steve Barclay's publicity packages for VCONs 21 and 22, which went to all publicity outlets. It seems imperative to emphasize to papers that we need early, advance advertisement.
Clint pointed out that, according to Robert Sawyer's experience, a mention on any major TV station seems to have several times as much publicity impact as any other form of advertisement.
Palle has given a lot of thought and figuring to the tasks and positions which a VCON has required, and reckons that a VCON committee could use up to 35 people. (Clint looked up Donna McMahon's conrunning notes, in which she thought a ConCom needed about 12 people.)
Chris and Palle discussed future VCON volunteer work, and who could handle Pre-Registration and Registration tasks. Palle has not as yet got a candidate for Dealers' Liaison.
Dollars and Numbers
Chris estimates the current debt from VCON 26 at about $3000.
Granted, this includes preregistrations owed to VCON 27, and the preregistrations and final bills have not been listed and sent to Clint yet. He has a number of fundraising ideas, starting with a benefit party at his place.
Palle has great concerns about this debt, as it is much bigger than he expected.
Clint sees two things he has to do this week: obtain and email the Registration and Pre-Registration lists to Garth, or Palle; and specify a date for final bookkeeping figures.
Chris said that his wife Nicole has started her side of the VCON 26 bookkeeping now, despite that not all receipts have been turned in, and that Nico Iormetti is waiting on her input. Chris has background and contact information for most departments, to pass on to VCON 27.
Palle and Clint discussed possible Artist Guests of Honour: maybe Rob Alexander? Alan M. Clarke?
Clint says we definitely need one full-time person to find out what rigmarole current US-Canada border customs entails, so that US artists and dealers can get over the hurdle they perceive barring them from VCON.
Chris mentioned that there are courses offering this information.
Palle brought up the hotel issue, and said that he wants to explore the alternatives to the Burnaby Radisson.
Chris and Doug left at 2:49 p.m.
Clint and Jeff Hartt have been looking for a convenient bank in Jeff's neighbourhood, at which to open a new account, but now it looks pointless to worry about it at this time.
By the end of this week, the VCON 26 attendee list and financial report are due.
Palle observes that, not only does the labour burden for a con committee increase dramatically in the two months before the convention date, it then becomes important that some committee members are easy to access; a geographically distant treasurer, or a treasurer so busy you have to carefully schedule to meet them even once a month, just does not work.
Clint and Sean and Palle kicked around the idea of gaming some more.
VCON 27
The possible bid by Palle came up for discussion, as VCON has earlier on e-mail. Palle has talked to Tim Powers who may talk to J. Blaylock. Andrew Brechin has talked (on e-mail) about a gaming-oriented VCON.
Further to advertising to schools, putting on an open artists' or writers' competition, we note that this will demand some additional manpower.
Palle reiterated his notion of a minimum committee.
We all observed again that, financially, we're in a mess.
Reschedule VCON?
At this point we started kicking around the idea of rescheduling VCON to October (not October 2001, of course, but October 2002). In fact, as Palle pointed out, rescheduling VCONs permanently to October would be more practicable than doing so just once.
For a while the lot of us talked about past conventions, and hotels, mainly with a focus on hot tub parties, and hotel contracts. We have surveyed Vancouver hotels in the past, but rather sporadically and infrequently. Palle thinks we need to do so every two years.
Palle pointed out that he rules out a lot of Vancouver hotels, because their parking space is minimal.
We discussed in particular the Royal, in New Westminster, which now has a casino; and the Sheraton Plaza, which hosted an early VCON, and has lots of function space, but which has rather insufficient parking – and Sheratons had a bad reputation for screwing science fiction conventions.
Discussion wandered again over past VCON financial statements, and Garth finally discovered why there are no final statements for VCONs 21 and 22. Palle stresses that you have to tell people what the workload is, when they volunteer to work on conventions; including a whole chunk of work for the Treasurer, in the month after the con.
Palle raised the question of when to reschedule VCON; shall we say, the second weekend of October (Canadian Thanksgiving, and US Columbus Day)?
At this point we started adding up pros and cons.
Against the proposition, we can expect a lot of automatic opposition and protest; and as a practical matter, sticking to a known, predictable time like May offers VCON a kind of stability.
In favour of the proposition, giving the next VCON an extra five months to prepare will offer us all that much more time this year to clear the VCON 26 debt, and raise seed money for VCON 27; in any year, an October date offers far less schedule conflict with other conventions and SCA events; thus more people can attend; and the change in date can be properly advertised by a publicity blitz.
Whether more hotel space will be available, or at a cheaper rate, is a moot question; Vancouver seems to be relatively short on hotels, and the hotels now seem to be treating all times of year as prime convention-booking season.
Some of our discussion wandered over other potential (fan) guests: John Lorentz? Karl Johanson? Team Maroon?
Clint suggested we pick a date to meet again, and he would book the Renfrew Library room again. He also saw three further matters to deal with in the coming week:
Perhaps we could ask BCSFA whether the barbecue on July 21st could also serve as a fund-raiser? Chilam suggested holding an auction for personal services, like housecleaning.
We indulged in a bit of discussion about schedules. July 20th will be the deadline for the next BCSFAzine, and some statement about the next VCON Society meeting should go into it. Garth will set July 27th as the BCSFAzine production date.
The GENERAL MEETING of the VCON Society will be held August 4th, 2001 at 1:00 p.m. at the Renfrew Public Library meeting room. The subject before the general membership will be the proposed shift in date, and the future of VCON, and maybe a VCON 27 bid.
Meeting adjourned about 5:30 p.m.