This will, regrettably, have to be a much more hastily-written
response than your letter deserves, but there's a distressingly
large number of things which have to be done in the week
remaining before departure for Worldcon, and experience has
taught that there's no catching-up after a big convention.
In a sense -- despite your embarrassment at being wrong -- you
were almost right that my knowledge/acquaintance with the
productional intricacies of conventions dates back only about
five years. That's when I returned from a near-decade of fafia,
and first began paying some (if only a modest amount of)
attention to the mechanics of conventions. (Actually, my first
was ... errr ... the LArea Westercon following SolaCon (which I
just missed) -- 1959 or '60, I suppose. For some years, like many
fans, I couldn't afford to go far afield, with San Francisco
being the practical limit. Torcon II was, I think, my first
Really Distant convention (and it was Marvelous, as were the two
Vancouver WesterCons [well ... maybe #44 wasn't quite that good,
but it was fun], so I'm especially glad that it looks as though
I'll be able to make it to the Winnipeg WorldCon, even though I
get the feeling that that concom is a bit out of their depth]).
The point is that, during that earlier phase I attended,
occasionally helped out, complained about a few things, and heard
some SMOF-type talk (some from Experts), but never really looked
at or thought seriously about what was going on behind the
scenes.
If I said that the rule-of-thumb I heard was that walk-ins are
about 20% of the pre-regs, I shouldn't have. It should have been
that the ConCom should not count on them being more than that;
anything beyond that should be gravy/profit.
My chronological sense is almost as lousy as my memory, but I
heard it from LArea fans who were probably the vanguard of what
became Con-Runner Fandom a few years later. I think it was a year
or two before the Media Influx, when Cons were just beginning to
get big enough that it was becoming clear that they couldn't any
longer be operated (safely) on a "handle things as they come up"
basis. Bruce Pelz, Chuck Crayne, and maybe Craig Miller and
Milton Stevens, were working on the idea of heading off potential
problems before they get big, and the concept of Fiscal
Responsibility. The Ideal was something like "Don't commit
yourself to spending any money you don't actually have in hand";
somewhat modified by Practicality into "... you are sure you will
get" (with no place for optimism). When the total Con Budget was
a few thousand dollars, a +/-5% misestimate was little problem,
but when they started thinking about expanding into an area where
unknowns could make it 10% or more, and budgets of $50 thousand
or more, they were sensible enough to get worried ... and to try
to do something about it.
As far as I know, they used the 20% estimate for several major
cons, so successfully (the actual figure was closer to 30%) that
there was enough Profit that Ted White got All Upset (as Ted used
to do so spectacularly) when they donated largish amounts to the
LASFS and kept much for Bidding Expenses for their future cons,
rather than passing it all on directly to the next one, as had
been traditional. (As the sort of person who buys things for
cash, rather than paying finance charges, and who always manages
to have some money left over at the end of the year, I strongly
approve of the "Fiscal Responsibility" approach.)
That was, I think, shortly before the release of Star Wars and
the popularity of Star Trek, before the science-fictionalization
of mundania (and the mundanization of fandom), and it seems
likely that the percentage of walk-ins would have greatly
increased after that. If I recall correctly, at my earliest cons,
up through the mid- or late 60s, the events were thought of as
parties (or for the more sercon, something like seminars) given
by (groups of) fans for their fan friends, almost all of whom
knew well in advance that they were going to attend, and who took
advantage of the $2 advance registration rate for WesterCon,
rather than pay $6 at the door; at-the-door members were mostly
off-the-street walk-ins, usually not especially welcome and
rarely solicited.
As you say, things Change. Somewhere in there, the concoms
composed of fans who wanted to provide an opportunity for their
friends to get together became (often) concoms composed of
conrunners who delighted in playing around with large sums of
money, and thought in terms of "head count" without (as F.M.
Busby put it) any concern for what's in those heads.
Certainly the 20% estimate went out of the window long ago,
though maybe it's now coming back in -- much depends on the
concom and whether they want to advertise locally, and if the con
is sited conveniently to a high-density urban area. I'm not sure
what the Phoenix Westercon 45 people did, but as far as I can
visualize the Voodoo Message Board (listing pre-registered
members) and the segment of at-the-door additions (which may or
may not have been thoroughly updated when I saw it), the latter
(containing close to 80% Badge Names) almost certainly wasn't
more than 20% the size of the former.
Badge Names ... in general, the "Badge Name" practice strikes me
as being ... more a matter of saying "I don't want whatever
relationship we may establish this weekend to have anything
real/permanent about it" ... My biggest concern, though, stems
from reports (mostly from Eastern & Southern cons) of vandalism
and rowdyness problems, with the perpetrators almost always
having Badge Names, so the concept (for some) seems to imply
anonymity = irresponsibility.
I know little about either statistics or computers, but at least
think I know enough to realize that statistics can be useful as a
guide ... and disastrous as a railroad track. Sure, concoms can
rely too heavily on them, and come a cropper if they project
trends too freely, but the alternative would seem to be pure
guesswork, which is likely to be worse. Actually, the alternative
is probably something like following subconscious impressions of
statistical trends, which isn't much better.
Maybe keeping track of such little details is too much work, for
a small convention, where all the paperwork may be kept in
shoeboxes under the Treasurer's bed, but I think almost all
medium and large cons nowadays use these newfangled things called
"computers". IF the SMOFs and conrunners are even halfway as
well-organized and important and efficient as they seem to want
people to think they are, they'd have worked out systems, and
produced software programs (freeware or shareware), containing
all the framework necessary for handling conventions in various
size categories. If the membership data is entered into a
standardized database (which is then used for printing out
mailing labels for PRs, Badges, etc.), much useful information
can be garnered from a half-hour of button-pushing, after the
data has been collected for a few years. (If, for example, 70% of
the people who attended this year also attended the past three
years [information computerized records can easily provide], the
planners won't go too far wrong if they figure that number as a
sure basis for next year -- as long as they don't move to an
inaccessible location or a much more expensive venue, etc.). And
if such data is easily available (on disk) for other cons of
similar size and nature, they'll have other useful data, if
they're smart enough to use it. (E.g., if they have only a 30%
return rate, and others have 80%, they're doing the right things
to attract new members, but they may want to think seriously
about doing things to encourage more people to come back year
after year.)
Anecdotal evidence is always suspect of course, but I keep
hearing about small local "Science Fiction Clubs" which have
turned into nothing but organizations to produce an annual
convention, with prospective new members who were looking for
something to do with SF (or even fandom) being so turned-off by
the (to them, boring) discussions of organizational details that
they never return. Without a source of grassroots new blood (as
it were), things are going to collapse as the members of the
current generation of conrunners lose interest and drop out (as
most of them will, eventually). Bigger clubs such as LASFS and
MinnSTF don't have quite the same problem, though even if the
conrunners keep most of their activity outside the club meetings,
much of their energy and their minds (often very good ones) will
be diverted away from other club activities.
Another thing that's starting to bother me a lot is that so many
conrunners seem to know almost nothing about fanzines (as I, and
probably you, would define them), and almost certainly read even
the conreports in few or none of them. As a result, they greatly
limit their ... err ... informational intake concerning the
personal-interface aspect of conventions. (I think that's what I
mean, in language they'd probably understand.) Much of the long-
term success of particular conventions (and, in a sense, short-
term as well) hinges on little things which put the people
attending in a good mood, so that they're likely to take the
occasional flub in stride, and it's really much more effective to
have as much of this as possible down in a con-planning/operating
book, rather than depending that "someone" will think of them.
There are hundreds of these little details, and the more of them
that are handled well, the more successful the con will be. (I'm
talking here about the out-front effects on ordinary members such
as myself; the bigger, behind-the-scenes things are probably more
important, but I know less about them.)
If concoms had just one person who assiduously kept up with
fanzines, and provided appropriate extracts for them (and they
read and paid attention to these), they'd be aware of John Hertz'
Axiom: Once something has been done right, there's rarely any
reason for doing it less well, and they'd be aware that:
And all of that is (mostly) merely things one notices about a
Convention during the first hour or so. Admittedly some of it
doesn't apply greatly to smaller cons, and it implies a rather
large number of Staff & responsible Gophers, at least some of
whom would probably have to be enlisted from outside the local
Group. It also implies a great deal of Organization, primarily on
the delivery end, but also at the planning stages.